Rationale of the Kansas-Nebraska movement--Western
Agriculturists merely Feeders of Slaves--Dry goods
and groceries nearly all of Slave labor
origin--Value of Imports--How paid for--Planters
pay for more than three-fourths--Slavery
intermediate between Commerce and
Agriculture--Slavery not self-sustaining--Supplies
from the North essential to its success--Proximate
extent of those supplies--Slavery the central
power of the industrial interests depending on
Manufactures and Commerce--Abolitionism
contributing to this result--Protection
prostrate--Free Trade dominant--The South
triumphant--Country ambitious of territorial
aggrandizement--The world's peace disturbed--our
policy needs modifying to meet
contingencies--Defeat of Mr. Clay--War with
Mexico--Results unfavorable to renewal of
Protective policy--Dominant political party at the
North gives its adhesion to Free Trade--Leading
Abolition paper does the same--Ditches on the
wrong side of breastworks--Inconsistency--Free
Trade the main element in extending
Slavery--Abolition United States Senators' voting
with the South--North thus shorn of its
power--_Home Market_ supplied by Slavery--People
acquiesce--Despotism and Freedom--Preservation of
the Union paramount--Colored people must wait a
little--Slavery triumphant--People at large
powerless--Necessity of severing the Slavery
question from politics--Colonization the only
hope--Abolitionism prostrate--Admissions on this
point, by Parker, Sumner, Campbell--Other dangers
to be averted--Election of Speaker Banks a Free
Trade triumph--Neutrality necessary--Liberia the
colored man's hope.
FROM what has been said, the dullest intellect can not fail, now, to
perceive the _rationale_ of the Kansas-Nebraska movement. The political
influence which these Territories will give to the South, if secured,
will be of the first importance to perfect its arrangements for future
slavery extension--whether by divisions of the larger States and
Territories, now secured to the institution, its extension into
territory hitherto considered free, or the acquisition of new territory
to be devoted to the system, so as to preserve the balance of power in
Congress. When this is done, Kansas and Nebraska, like Kentucky and
Missouri, will be of little consequence to slaveholders, compared with
the cheap and constant supply of provisions they can yield. Nothing,
therefore, will so exactly coincide with Southern interests, as a rapid
emigration of freemen into these new Territories. White free labor,
doubly productive over slave labor in grain-growing, must be multiplied
within their limits, that the cost of provisions may be reduced and the
extension of slavery and the growth of cotton suffer no interruption.
The present efforts to plant them with slavery, are indispensable to
produce sufficient excitement to fill them speedily with a free
population; and if this whole movement has been a Southern scheme to
cheapen provisions, and increase the ratio of the production of sugar
and cotton, as it most unquestionably will do, it surpasses the
statesman-like strategy which forced the people into an acquiescence in
the annexation of Texas.
And should the anti-slavery voters succeed in gaining the political
ascendency in these Territories, and bring them as free States
triumphantly into the Union; what can they do, but turn in, as all the
rest of the Western States have done, and help to feed slaves, or those
who manufacture or who sell the products of the labor of slaves. There
is no other resource left, either to them or to the older free States,
without an entire change in almost every branch of business and of
domestic economy. Reader, look at your bills of dry goods for the year,
and what do they contain? At least three-fourths of the amount are
French, English, or American cotton fabrics, woven from slave labor
cotton. Look at your bills for groceries, and what do they contain?
Coffee, sugar, molasses, rice--from Brazil, Cuba, Louisiana, Carolina;
while only a mere fraction of them are from free labor countries. As now
employed, our dry goods' merchants and grocers constitute an immense
army of agents for the sale of fabrics and products coming, directly or
indirectly, from the hand of the slave; and all the remaining portion of
the people, free colored, as well as white, are exerting themselves,
according to their various capacities, to gain the means of purchasing
the greatest possible amount of these commodities. Nor can the country,
at present, by any possibility, pay the amount of foreign goods
consumed, but by the labor of the slaves of the planting States. This
can not be doubted for a moment. Here is the proof:
Commerce supplied us, in 1853, with foreign articles, for consumption,
to the value of $250,420,187, and accepted, in exchange, of our
provisions, to the value of but $33,809,126; while the products of our
slave labor, manufactured and unmanufactured, paid to the amount of
$133,648,603, on the balance of this foreign debt. This, then, is the
measure of the ability of the Farmers and Planters, respectively, to
meet the payment of the necessaries and comforts of life, supplied to
the country by its foreign commerce. The farmer pays, or seems only to
pay, $33,800,000, while the planter has a broad credit, on the account,
of $133,600,000.
This was true in 1853: is it so in 1859? The amounts are not now the
same, but the proportions have not varied materially. Reference to Table
VIII, in the Appendix, will show, that while the provisions exported,
for the three years preceding 1859, amounted to a yearly average of
$67,512,812, the value of the cotton and tobacco exported, during the
same period, amounted to an annual average of $147,079,647.
But is this seeming productiveness of slavery real, or is it only
imaginary? Has the system such capacities, over the other industrial
interests of the nation, in the creation of wealth, as these figures
indicate? Or, are these results due to its intermediate position between
the agriculture of the country and its foreign commerce? These are
questions worthy of consideration. Were the planters left to grow their
own provisions, they would, as already intimated, be unable to produce
any cotton for export. That their present ability to export so
extensively, is in consequence of the aid they receive from the North,
is proved by facts such as these:
In 1820, the cotton-gin had been a quarter of a century in operation,
and the culture of cotton was then nearly as well understood as at
present. The North, though furnishing the South with some live stock,
had scarcely begun to supply it with provisions, and the planters had to
grow the food, and manufacture much of the clothing for their slaves. In
that year the cotton crop equaled 109 lbs. to each slave in the Union,
of which 83 lbs. per slave were exported. In 1830 the exports of the
article had risen to 143 lbs., in 1840 to 295 lbs., and in 1853 to 337
lbs. per slave. The total cotton crop of 1853 equaled 395 lbs. per
slave--making both the production and export of that staple, in 1853,
more than four times as large, in proportion to the slave population, as
they were in 1820.[47] Had the planters, in 1853, been able to produce
no more cotton, per slave, than in 1820, they would have grown but
359,308,472 lbs., instead of the actual crop of 1,305,152,800 lbs.; and
would not only have failed to supply any for export, but have barely
supplied the home demand, and been _minus_ the total crop of that year,
by 945,844,328 lbs.
In this estimate, some allowance, perhaps, should be made, for the
greater fertility of the new lands, more recently brought under
cultivation; but the difference, on this account, can not be equal to
the difference in the crops of the several periods, as the lands, in the
older States, in 1820, were yet comparatively fresh and productive.
Again, the dependence of the South upon the North, for its provisions,
may be inferred from such additional facts as these: The "Abstract of
the Census," for 1850, shows, that the production of wheat, in Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, averaged, the year
preceding, very little more than a peck, (it was 27/100 of a bushel,) to
each person within their limits. These States must purchase flour
largely, but to what amount we can not determine. The shipments of
provisions from Cincinnati to New Orleans and other down river ports,
show that large supplies leave that city for the South; but what
proportion of them is taken for consumption by the planters, must be
left, at present, to conjecture. These shipments, as to a few of the
prominent articles, for the four years ending August 31, 1854, averaged
annually the following amounts:
Wheat flour brls. 385,204
Pork and Bacon lbs. 43,689,000
Whisky gals. 8,115,360
Cincinnati also exports eastward, by canal, river and railroad, large
amounts of these productions. The towns and cities westward send more of
their products to the South, as their distance increases the cost of
transportation to the East. But, in the absence of full statistics, it
is not necessary to make additional statements.
From this view of the subject, it appears that slavery is not a
self-sustaining system, independently remunerative; but that it attains
its importance to the nation and to the world, by standing as an agency,
intermediate, between the grain-growing States and our foreign commerce.
As the distillers of the West transformed the surplus grain into
whisky, that it might bear transport, so slavery takes the products of
the North, and metamorphoses them into cotton, that they may bear
export.
It seems, indeed, when the whole of the facts brought to view are
considered, that American slavery, though of little force unaided, yet
properly sustained, is the great central power, or energizing influence,
not only of nearly all the industrial interests of our own country, but
also of those of Great Britain and much of the Continent; and that, if
stricken from existence, the whole of these interests, with the
advancing civilization of the age, would receive a shock that must
retard their progress for years to come.
This is no exaggerated picture of the present imposing power of slavery.
It is literally true. Southern men, at an early day, believed that the
Protective Tariff would have paralyzed it--would have destroyed it. But
the abolitionists, led off by their sympathies with England, and
influenced by American politicians and editors, who advocated free
trade, were made the instruments of its overthrow. No such extended
mining and manufacturing, as the Protective system was expected to
create, has now any existence in the Union. Under it, according to the
theory of its friends, more than one hundred and sixty millions in
value, of the foreign imports for 1853, would have been produced in our
own country. But free trade is dominant: the South has triumphed in its
warfare with the North: the political power passed into its hands with
the defeat of the Father of the Protective Tariff, ten years since, in
the last effort of his friends to elevate him to the Presidency: the
slaveholding and commercial interests then gained the ascendency, and
secured the power of annexing territory at will: the nation has become
rich in commerce, and unbounded in ambition for territorial
aggrandizement: the people acquiesce in the measures of Government, and
are proud of the influence it has gained in the world: nay, more, the
peaceful aspect of the nations has been changed, and the policy of our
own country must be modified to meet the exigencies that may arise.
One word more on the point we have been considering. With the defeat of
Mr. Clay, came the immediate annexation of Texas, and, as he predicted,
the war with Mexico. The results of these events let loose from its
attachments a mighty avalanche of emigration and of enterprise, under
the rule of the free trade policy, then adopted, which, by the golden
treasures it yields, renders that system, thus far, self-sustaining, and
able to move on, as its friends believe, with a momentum that forbids
any attempt to return again to the system of protection. Whether the
Tariff controversy is permanently settled, or not, is a question about
which we shall not speculate. It may be remarked, however, that one of
the leading parties in the North gave its adhesion to free trade many
years since, and still continues to vote with the South. The leading
abolition paper, too, ever since its origin, has advocated the Southern
free trade system; and thus, in defending the cause it has espoused, as
was said of a certain general in the Mexican war, its editors have been
digging their ditches on the wrong side of their breastworks. To say the
least, their position is a very strange one, for men who profess to
labor for the subversion of American slavery. It would be as rational to
pour oil upon a burning edifice, to extinguish the fire, as to attempt
to overthrow that system under the rule of free trade. For, whatever
differences of opinion may exist on the question of free trade, as
applied to the nations at large, there can be no question that it has
been the main element in promoting the value of slave labor in the
United States; and, consequently, of extending the system of slavery,
vastly, beyond the bounds it would otherwise have reached. But the
editors referred to, do not stand alone. More than one United States
Senator, after acquiring notoriety and position by constant clamors
against slavery at home, has not hesitated to vote for free trade at
Washington, with as hearty a good will as any friend of the extension of
slavery in the country!
All these things together have paralyzed the advocates of the protection
of free labor, at present, as fully as the North has thereby been shorn
of its power to control the question of slavery. Indeed, from what has
been said of the present position of American slavery, in its relation
to the other industrial interests of the country, and of the world,
there is no longer any doubt that it now supplies the complement of that
_home market_, so zealously urged as essential to the prosperity of the
agricultural population of the country: and which, it was supposed,
could only be created by the multiplication of domestic manufactures.
This desideratum being gained, the great majority of the people have
nothing more to ask, but seem desirous that our foreign commerce shall
be cherished; that the cultivation of cotton and sugar shall be
extended; that the nation shall become cumulative as well as
progressive; that, as despotism is striving to spread its raven wing
over the earth, freedom must strengthen itself for the protection of the
liberties of the world; that while three millions of Africans, only, are
held to involuntary servitude for a time, to sustain the system of free
trade, the freedom of hundreds of millions is involved in the
preservation of the American Constitution; and that, as African
emancipation, in every experiment made, has thrown a dead weight upon
Anglo-Saxon progress, the colored people must wait a little, until the
general battle for the liberties of the civilized nations is gained,
before the universal elevation of the barbarous tribes can be achieved.
This work, it is true, has been commenced at various outposts in
heathendom, by the missionary, but is impeded by numberless hindrances;
and these obstacles to the progress of Christian civilization, doubtless
will continue, until the friends of civil and religious liberty shall
triumph in nominally Christian countries; and, with the wealth of the
nations at command, instead of applying it to purposes of war, shall
devote it to sweeping away the darkness of superstition and barbarism
from the earth, by extending the knowledge of science and revelation to
all the families of man.
But we must hasten.
There are none who will deny the truth of what is said of the present
strength and influence of slavery, however much they may have deprecated
its acquisition of power. There are none who think it practicable to
assail it, successfully, by political action, in the States where it is
already established by law. The struggle against the system, therefore,
is narrowed down to an effort to prevent its extension into territory
now free; and this contest is limited to the people who settle the
territories. The question is thus taken out of the hands of the people
at large, and they are cut off from all control of slavery both in the
States and Territories. Hence it is, that the American people are
considering the propriety of banishing this distracting question from
national politics, and demanding of their statesmen that there shall no
longer be any delay in the adoption of measures to sustain the
Constitution and laws of our glorious Union, against all its enemies,
whether domestic or foreign.
The policy of adopting this course, may be liable to objection; but it
does not appear to arise from any disposition to prove recreant to the
cause of philanthropy, that a large portion of the people of the free
States are desirous of divorcing the slavery question from all
connection with political movements. It is because they now find
themselves wholly powerless, as did the colonizationists, forty years
since, in regard to emancipation, and are thus forced into a position of
neutrality on that subject.
A word on this point. The friends of colonization, in the outset of that
enterprise, found themselves shut up to the necessity of creating a
Republic on the shores of Africa, as the only hope for the free colored
people--the further emancipation of the slaves, by State action, having
become impracticable. After nearly forty years of experimenting with the
free colored people, by others, colonizationists still find themselves
circumscribed in their operations, to their original design of building
up the Republic of Liberia, as the only rational hope of the elevation
of the African race--the prospects of general emancipation being a
thousand-fold more gloomy in 1859 than they were in 1817.
Abolitionists, themselves, now admit that slavery completely controls
all national legislation. This is equivalent to admitting that all their
schemes for its overthrow have failed. Theodore Parker, of Boston, in a
sermon before his congregation, recently, is reported as having made the
following declaration: "I have been preaching to you in this city for
ten years; and beside the multitudes addressed here, I have addressed a
hundred thousand annually in excursions through the country; and in that
time the area of slavery has increased a hundred fold." Gerrit Smith, in
his late speech in Congress, said, that cotton is now the dominant
interest of the country, and sways Church, and State, and commerce, and
compels all of them to go for slavery. Mr. Sumner, in his thrice
repeated lecture, in New York, in May, 1855, declared, that,
"notwithstanding all its excess of numbers, wealth, and intelligence,
the North is now the vassal of an oligarchy, whose single inspiration
comes from slavery.". . . . . It "now dominates over the Republic,
determines its national policy, disposes of its offices, and sways all
to its absolute will." . . . . "In maintaining its power, the slave
oligarchy has applied a new test for office"--. . . . "Is he faithful to
slavery?" . . . . "With arrogant ostracism, it excludes from every
national office all who can not respond to this test." Hon. L. D.
Campbell, in a letter to the Cincinnati Convention of Colored Freemen,
January 5, 1852, said: "I regard the _present position_ of your race in
this country as infinitely worse than it was ten years ago. The States
which were _then_ preparing for gradual emancipation, are _now_
endeavoring to extend, perpetuate, and strengthen slavery! . . . . A
vast amount of territory which was _then_ free is _now_ everlastingly
dedicated to slavery. . . . . From the lights of the past, I confess,
I see nothing to justify a promise of much to your _future prospects_."
That these gentlemen state a great truth, as to the present position of
the slavery question, and the darkening prospects of emancipation, will
be denied by no man of intelligence and candor. Doubtless, a certain
class of politicians, because of the present dearth of political
capital, of any other kind, will continue to agitate this subject. But,
sooner or later, it must take the form we have stated, and become a
question of minor importance in politics. This result is inevitable,
because the people at large are beginning to realize their want of power
over the institution of slavery, and the futility of any measures
hitherto adopted to arrest its progress, and elevate the free colored
people on terms of equality among the whites.
But, I am told that the North has recently achieved a great victory over
the South, in the election of Mr. Banks, as Speaker.[48] Time was when
such a result would have been considered far otherwise than a Northern
triumph. Mr. Banks is an ultra free trade man, and his sentiments will
assuredly work no ill to the commercial interests of the South. His
election provoked no threats of secession. What, then, has been gained
to the North, in the wild excitement consequent upon the controversy
relative to the Speakership? The opponents of slavery are further than
ever from accomplishing any thing practicable in checking the demand for
the great staple of the South. Cotton is King still.
In such a crisis as this, shall the friends of the Union be rebuked, if
they determine to take a position of neutrality, in politics, on the
subject of slavery; while, at the same time, they offer to guarantee the
free colored people a Republic of their own, where they may equal other
races, and aid in redeeming a Continent from the woes it has suffered
for thousands of years!
FOOTNOTES:
[47] The progressive increase is indicated by the following figures:
=1820.= =1830.= =1840.= =1853.=
Total slaves
in United States, 1,538,098 2,009,043 2,487,356 3,296,408
Cotton exported, lbs., 127,800,000 298,459,102 743,941,061 1,111,570,370
Average export to
each slave, lbs., 83 143 295 337
[48] The remarks in this chapter remain as they were in the first
edition.