I do not say this in the interest of the workmen, but speak in appeal to
the non-productive classes, those who live without labour, to show them
that through their servants, the Congress and the administrators of the
laws, they are repeating the folly of the Southern slave-holders, who
could not have found a more effectual way to rid themselves of slavery
than that which they adopted. Looking upon it now, it seems that they
could not have been satisfied with the progress of abolitionism in the
North, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips and Douglass, and therefore
they stirred up the war at home to precipitate the end, and succeeded
admirably. The heartiness with which the Southern members of the St.
Louis Convention recently accepted “the results” is evidence that this
is a proper view to take of it. It is only a wonder that, going so far
as they did, they did not fall into the arms of the Cincinnati
Convention and thank its party for the services rendered them. But this
aside. Had they been content to keep the power they had, they might have
retained their slaves for years to come; but they wanted more! more!
more! Nothing less than the whole country as slave territory would
satisfy their morbidness upon the subject. Perhaps they did not know
what they were doing; but they must have been blind indeed if there were
not among them one sagacious mind who understood it.
But when, through promises from northern doughfaces, they had brought on
the war, then those who had been gradually getting rich, quietly
extending their mortgages, through railroad and other speculative
schemes and exorbitant rates of interest, saw an opportunity to extend,
at a single effort, their grasp over the whole property of the country,
and reduce the masses to servitude for all time to come, as they are
reduced in England. The classes to whom I speak knew that the government
would have to have money; and that it would have to come to them to get
it; and they also knew that the longer the war continued the more money
would be required. So, while the copper-headed bankers of the North gave
the rebels all the encouragement they dared, their English brethren
furnished them with arms and ammunition, and thus the war was prolonged
and made a costly one. The plan was well conceived and nicely executed;
the productive classes were saddled with a debt of $3,000,000,000, for
which the government received little more than half that sum.