FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE.
Finding that we shall have to leave unsaid a great many things which we
intended to say, and that we shall have to omit much valuable matter, the
product of other pens than our own, but which, having collected at
considerable expense, we had hoped to be able to introduce, we have
concluded to present, under the above heading, only a few of the more
important particulars.
In the first place, we will give an explanation of the reason
WHY THIS WORK WAS NOT PUBLISHED IN BALTIMORE.
A considerable portion of this work was written in Baltimore; and the
whole of it would have been written and published there, but for the
following odious clause, which we extract from the Statutes of Maryland:--
"Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, That after the
passage of this act, it shall not be lawful for any citizen of this
State, knowingly to make, print or engrave, or aid in the making,
printing or engraving, within this State, any pictorial
representation, or to write or print, or to aid in the writing or
printing any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill or other paper of an
inflammatory character, and having a tendency to excite discontent
or stir up insurrection amongst the people of color of this State, or
of either of the other States or Territories of the United States, or
knowingly to carry or send, or to aid in the carrying or sending the
same for circulation amongst the inhabitants of either of the other
States or Territories of the United States, and any person so
offending shall be guilty of a felony, and shall on conviction be
sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary of this State, for a
period not less than ten nor more than twenty years, from the time of
sentence pronounced on such person."--_Act passed Dec. 1831. See 2nd
Dorsey, page 1218._
Now so long as slaveholders are clothed with the mantle of office, so long
will they continue to make laws, like the above, expressly calculated to
bring the non-slaveholding whites under a system of vassalage little less
onerous and debasing than that to which the negroes themselves are
accustomed. What wonder is it that there is no native literature in the
South? The South can never have a literature of her own until after
slavery shall have been abolished. Slaveholders are too lazy and ignorant
to write it, and the non-slaveholders--even the few whose minds are
cultivated at all--are not permitted even to make the attempt. Down with
the oligarchy! Ineligibility of slaveholders--never another vote to the
trafficker in human flesh!
LEGISLATIVE ACTS AGAINST SLAVERY.
In his Compendium of the Seventh Census, Mr. DeBow has compiled the
following useful and highly interesting facts:--
"The Continental Congress of 1774 resolved to discontinue the slave
trade, in which resolution they were anticipated by the Conventions
of Delegates of Virginia and North Carolina. In 1789 the Convention
to frame the federal Constitution, looked to the abolition of the
traffic in 1808. On the 2nd of March, 1807, Congress passed an act
against importations of Africans into the United States after January
1st, 1808. An act in Great Britain in 1807 also made the slave trade
unlawful. Denmark forbid the introduction of African slaves into her
colonies after 1804. The Congress of Vienna, in 1815, pronounced for
the abolition of the trade. France abolished it in 1817, and also
Spain, but the acts were to take effect after 1820. Portugal
abolished it in 1818.
"In Pennsylvania slavery was abolished in 1780. In New Jersey it was
provisionally abolished in 1784; all children born of a slave after
1804 are made free in 1820. In Massachusetts, it was declared after
the revolution, that slavery was virtually abolished by their
Constitution, (1780). In 1784 and 1797, Connecticut provided for a
gradual extinction of slavery. In Rhode Island, after 1784, no person
could be _born_ a slave. The Constitutions of Vermont and New
Hampshire, respectively, abolished slavery. In New York it was
provisionally abolished in 1799, twenty-eight years' ownership being
allowed in slaves born after that date, and in 1817 it was enacted
that slavery was not to exist after ten years, or 1827. The ordinance
of 1787 forbid slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio."
Besides the instances enumerated above, slavery has been abolished in more
than forty different parts of the world within the last half century, and
with good results everywhere, except two or three West India islands,
where the negro population was greatly in excess of the whites; and even
in these, the evils, if any, that have followed, are not justly
attributable to abolition, but to the previous demoralization produced by
slavery.
In this connection we may very properly introduce the testimony of a West
India planter to the relative advantages of Free over Slave Labor. Listen
to Charles Pettyjohn, of Barbadoes, who, addressing himself to a citizen
of our own country, says:--
"In 1834, I came in possession of 257 slaves, under the laws of
England, which required the owner to feed, clothe, and furnish them
with medical attendance. With this number I cultivated my sugar
plantation until the Emancipation Act of August 1st, 1838, when they
all became free. I now hire a portion of those slaves, the best and
cheapest of course, as you hire men in the United States. The average
number which I employ is 100, with which I cultivate more land at a
cheaper rate, and make more produce than I did with 257 slaves. With
my slaves I made from 100 to 180 tons of sugar yearly. With 100 free
negroes I think I do badly if I do not annually produce 250 tons."
If, in the forty and more instances to which we have alluded, the
abolition of slavery had proved injurious in a majority of cases, the
attempt to abolish it elsewhere might, perhaps, be regarded as an
ill-advised effort; but, seeing that its abolition has worked well in at
least fourteen-fifteenths of all the cases on record, the fact becomes
obvious that it is our duty and our interest to continue to abolish it
until the whole world shall be freed, or until we shall begin to see more
evil than good result from our acts of emancipation.
THE TRUE FRIENDS OF THE SOUTH.
Freesoilers and abolitionists are the only true friends of the South;
slaveholders and slave-breeders are downright enemies of their own
section. Anti-slavery men are working for the Union and for the good of
the whole world; proslavery men are working for the disunion of the
States, and for the good of nothing except themselves. Than such men as
Greeley, Seward, Sumner, Clay, and Birney, the South can have no truer
friends--nor can slavery have more implacable foes.
For the purpose of showing that Horace Greeley is not, as he is generally
represented by the oligarchy, an inveterate hater of the South, we will
here introduce an extract from one of his editorial articles in a late
number of the New York _Tribune_--a faithful advocate of freedom, whose
circulation, we are happy to say, is greater than the aggregate
circulation of more than twenty of the principal proslavery sheets
published at the South:--
"Is it in vain that we pile fact upon fact, proof on proof, showing
that slavery is a blight and a curse to the States which cherish it?
These facts are multitudinous as the leaves of the forest; conclusive
as the demonstrations of geometry. Nobody attempts to refute them,
but the champions of slavery extension seem determined to persist in
ignoring them. Let it be understood, then, once for all, that we do
not hate the South, war on the South, nor seek to ruin the South, in
resisting the extension of slavery. We most earnestly believe human
bondage a curse to the South, and to all whom it affects; but we do
not labor for its overthrow otherwise than through the conviction of
the South of its injustice and mischief. Its extension into new
Territories we determinedly resist, not by any means from ill will to
the South, but under the impulse of good will to all mankind. We
believe the establishment of slavery in Kansas or any other Western
Territory would prolong its existence in Virginia and Maryland, by
widening the market and increasing the price of slaves, and thereby
increasing the profits of slave-breeding, and the consequent
incitement thereto. Those who urge that slavery would not go into
Kansas if permitted, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that it
_has gone_ into Missouri, lying in exactly the same latitude, and is
now strongest in that north-western angle of said State, which was
covertly filched from what is now Kansas, within the last twenty
years. Even if the growth of hemp, corn and tobacco were not so
profitable in Eastern Kansas, as it evidently must be, the growth of
slaves for more Southern consumption would inevitably prove as
lucrative there as in Virginia and Maryland, which lie in
corresponding latitudes, and whose chief staple export to-day
consists of negro bondmen destined for the plantations of Louisiana
and Mississippi, which could be supplied more conveniently and
cheaply from Kansas than from their present breeding-places this side
of the Alleghanies.
Whenever we draw a parallel between Northern and Southern production,
industry, thrift, wealth, the few who seek to parry the facts at all
complain that the instances are unfairly selected--that the
commercial ascendancy of the North, with the profits and facilities
thence accruing, accounts for the striking preponderance of the
North. In vain we insist that slavery is the cause of this very
commercial ascendancy--that Norfolk and Richmond and Charleston might
have been to this country what Boston, New-York and Philadelphia now
are, had not slavery spread its pall over and paralyzed the energies
of the South."
This may be regarded as a fair expression of the sentiments of a great
majority of the people north of Mason and Dixon's line. Our Northern
cousins "do not hate the South, war on the South, nor seek to ruin the
South;" on the contrary, they love our particular part of the nation, and,
like dutiful, sensible, upright men, they would promote its interests by
facilitating the abolition of slavery. Success to their efforts!
SLAVERY THOUGHTFUL--SIGNS OF CONTRITION.
The real condition of the South is most graphically described in the
following doleful admissions from the Charleston _Standard_:--
"In its every aspect our present condition is provincial. We have
within our limits no solitary metropolis of interest or ideas--no
marts of exchange--no radiating centres of opinion. Whatever we have
of genius and productive energy, goes freely in to swell the
importance of the North. Possessing the material which constitutes
two-thirds of the commerce of the whole country, it might have been
supposed that we could have influence upon the councils of foreign
States; but we are never taken into contemplation. It might have been
supposed that England, bound to us by the cords upon which depend the
existence of four millions of her subjects, would be considerate of
our feelings; but receiving her cotton from the North, it is for them
she has concern, and it is her interest and her pleasure to reproach
us. It might have been supposed, that, producing the material which
is sent abroad, to us would come the articles that are taken in
exchange for it; but to the North they go for distribution, and to us
are parcelled out the fabrics that are suited to so remote a section.
Instead, therefore, of New-York being tributary to Norfolk,
Charleston, Savannah or New Orleans, these cities are tributary to
New-York. Instead of the merchants of New-York standing cap in hand
to the merchants of Charleston, the merchants of Charleston stand cap
in hand to the merchants of New-York.--Instead of receiving foreign
ships in Southern waters, and calling up the merchants of the country
to a distribution of the cargo, the merchants of the South are
hurried off to make a distribution elsewhere. In virtue of our
relations to a greater system, we have little development of internal
interests; receiving supplies from the great centre, we have made
little effort to supply ourselves. We support the makers of boots,
shoes, hats, coats, shirts, flannels, blankets, carpets, chairs,
tables, mantels, mats, carriages, jewelry, cradles, couches, coffins,
by the thousand and hundreds of thousands; but they scorn to live
amongst us. They must have the gaieties and splendors of a great
metropolis, and are not content to vegetate upon the dim verge of
this remote frontier.
As it is in material interests, so it is in arts and letters--our
pictures are painted at the North, our books are published at the
North, our periodicals and papers are printed at the North. We are
even fed on police reports and villany from the North. The papers
published at the South which ignore the questions at issue between
the sections are generally well sustained; the books which expose the
evils of our institution are even read with avidity beyond our
limits, but the ideas that are turned to the condition of the South
are intensely provincial. If, as things now are, a man should rise
with all the genius of Shakspeare, or Dickens, or Fielding, or of all
the three combined, and speak from the South, he would not receive
enough to pay the costs of publication. If published at the South,
his book would never be seen or heard of, and published at the North
it would not be read.--So perfect is our provincialism, therefore,
that enterprise is forced to the North for a sphere--talent for a
market--genius for the ideas upon which to work--indolence for ease,
and the tourist for attractions."
This extract exhibits in bold relief, and in small space, a large number
of the present evils of past errors. It is charmingly frank and truthful.
DeQuincey's Confessions of an opium eater are nothing to it. A
distinguished writer on medical jurisprudence informs us that "the
knowledge of the disease is half the cure;" and if it be true, as perhaps
it is, we think the _Standard_ is in a fair way to be reclaimed from the
enormous vices of proslavery statism.
PROGRESS OF FREEDOM IN THE SOUTH.
"Now, by St. Paul, the work goes bravely on."
As well might the oligarchy attempt to stay the flux and reflux of the
tides, as to attempt to stay the progress of Freedom in the South.
Approved of God, the edict of the genius of Universal Emancipation has
been proclaimed to the world, and nothing, save Deity himself, can
possibly reverse it. To connive at the perpetuation of slavery is to
disobey the commands of Heaven. Not to be an abolitionist is to be a
wilful and diabolical instrument of the devil. The South needs to be free,
the South wants to be free, the South _shall_ be free!
The following extracts from Southern journals will show that the glorious
light of a better era has already begun to penetrate and dispel the
portentous clouds of slavery. The Wellsburg (Va.) _Herald_, an independent
paper, referring to the vote of thirteen Democrats from that section,
refusing, in the Virginia Legislature, in 1856, "to appropriate money from
the general treasury for the recapture of runaway slaves," says:--
"We presume these delegates in some degree represent their
constituents, and we are thereby encouraged and built up in the
confidence that there are other interests in Virginia to be seen to
besides those pertaining to slavery."
A non-slaveholding Southron, in the course of a communication in a more
recent number of the same journal, says:--
"We are taxed to support slavery. The clean cash goes out of our own
pockets into the pockets of the slaveholder, and this in many ways. I
will now allude to but two. If a slave, for crime, is put to death or
transported, the owner is paid for him out of the public treasury,
and under this law thousands are paid out every year. Again, a
standing army is kept up in the city of Richmond for no other purpose
than to be ready to quell insurrection among the slaves; this is paid
for out of the public treasury annually. This standing army is called
the public guard, but it is no less a standing army always kept up.
We will quote from the acts of 1856 the expense of these two items to
the State, on the 23d and 24th pages of the acts:--'To pay for slaves
executed and transported, $22,000;' 'to the public guard at Richmond,
$24,000.' This, be it noticed, is only for one year, making near
$50,000 for those two objects in one year; but it can be shown by the
present unequal plan of taxation between slave property and other
property, that this is but a small item of our cash pocketed by the
slaveholders; and yet some will say we have no reason to complain."
The editor of the Wheeling _Gazette_ publishes the following as his
platform on the slavery question:--
"Allying ourself to neither North nor South, on our own hook we adopt
the following platform as our platform on this question, from which
we never have and never will recede. _We may_ FALL _on it, but_ WILL
NEVER LEAVE IT.
The severance of the General Government from slavery.
_The_ REPEAL _of the fugitive slave law._
_The_ REPEAL _of the Nebraska Kansas Bill._
_No more slave territories._
THE PURCHASE AND MANUMISSION OF SLAVES IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
OR THE REMOVAL OF THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT TO FREE TERRITORY."
Says the Baltimore _Clipper_:--
"The South is contending for, and the North against, the extension of
slavery into the territories; but we do not think that either side
would consent to dissolve the Union about the negro population--a
population which we look upon as a curse to the nation, and should
rejoice to see removed to their native clime of Africa."
The _National Era_, _one_ of the best papers in the country, published in
Washington City, D. C., says:--
"The tendency of slavery to diffuse itself, and to crowd out free
labor, was early observed by American patriots, North and South; and
Mr. Jefferson, the great apostle of Republicanism, made an effort, in
1784, to cut short the encroaching tide of barbaric despotism, by
prohibiting slavery in all the territories of the Union, down to
thirty-one degrees of latitude, which was then our Southern boundary.
His beneficent purpose failed, not for want of a decisive majority of
votes present in the Congress of the Confederation, but in
consequence of the absence of the delegates from one or two States,
which were necessary to the constitutional majority. When the subject
again came up, in 1787, Mr. Jefferson was Minister to France, and the
famous ordinance of that year was adopted, prohibiting slavery North
and West of the Ohio river. Between 1784 and 1787, the strides of
slavery westward, into Tennessee and Kentucky, had become too
considerable to admit of the policy of exclusion; and besides those
regions were then integral parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and
of course they could not be touched without the consent of those
States. In 1820, another effort was made to arrest the progress of
slavery, which threatened to monopolize the whole territory west of
the Mississippi. In the meantime the South had apostatized from the
faith of Jefferson. It had ceased to love universal liberty, and the
growing importance of the cotton culture had caused the people to
look with indifference upon the moral deformity of slavery; and, as a
matter of course, the politicians became its apologists and
defenders. After a severe struggle a compromise was agreed upon, by
which Missouri was to be admitted with slavery, which was the
immediate point in controversy; and slavery was to be excluded from
all the territory North and West of that State.
"We have shown, from the most incontestable evidence, that there is
in slave society a much greater tendency to diffuse itself into new
regions, than belongs to freedom, for the reason that it has no
internal vitality. It cannot live if circumscribed, and must, like a
consumptive, be continually roving for a change of air to recuperate
its wasting energies."
In the Missouri Legislature, in January, 1857, Mr. Brown, of St. Louis,
proved himself a hero, a patriot, and a statesman, in the following
words:--
"I am a Free-Soiler and I don't deny it. No word or vote of mine
shall ever inure to the benefit of such a monstrous doctrine as the
extension of Slavery over the patrimony of the free white laborers of
the country. I am for the greatest good of the greatest number, and
against the system which monopolizes the free and fertile territory
of our country for a few slaveholders, to the exclusion of thousands
upon thousands of the sinewy sons of toil. The time will come, and
perhaps very soon, when the people will rule for their own benefit
_and not for that of a class which, numerically speaking, is
insignificant_. I stand here in the midst of the assembled
Legislature of Missouri to avow myself a Free-Soiler. Let those who
are scared at names shrink from the position if they will. I shall
take my stand in favor of the white man. Here in Missouri I shall
support the rights, the dignity and the welfare of the 800,000
non-slaveholders in preference to upholding and perpetuating the
dominancy of the 30,000 slaveholders who inhabit our State."
The St. Louis _Democrat_, in an editorial article, under date of January
28, 1857, entitled itself to the favorable regard of every true lover of
liberty, by talking thus boldly on the subject of the "Emancipation of
Slavery in Missouri":--
"Viewing the question as a subject of State policy, we will venture
to say that it is the grandest ever propounded to the people. If it
were affirmed in a constitutional convention, and thoroughly carried
out without any violation of vested rights, Missouri, in a few years
subsequent to its consummation, would be the foremost State on the
American continent. Population would flow in from all sides were the
barrier of negro slavery once removed, and in place of 80,000 slaves,
we should have 800,000 white men, which, in addition to the
population we would have at that time, would give us at once an
aggregate of two millions.
Is Missouri ambitious of political power?--a power which is slipping
away from the South. The mode of acquiring it is found. We are not
rash enough to attempt a description of our condition if the element
of free labor were introduced. The earth would give up its hidden
treasures at its bidding as the sea will give up its dead; and the
soil would bloom more luxuriantly than if it drank the dews of Hermon
nightly; ten thousand keels would vex our rivers, towns along their
banks would grow into cities, and St. Louis would soon unite in
itself the attributes of the greatest commercial manufacturing and
literary metropolis in the world. Let it be remembered that we have
every inanimate element of wealth and power within our limits, and
that we require only labor--free labor--for we need not say that
servile labor is inadequate. * * *
There need be no pernicious agitation, and even if there should, it
is the penalty which we cannot avoid paying at some time; and it is
easier to pay it now, than in the future. Who that watches passing
events and indications, is not sensible of the fact that great
internal convulsions await the slave States? Better to grapple with
the danger in time, if danger there be, and avert it, than wait until
it becomes formidable. One thing is certain, or history is no guide:
that is, that slavery cannot be perpetuated anywhere. An agitation
now would be the effort of the social system to throw off a disease
which had not touched its vitals; hereafter it would be the struggle
for life with a mortal sickness. But we do not apprehend any
agitation more violent than has been forced upon us for years by the
pro-slavery politicians. Agitating the slavery question, has been
their constant business, and nothing worse has resulted from it than
their elevation to office--no very trifling evil, by the way--and the
temporary subjugation of Kansas.
Besides, we know that all the free States emancipated their slaves,
and England and France theirs suddenly; and we have yet to learn that
a dangerous agitation arose in any instance."
In addition to all this, it is well known, and we thank Heaven for the
fact and for the indication, that, at the election held for Mayor of St.
Louis, in April, 1857, the Abolition candidate, himself a native of
Virginia, was triumphantly elevated to the chief magistracy of the city.
Three cheers for St. Louis! nine for Missouri! thirteen for the South.
In reference to the late election in St. Louis, in which the Emancipation
party triumphed, the Wheeling (Va.) _Intelligencer_ says:--
"These elections do demonstrate this fact, beyond a cavil, that the
sentiment of the great majority of the people of this Union is
irrevocably opposed to the extension of slavery; that they are
determined, if overwhelming public sentiment can avail anything,
another slave State shall not be admitted into the confederacy. And
why are they so determined? Because they believe, and not only
believe, but see and know, that slavery is an unmitigated curse to
the soil that sustains it. They know this, because they see every
free State outstripping every slave State in all the elements that
make a people powerful and prosperous; because they see the people in
the one educated and thrifty, and in the other ignorant and
thriftless; because they have before their eyes a State like our own,
once the very Union itself almost in importance, to-day taking her
rank as a fifth rate power."
Non-slaveholders of the South! fail not to support the papers--the
Southern papers--that support your interests. Chief amongst those papers
are the St. Louis (Mo.) _Democrat_, the _National Era_, published in
Washington City, D. C., the Baltimore _Clipper_, the Wheeling (Va.)
_Intelligencer_, and the Wellsburg (Va.) _Herald_.
A RIGHT FEELING IN THE RIGHT QUARTER.
There is but one way for the oligarchy to perpetuate slavery in the
Southern States, and that is by perpetuating absolute ignorance among the
non-slaveholding whites. This it is quite impossible for them to do. God
has scattered the seeds of knowledge throughout every portion of the
South, and they are, as might have been expected, beginning to take root
in her fertile soil. The following extracts from letters which have been
received since we commenced writing this work, will show how powerfully
the spirit of freedom is operating upon the minds of intelligent, thinking
men in the slave States.
A Baltimorean, writing to us awhile previous to the last Presidential
election, says:--
"I see that the Trustees of the University of North Carolina have
dismissed Prof. Hedrick for writing a letter in favor of Republican
principles. Oh, what an inglorious source of reflection for an
American citizen! To think, to know that our boasted liberty of
speech is a myth, an abstraction. To see a poor professor crushed
under the feet of the tyrannical magnates of slavery, for daring to
speak the honest sentiments of his heart. Where is fanaticism now,
North or South? Oh, my country, my country, whither art thou tending?
Truly we have fallen upon degenerate days. God grant that they may
not be like those of ancient Greece and Rome, the forerunners of our
country's ruin."
In a letter under date of November 1, 1856, a friend who resides in the
eastern part of North Carolina, says:--
"In the papers which reached me last week I notice that our own State
has been disgraced by a junto of pro-slavery hot-spurs, who had the
audacity to meet in Raleigh for the express purpose of concocting
measures for a dissolution of the Union. It appears that the three
leading spirits of this cabal were the present governors of three
neighboring States--three treasonable disturbers of the public peace,
who, under the circumstances, should, in my opinion, have been shot
dead upon the spot! I have each of their names noted down in my
memorandum, and I shall certainly die unsatisfied, if I do not live
to hear of their being thoroughly tarred and feathered, and ridden on
a rail, by the non-slaveholding whites, against whose welfare their
machinations have been chiefly leveled. Rely upon it, that, if they
do not soon sneak away into their graves, a day of retributive
justice will most assuredly overtake them."
A native and resident of one of the towns in western North Carolina, under
date of March 19, 1857, writes to us as follows:--
"While patrolling a few nights ago I was forcibly struck with the
truthfulness of the remarks contained in your last letter.--Here I
am, a poor but sober and industrious man, with a family dependent on
me for support, and after I have finished my day's labor, I am
compelled to walk the streets from nine in the evening till three in
the morning, to restrain the roving propensities of other people's
'property'--niggers. Why should I thus be deprived of sleep that the
slaveholder may slumber? I frankly acknowledge my indebtedness to you
for opening my eyes upon this subject. The more I think and see of
slavery the more I detest it. * * * I am becoming restless, and have
been debating within my own mind whether I had not better emigrate to
a free State. * * * If I live, I am determined to oppose slavery
somewhere--here or elsewhere. It will be impossible for me to keep my
lips sealed much longer. Indeed, I sometimes feel that I have been
remiss in my duty in not having opened them ere now. But for the
unfathomable ignorance that pervades the mass of the poor, deluded,
slavery-saddled whites around me, I would not suppress my sentiments
another hour."
Again, under date of April 7, 1857, he says:--
"I thank God that slavery will, in my opinion, soon be abolished. I
wish to Heaven I had the ability to raise my voice successfully in
favor of a just system to abolish it. I would indeed be rejoiced to
have an opportunity to do something to relieve the South of the awful
curse. Fear not that you will meet with no sympathizers in the South.
You will have hosts of friends on every side--even in this town, if I
am not greatly mistaken, a large majority of the citizens will add
an enthusiastic _Amen!_ to your work."
We might furnish similar extracts from other letters, but these, we think,
are quite sufficient to show that the millennium of freedom is rapidly
dawning throughout the benighted regions of slavery. Coveted events are
happening in charming succession. All we have to do is to wait and work a
little longer.
THE ILLITERATE POOR WHITES OF THE SOUTH.
Had we the power to sketch a true picture of life among the
non-slaveholding whites of the South, every intelligent man who has a
spark of philanthropy in his breast, and who should happen to gaze upon
the picture, would burn with unquenchable indignation at that system of
African slavery which entails unutterable miseries on the superior race.
It is quite impossible, however, to describe accurately the deplorable
ignorance and squalid poverty of the class to which we refer. The serfs of
Russia have reason to congratulate themselves that they are neither the
negroes nor the non-slaveholding whites of the South. Than the latter
there can be no people in Christendom more unhappily situated. Below will
be found a few extracts which will throw some light on the subject now
under consideration.
Says William Gregg, in an address delivered before the South Carolina
Institute, in 1851:--
"From the best estimates that I have been able to make, I put down
the white people who ought to work, and who do not, or who are so
employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State, at one hundred
and twenty-five thousand. Any man who is an observer of things could
hardly pass through our country, without being struck with the fact
that all the capital, enterprise, and intelligence, is employed in
directing slave labor; and the consequence is, that a large portion
of our poor white people are wholly neglected, and are suffered to
while away an existence in a state but one step in advance of the
Indian of the forest. It is an evil of vast magnitude, and nothing
but a change in public sentiment will effect its cure. These people
must be brought into daily contact with the rich and
intelligent--they must be stimulated to mental action, and taught to
appreciate education and the comforts of civilized life; and this, we
believe, may be effected only by the introduction of manufactures. My
experience at Graniteville has satisfied me that unless our poor
people can be brought together in villages, and some means of
employment afforded them, it will be an utterly hopeless effort to
undertake to educate them. We have collected at that place about
eight hundred people, and as likely looking a set of country girls as
may be found--industrious and orderly people, but deplorably
ignorant, three-fourths of the adults not being able to read or to
write their own names.
"It is only necessary to build a manufacturing village of shanties,
in a healthy location, in any part of the State, to have crowds of
these people around you, seeking employment at half the compensation
given to operatives at the North. It is indeed painful to be brought
in contact with such ignorance and degradation."
Again he asks:--
"Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded
white people among us, who, in this land of plenty, live in
comparative nakedness and starvation? Many a one is reared in _proud_
South Carolina, from birth to manhood, who has never passed a month
in which he has not, some part of the time, been stinted for meat.
Many a mother is there who will tell you that her children are but
scantily provided with bread, and much more scantily with meat; and,
if they be clad with comfortable raiment, it is at the expense of
these scanty allowances of food. These may be startling statements,
but they are nevertheless true; and if not believed in Charleston,
the members of our legislature who have traversed the State in
electioneering campaigns can attest the truth."
In an article on "_Manufactures in South Carolina_," published some time
ago in _DeBow's Review_, J. H. Taylor, of Charleston (S. C.) says:--
"There is in some quarters, a natural jealousy of the slightest
innovation upon established habits, and because an effort has been
made to collect the poor and unemployed white population into our new
factories, fears have arisen that some evil would grow out of the
introduction of such establishments among us. * * * The poor man has
a vote as well as the rich man, and in our State the number of the
former will largely overbalance the latter. So long as these poor but
industrious people can see no mode of living except by a degrading
operation of work with the negro upon the plantation, they will be
content to endure life in its most discouraging forms, satisfied that
they are _above_ the slave, though faring often worse than he."
Speaking in favor of manufactures, the Hon. J. H. Lumpkin, of Georgia,
said in 1852:--
"It is objected that these manufacturing establishments will become
the hotbeds of crime. But I am by no means ready to concede that our
poor, degraded, half-fed, half-clothed, and ignorant
population--without Sabbath Schools, or any other kind of
instruction, mental or moral, or without any just appreciation of
character--will be injured by giving them employment, which will
bring them under the oversight of employers, who will inspire them
with self-respect by taking an interest in their welfare."
In a paper on the "_Extension of Cotton and Wool Factories at the South_,"
Mr. Steadman, of Tennessee, says:--
"In Lowell, labor is paid the fair compensation of 80 cents a day for
men, and $2 a week for women, beside board, while in Tennessee the
average compensation for labor does not exceed 50 cents per day for
men, and $1,25 per week for women."
In the course of a speech which he delivered in Congress several years
ago, Mr. T. L. Clingman, of North Carolina, said:--
"Our manufacturing establishments can obtain the raw material
(cotton) at nearly two cents on the pound cheaper than the
New-England establishments. Labor is likewise one hundred per cent.
cheaper. In the upper parts of the State, the labor of either a free
man or a slave, including board, clothing, &c., can be obtained for
from $110 to $120 per annum. It will cost at least twice that sum in
New-England. The difference in the cost of female labor, whether free
or slave, is even greater."
The Richmond (Va.) _Dispatch_ says:--
"We will only suppose that the ready-made shoes imported into this
city from the North, and sold here, were manufactured in Richmond.
What a great addition it would be to the means of employment! How
many boys and females would find the means of earning their bread,
who are now suffering for a regular supply of the necessaries of
life."
A citizen of New-Orleans, writing in _DeBow's Review_, says:--
"At present the sources of employment open to females (save in menial
offices) are very limited; and an inability to procure suitable
occupation is an evil much to be deplored, as tending in its
consequences to produce demoralization. The superior grades of female
labor may be considered such as imply a necessity for education on
the part of the employee, while the menial class is generally
regarded as of the lowest; and in a slave State, this standard is 'in
the lowest depths, a lower deep,' from the fact that, by association,
it is a reduction of the white servant to the level of their colored
fellow-menials."
Black slave labor, though far less valuable, is almost invariably better
paid than free white labor. The reason is this: The fiat of the oligarchy
has made it _fashionable_ to "have negroes around," and there are, we are
grieved to say, many non-slaveholding-whites, (lickspittles,) who, in
order to retain on their premises a hired slave whom they falsely imagine
secures to them not only the appearance of wealth, but also a position of
high social standing in the community, keep themselves in a perpetual
strait.
Last Spring we made it our special business to ascertain the ruling rates
of wages paid for labor, free and slave, in North Carolina. We found
sober, energetic white men, between twenty and forty years of age, engaged
in agricultural pursuits at a salary of $84 per annum--including board
only; negro men, slaves, who performed little more than half the amount of
labor, and who were exceedingly sluggish, awkward, and careless in all
their movements, were hired out on adjoining farms at an average of about
$115 per annum, including board, clothing, and medical attendance. Free
white men and slaves were in the employ of the North Carolina Railroad
Company; the former, whose services, in our opinion, were at least twice
as valuable as the services of the latter, received only $12 per month
each; the masters of the latter received $16 per month for every slave so
employed. Industrious, tidy white girls, from sixteen to twenty years of
age, had much difficulty in hiring themselves out as domestics in private
families for $40 per annum--board only included; negro wenches, slaves, of
corresponding ages, so ungraceful, stupid and filthy that no decent man
would ever permit one of them to cross the threshold of his dwelling, were
in brisk demand at from $65 to $70 per annum, including victuals, clothes,
and medical attendance. These are facts, and in considering them, the
students of political and social economy will not fail to arrive at
conclusions of their own.
Notwithstanding the greater density of population in the free States,
labor of every kind is, on an average, about one hundred per cent. higher
there than it is in the slave States. This is another important fact, and
one that every non-slaveholding white should keep registered in his mind.
Poverty, ignorance, and superstition, are the three leading
characteristics of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. Many of them
grow up to the age of maturity, and pass through life without ever owning
as much as five dollars at any one time. Thousands of them die at an
advanced age, as ignorant of the common alphabet as if it had never been
invented. All are more or less impressed with a belief in witches, ghosts,
and supernatural signs. Few are exempt from habits of sensuality and
intemperance. None have anything like adequate ideas of the duties which
they owe either to their God, to themselves, or to their fellow-men.
Pitiable, indeed, in the fullest sense of the term, is their condition.
It is the almost utter lack of an education that has reduced them to
their present unenviable situation. In the whole South there is scarcely a
publication of any kind devoted to their interests. They are now
completely under the domination of the oligarchy, and it is madness to
suppose that they will ever be able to rise to a position of true manhood,
until after the slave power shall have been utterly overthrown.