Nowhere, since time began, have the two systems of slave labor and free labor been subjected to so fair and so decisive a trial of their effects on public prosperity as in these United States. Here the two systems have worked side by side for ages, under such equal circumstances, both political and physical, and with such ample time and opportunity for each to work out its proper effects, that all must admit the experiment to be now complete, and the result decisive. No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor. In the first settlement of a country, when labor is scarce and dear, slavery may give a temporary impulse to improvement; but even this is not the case, except in warm climates, and where free men are scarce and either sickly or lazy; and when we have said this, wehave said all that experience in the United States warrants us to say, in favor of the policy of employing slave labor.It is the common remark of all who have travelled through the United States, that the free states and the slave states exhibit a striking contrast in their appearance. In the older free states are seen all the tokens of prosperity;—a dense and increasing population; thriving villages, towns, and cities; a neat and productive agriculture, growing manufactures, and active commerce.In the older parts of the slave states,—with a few local exceptions,—are seen, on the contrary, too evident signs of stagnation, or of positive decay;—a sparse population, a slovenly cultivation spread over vast fields that are wearing out, among others already worn out and desolate; villages and towns, “few and far between,” rarely growing, often decaying, sometimes mere remnants of what they were, sometimes deserted ruins, haunted only by owls; generally no manufactures, nor even trades, except the indispensable few; commerce and navigation abandoned, as far as possible, to the people of the free states; and generally, instead of the stir and bustle of industry, a dull and dreamy stillness, broken, if broke at all, only by the wordy brawl of politics.New England and the middle states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania contained, in 1790, 1,968,000 inhabitants, and in 1840, 6,760,000; having gained, in this period, 243 per cent.The four old slave states had, in 1790, a population of 1,473,000, and in 1840, of 3,279,000; having gained, in the same period, 122 per cent., just about half as much, in proportion, as the free states. They ought to have gained about twice as much; for they had at first only seven inhabitants to the square mile, when the free states not only had upwards of twelve, but, on the whole, much inferior advantages of soil and climate. Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.About half the territory of these old slave states is new country, and has comparatively few slaves. On this part the increase of population has chiefly taken place. On the old slave-labored lowlands, a singular phenomena has appeared;there, within the bounds of these rapidly growing United States,—yes, there, population has been long at a stand; yes, over wide regions,—especially in Virginia,—it has declined, and a new wilderness is gaining upon the cultivated land! What has done this work of desolation? Not war, nor pestilence; not oppression of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical; butslavery, a curse more destructive in its effects than any of them. It were hard to find, in old king-ridden, priest-ridden, overtaxed Europe, so large a country, where, within twenty years past, such a growing poverty and desolation have appeared.It is in the last period of ten years, from 1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its worst effects in the old Southern States. Including the increase in their newly-settled and western counties, they gained in population only 7¹⁄₂ per cent.; while cold, barren, thickly peopled New England gained 15, and the old Middle States 26 per cent. East Virginia actually fell off 26,000 in population; and, with the exception of Richmond and one or two other towns, her population continues to decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction. Her lowland neighbors of Maryland and the Carolinas were not far behind at theseeding; nor are they far behind at the ingathering of desolation.Let us take the rich and beautiful State of Kentucky, compared with her free neighbor Ohio. The slaves of Kentucky have composed less than a fourth part of her population. But mark their effect upon the comparative growth of the state. In the year 1800, Kentucky contained 221,000 inhabitants, and Ohio, 45,000. In forty years, the population of Kentucky had risen to 780,000; that of Ohio to 1,519,000. This wonderful difference could not be owing to any natural superiority of the Ohio country. Kentucky is nearly as large, nearly as fertile, and quite equal, in other gifts of nature. She had greatly the advantage, too, in the outset of this forty years’ race of population. She started with 5¹⁄₂ inhabitants to the square mile, and came out with 20: Ohio started with one inhabitant to the square mile, and came out with 38. Kentucky had full possession of her territory at the beginning. Much of Ohio was then, and for a long time afterwards, in possessionof the Indians. Ohio is by this time considerably more than twice as thickly peopled as Kentucky; yet she still gains, both by natural increase and by the influx of emigrants; while Kentucky has for twenty years been receiving much fewer emigrants than Ohio, and multitudes of her citizens have been yearly moving off to newer and yet newer countries.Compare this natural increase with the census returns, and it appears that, in the ten years from 1830 to 1840, Virginia lost by emigration no fewer than 375,000 of her people, of whom East Virginia lost 304,000, and West Virginia 71,000. At this rate Virginia supplies the west every ten years with a population equal in number to the population of the State of Mississippi in 1840!Some Virginia politicians, proudly,—yes,proudly, fellow-citizens,—call our old commonwealthThe Mother of States! Theseenlightenedpatriots might pay her a still higher compliment, by calling herThe Grandmotherof States. For our part, we are grieved and mortified to think of the lean and haggard condition of our venerable mother. Her black children have sucked her so dry, that now, for a long time past, she has not milk enough for her offspring, either black or white.She has sent,—or we should rather say, she has driven,—from her soil at least one third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the west. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for them. It is a truth, a certain truth, thatslavery drives free laborers,—farmers, mechanics, and all, and some of the best of them too,—out of the country, and fills their places with negroes.It is admitted on all hands, that slave labor is better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry; and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing.Therefore, since in agriculture slave labor is proved to be far less productive than free labor,slavery is demonstrated to be not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to the public prosperity.We do not mean that slave labor can never earn any thing for him that employs it. The question is between free labor and slave labor. He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.Agriculture in the slave states may be characterized in general by two epithets,extensive,exhaustive,—which in all agricultural countries forebode two things,impoverishment,depopulation. The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,—in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.Pliny, a writer of that age, in his Natural History, (Book 18, c. 1-7,) tells us, that while the small farms of former times were cultivated by freemen, and even great commanders did not disdain to labor with their own hands, agriculture flourished, and provisions were abundant; but that afterwards, when the lands were engrossed by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by fettered and branded slaves, the country was ruined, and corn had to be imported. The same system was spreading ruin over the provinces, and thus the prosperity of the empire was undermined. Pliny denounces, as the worst of all, the system of having large estates in the country cultivated by slaves, or indeed, says he, “to have any thing done by men who labor without hope of reward.”So Livy, the great Roman historian, observed, some years before Pliny, (Book 6, c. 12,) that “innumerable multitudes of men formerly inhabited those parts of Italy, where, in his time, none but slaves redeemed the country from desertion;”—that is, a dense population of free laborers had been succeeded by a sparse population of slaves.Even the common mechanical trades do not flourish in a slave state. Some mechanical operations must, indeed, beperformed in every civilized country; but the general rule in the south is, to import from abroad every fabricated thing that can be carried in ships, such as household furniture, boats, boards, laths, carts, ploughs, axes, and axehelves, besides innumerable other things, which free communities are accustomed to make for themselves. What is most wonderful is, that the forests and iron mines of the south supply, in great part, the materials out of which these things are made. The northern freemen come with their ships, carry home the timber and pig iron, work them up, supply their own wants with a part, and then sell the rest at a good profit in the southern markets. Now, although mechanics, by setting up their shops in the south, could save all these freights and profits, yet so it is, that northern mechanics will not settle in the south, and the southern mechanics are undersold by their northern competitors.Now connect with these wonderful facts another fact, and the mystery is solved. The number of mechanics, in different parts of the south, is in the inverse ratio of the number of slaves; or in other words, where the slaves form the largest proportion of the inhabitants, there the mechanics and manufacturers form the least. In those parts only where the slaves are comparatively few, are many mechanics and artificers to be found; but even in these parts they do not flourish as the same useful class of men flourish in the free states. Even in our Valley of Virginia, remote from the sea, many of our mechanics can hardly stand against northern competition. This can be attributed only to slavery, which paralyzes our energies, disperses our population, and keeps us few and poor, in spite of the bountiful gifts of nature with which a benign Providence has endowed our country.Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia, both East and West. Only think of her vast forests of timber, her mountains of iron, her regions of stone coal, her valleys of limestone and marble, her fountains of salt, her immense sheep-walks for wool, her vicinity to the cotton fields, her innumerable waterfalls, her bays, harbors, and rivers for circulating products on every side;—in short, every material and every convenience necessary for manufacturing industry.Above all, think of Richmond, nature’s chosen site for the greatest manufacturing city in America,—her beds of coal and iron, just at hand, her incomparable water power, her tide-water navigation, conducting sea vessels from the foot of her falls, and above them her fine canal to the mountains, through which lie the shortest routes from the eastern tides to the great rivers of the west and the south-west. Think, also, that this Richmond, in old Virginia, “the mother of states,” has enjoyed these unparalleled advantages ever since the United States became a nation;—and then think again, that this same Richmond, the metropolis of all Virginia, has fewer manufactures than a third-rate New England town;—fewer,—not than the new city of Lowell, which is beyond all comparison,—but fewer than the obscure place called Fall River, among the barren hills of Massachusetts;—and then, fellow-citizens, what will you think,—whatmustyou think,—of the cause of this strange phenomenon? Or, to enlarge the scope of the question: What must you think has caused Virginians in general to neglect their superlative advantages for manufacturing industry?—to disregard the evident suggestions of nature, pointing out to them this fruitful source of population, wealth, and comfort?Say not that this state of things is chargeable to theapathyof Virginians. That is nothing to the purpose, for it does not go to the bottom of the subject. What causes the apathy? That is the question.The last census gave also the cost of constructing new buildings in each state, exclusive of the value of the materials. The amount of this is a good test of the increase of wealth in a country. To compare different states in this particular, we must divide the total cost of building by the number of inhabitants, and see what the average will be for each inhabitant. We find that it is in Massachusetts, $3·60; in Connecticut, $3·50; in New York, $3·00; in New Jersey, $2·70; in Pennsylvania, $3·10; in Maryland, $2·30; and in Virginia, $1·10.No state has greater conveniences for ship navigation and ship building than Virginia. Yet on all her fine tide waters she has little shipping; and what she has is composed almost wholly of small bay craft and a few coasting schooners.We do not blame our southern people for abstaining fromall employments of this kind. What could they do? Set their negroes to building ships? Who ever imagined such an absurdity? But could they not hire white men to do such things? No; for, in the first place, southern white men have no skill in such matters; and, in the second place, northern workmen cannot be hired in the south, without receiving a heavy premium for working in a slave state.The boast of our West Virginia is the good city of Wheeling. Would that she was six times as large, that she might equal Pittsburg, and that she grew five times as fast, that she might keep up with her!We glory in Wheeling, because she only, in Virginia, deserves to be called a manufacturing town. For this her citizens deserve to be crowned,—not with laurel,—but with the solid gold of prosperity. But how came it that Wheeling, and next to her, Wellsburg,—of all the towns in Virginia,—should become manufacturing towns? Answer: They breathe the atmosphere of free states, almost touching them on both sides. But again; seeing that Wheeling, as a seat for manufactures, is equal to Pittsburg, and inferior to no town in America, except Richmond; and that, moreover, she has almost no slaves; why is Wheeling so far behind Pittsburg, and comparatively so slow in her growth? Answer: She is in a country in which slavery is established by law.We shall explain, by examples, how a few slaves in a country may do its citizens more immediate injury than a large number.When a white family own fifty or one hundred slaves, they can, so long as their land produces well, afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for though each yields only a small profit, yet each member of the family has ten or fifteen of these black work-animals to toil for his support. It is not until the fields grow old, and the crops grow short, and the negroes and the overseer take nearly all, that the day of ruin can be no longer postponed. If the family be notveryindolent andveryexpensive, this inevitable day may not come before the third generation. But the ruin of small slaveholders is often accomplished in a single lifetime.When a white family own five or ten slaves, they cannot afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for one black drudge cannot support one white gentleman or lady.Yet, because they are slaveholders, this family will feel some aspirations for a life of easy gentility; and because field work and kitchen work are negroes’ work, the young gentlemen will dislike to go with the negroes to dirty field work, and the young ladies will dislike to join the black sluts in any sort of household labor. Such unthrifty sentiments are the natural consequence of introducing slaves among the families of a country, especially negro slaves. They infallibly grow and spread, creating among the white families a distaste for all servile labor, and a desire to procure slaves who may take all drudgery off their hands. Thus general industry gives way by degrees to indolent relaxation, false notions of dignity and refinement, and a taste for fashionable luxuries. Then debts slyly accumulate. The result is, that many families are compelled by their embarrassments to sell off and leave the country. Many who are unable to buy slaves leave it also, because they feel degraded, and cannot prosper, where slavery exists. Citizens of the valley! is it not so? Is not this the chief reason why your beautiful country does not prosper like the northern valleys?We have examined the census of counties for the last thirty or forty years, in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, with the view to discover the law of population in the northern slave states. The following are among the general results:—When a county had at first comparatively few slaves, the slave population, except near the free borders, gained upon the whites, and most rapidly in the older parts of the country.The population, as a whole, increased so long as the slaves were fewer than the whites, but more slowly as the numbers approached to equality. In our valley, a smaller proportion of slaves had the effect of a larger one in East Virginia, to retard the increase of population.When the slaves became as numerous as the whites in the eastern and older parts of the country, population came to a stand; when they outnumbered the whites, it declined. Consequently, the slave population has tended to diffuse itself equally over the country, rising more rapidly as it was further below the white population, and going down when it had risen above them.The price of cotton has regulated the price of negroes in Virginia; and so it must continue to do; because slave labor is unprofitable here, and nothing keeps up the price of slaves but their value as a marketable commodity in the south. Eastern negroes and western cattle are alike in this, that, if the market abroad go down or be closed, both sorts of animals, the horned and the woolly-headed, become a worthless drug at home. The fact is, that our eastern brethren must send off, on any terms, the increase of their slaves, because their impoverished country cannot sustain even its present stock of negroes. We join not the English and American abolition cry about “slave-breeding” in East Virginia, as if it were a chosen occupation, and therefore a reproachful one. It is no such thing, but a case of dire necessity, and many a heartache does it cost the good people there. But behold in the east the doleful consequences of letting slavery grow up to an oppressive and heart-sickening burden upon a community! Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.Good policy will require the Southern States, ere long, to close their markets against northern negroes. When the southern slave market is closed, or when, by the reduced profits of slave labor in the south, it becomes glutted,—then the stream of Virginia negroes, heretofore pouring down upon the south, will be thrown back upon the state, and, like a river dammed up, must spread itself over the whole territory of the commonwealth. The head spring in East Virginia cannot contain itself; it must find vent; it will shed its black streams through every gap of the Blue Ridge and pour over the Alleghany, till it is checked by abolitionism on the borders. But even abolitionism cannot finally stop it. Abolitionism itself will tolerate slavery, when slaveholders grow sick and tired of it.In plain terms, fellow-citizens, eastern slaveholders will come with their multitudes of slaves to settle upon the fresh lands of West Virginia. Eastern slaves will be sent by thousands for a market in West Virginia. Every valley will echo with the cry, “Negroes! Negroes for sale! Dog cheap! Dog cheap!” And because they are dog cheap, many of our people will buy them. We have shown howslavery has prepared the people for this; how a little slavery makes way for more, and how the law of slave increase operates to fill up every part of the country to the same level with slaves.And then, fellow-citizens, when you have suffered your country to be filled with negro slaves instead of white freemen; when its population shall be as motley as Joseph’s coat of many colors; as ring-streaked and speckled as father Jacob’s flock was in Padan Aram,—what will the white basis of representation avail you, if you obtain it? Whether you obtain it or not, East Virginia will have triumphed; or, rather,slaverywill have triumphed, and all Virginia will have become a land of darkness and of the shadow of death.Then, by a forbearance which has no merit, and a supineness which has no excuse, you will have given to your children, for their inheritance, this lovely land blackened with a negro population,—the offscourings of Eastern Virginia, the fag-end of slavery, the loathsome dregs of that cup of abomination which has already sickened to death the eastern half of our commonwealth.Delay, not, then, we beseech you, to raise a barrier against this Stygian inundation, to stand at the Blue Ridge, and with sovereign energy say to this Black Sea of misery, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.”
Nowhere, since time began, have the two systems of slave labor and free labor been subjected to so fair and so decisive a trial of their effects on public prosperity as in these United States. Here the two systems have worked side by side for ages, under such equal circumstances, both political and physical, and with such ample time and opportunity for each to work out its proper effects, that all must admit the experiment to be now complete, and the result decisive. No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor. In the first settlement of a country, when labor is scarce and dear, slavery may give a temporary impulse to improvement; but even this is not the case, except in warm climates, and where free men are scarce and either sickly or lazy; and when we have said this, wehave said all that experience in the United States warrants us to say, in favor of the policy of employing slave labor.
It is the common remark of all who have travelled through the United States, that the free states and the slave states exhibit a striking contrast in their appearance. In the older free states are seen all the tokens of prosperity;—a dense and increasing population; thriving villages, towns, and cities; a neat and productive agriculture, growing manufactures, and active commerce.
In the older parts of the slave states,—with a few local exceptions,—are seen, on the contrary, too evident signs of stagnation, or of positive decay;—a sparse population, a slovenly cultivation spread over vast fields that are wearing out, among others already worn out and desolate; villages and towns, “few and far between,” rarely growing, often decaying, sometimes mere remnants of what they were, sometimes deserted ruins, haunted only by owls; generally no manufactures, nor even trades, except the indispensable few; commerce and navigation abandoned, as far as possible, to the people of the free states; and generally, instead of the stir and bustle of industry, a dull and dreamy stillness, broken, if broke at all, only by the wordy brawl of politics.
New England and the middle states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania contained, in 1790, 1,968,000 inhabitants, and in 1840, 6,760,000; having gained, in this period, 243 per cent.
The four old slave states had, in 1790, a population of 1,473,000, and in 1840, of 3,279,000; having gained, in the same period, 122 per cent., just about half as much, in proportion, as the free states. They ought to have gained about twice as much; for they had at first only seven inhabitants to the square mile, when the free states not only had upwards of twelve, but, on the whole, much inferior advantages of soil and climate. Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.
About half the territory of these old slave states is new country, and has comparatively few slaves. On this part the increase of population has chiefly taken place. On the old slave-labored lowlands, a singular phenomena has appeared;there, within the bounds of these rapidly growing United States,—yes, there, population has been long at a stand; yes, over wide regions,—especially in Virginia,—it has declined, and a new wilderness is gaining upon the cultivated land! What has done this work of desolation? Not war, nor pestilence; not oppression of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical; butslavery, a curse more destructive in its effects than any of them. It were hard to find, in old king-ridden, priest-ridden, overtaxed Europe, so large a country, where, within twenty years past, such a growing poverty and desolation have appeared.
It is in the last period of ten years, from 1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its worst effects in the old Southern States. Including the increase in their newly-settled and western counties, they gained in population only 7¹⁄₂ per cent.; while cold, barren, thickly peopled New England gained 15, and the old Middle States 26 per cent. East Virginia actually fell off 26,000 in population; and, with the exception of Richmond and one or two other towns, her population continues to decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction. Her lowland neighbors of Maryland and the Carolinas were not far behind at theseeding; nor are they far behind at the ingathering of desolation.
Let us take the rich and beautiful State of Kentucky, compared with her free neighbor Ohio. The slaves of Kentucky have composed less than a fourth part of her population. But mark their effect upon the comparative growth of the state. In the year 1800, Kentucky contained 221,000 inhabitants, and Ohio, 45,000. In forty years, the population of Kentucky had risen to 780,000; that of Ohio to 1,519,000. This wonderful difference could not be owing to any natural superiority of the Ohio country. Kentucky is nearly as large, nearly as fertile, and quite equal, in other gifts of nature. She had greatly the advantage, too, in the outset of this forty years’ race of population. She started with 5¹⁄₂ inhabitants to the square mile, and came out with 20: Ohio started with one inhabitant to the square mile, and came out with 38. Kentucky had full possession of her territory at the beginning. Much of Ohio was then, and for a long time afterwards, in possessionof the Indians. Ohio is by this time considerably more than twice as thickly peopled as Kentucky; yet she still gains, both by natural increase and by the influx of emigrants; while Kentucky has for twenty years been receiving much fewer emigrants than Ohio, and multitudes of her citizens have been yearly moving off to newer and yet newer countries.
Compare this natural increase with the census returns, and it appears that, in the ten years from 1830 to 1840, Virginia lost by emigration no fewer than 375,000 of her people, of whom East Virginia lost 304,000, and West Virginia 71,000. At this rate Virginia supplies the west every ten years with a population equal in number to the population of the State of Mississippi in 1840!
Some Virginia politicians, proudly,—yes,proudly, fellow-citizens,—call our old commonwealthThe Mother of States! Theseenlightenedpatriots might pay her a still higher compliment, by calling herThe Grandmotherof States. For our part, we are grieved and mortified to think of the lean and haggard condition of our venerable mother. Her black children have sucked her so dry, that now, for a long time past, she has not milk enough for her offspring, either black or white.
She has sent,—or we should rather say, she has driven,—from her soil at least one third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the west. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for them. It is a truth, a certain truth, thatslavery drives free laborers,—farmers, mechanics, and all, and some of the best of them too,—out of the country, and fills their places with negroes.
It is admitted on all hands, that slave labor is better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry; and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing.
Therefore, since in agriculture slave labor is proved to be far less productive than free labor,slavery is demonstrated to be not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to the public prosperity.
We do not mean that slave labor can never earn any thing for him that employs it. The question is between free labor and slave labor. He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
Agriculture in the slave states may be characterized in general by two epithets,extensive,exhaustive,—which in all agricultural countries forebode two things,impoverishment,depopulation. The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,—in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.
Pliny, a writer of that age, in his Natural History, (Book 18, c. 1-7,) tells us, that while the small farms of former times were cultivated by freemen, and even great commanders did not disdain to labor with their own hands, agriculture flourished, and provisions were abundant; but that afterwards, when the lands were engrossed by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by fettered and branded slaves, the country was ruined, and corn had to be imported. The same system was spreading ruin over the provinces, and thus the prosperity of the empire was undermined. Pliny denounces, as the worst of all, the system of having large estates in the country cultivated by slaves, or indeed, says he, “to have any thing done by men who labor without hope of reward.”
So Livy, the great Roman historian, observed, some years before Pliny, (Book 6, c. 12,) that “innumerable multitudes of men formerly inhabited those parts of Italy, where, in his time, none but slaves redeemed the country from desertion;”—that is, a dense population of free laborers had been succeeded by a sparse population of slaves.
Even the common mechanical trades do not flourish in a slave state. Some mechanical operations must, indeed, beperformed in every civilized country; but the general rule in the south is, to import from abroad every fabricated thing that can be carried in ships, such as household furniture, boats, boards, laths, carts, ploughs, axes, and axehelves, besides innumerable other things, which free communities are accustomed to make for themselves. What is most wonderful is, that the forests and iron mines of the south supply, in great part, the materials out of which these things are made. The northern freemen come with their ships, carry home the timber and pig iron, work them up, supply their own wants with a part, and then sell the rest at a good profit in the southern markets. Now, although mechanics, by setting up their shops in the south, could save all these freights and profits, yet so it is, that northern mechanics will not settle in the south, and the southern mechanics are undersold by their northern competitors.
Now connect with these wonderful facts another fact, and the mystery is solved. The number of mechanics, in different parts of the south, is in the inverse ratio of the number of slaves; or in other words, where the slaves form the largest proportion of the inhabitants, there the mechanics and manufacturers form the least. In those parts only where the slaves are comparatively few, are many mechanics and artificers to be found; but even in these parts they do not flourish as the same useful class of men flourish in the free states. Even in our Valley of Virginia, remote from the sea, many of our mechanics can hardly stand against northern competition. This can be attributed only to slavery, which paralyzes our energies, disperses our population, and keeps us few and poor, in spite of the bountiful gifts of nature with which a benign Providence has endowed our country.
Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia, both East and West. Only think of her vast forests of timber, her mountains of iron, her regions of stone coal, her valleys of limestone and marble, her fountains of salt, her immense sheep-walks for wool, her vicinity to the cotton fields, her innumerable waterfalls, her bays, harbors, and rivers for circulating products on every side;—in short, every material and every convenience necessary for manufacturing industry.
Above all, think of Richmond, nature’s chosen site for the greatest manufacturing city in America,—her beds of coal and iron, just at hand, her incomparable water power, her tide-water navigation, conducting sea vessels from the foot of her falls, and above them her fine canal to the mountains, through which lie the shortest routes from the eastern tides to the great rivers of the west and the south-west. Think, also, that this Richmond, in old Virginia, “the mother of states,” has enjoyed these unparalleled advantages ever since the United States became a nation;—and then think again, that this same Richmond, the metropolis of all Virginia, has fewer manufactures than a third-rate New England town;—fewer,—not than the new city of Lowell, which is beyond all comparison,—but fewer than the obscure place called Fall River, among the barren hills of Massachusetts;—and then, fellow-citizens, what will you think,—whatmustyou think,—of the cause of this strange phenomenon? Or, to enlarge the scope of the question: What must you think has caused Virginians in general to neglect their superlative advantages for manufacturing industry?—to disregard the evident suggestions of nature, pointing out to them this fruitful source of population, wealth, and comfort?
Say not that this state of things is chargeable to theapathyof Virginians. That is nothing to the purpose, for it does not go to the bottom of the subject. What causes the apathy? That is the question.
The last census gave also the cost of constructing new buildings in each state, exclusive of the value of the materials. The amount of this is a good test of the increase of wealth in a country. To compare different states in this particular, we must divide the total cost of building by the number of inhabitants, and see what the average will be for each inhabitant. We find that it is in Massachusetts, $3·60; in Connecticut, $3·50; in New York, $3·00; in New Jersey, $2·70; in Pennsylvania, $3·10; in Maryland, $2·30; and in Virginia, $1·10.
No state has greater conveniences for ship navigation and ship building than Virginia. Yet on all her fine tide waters she has little shipping; and what she has is composed almost wholly of small bay craft and a few coasting schooners.
We do not blame our southern people for abstaining fromall employments of this kind. What could they do? Set their negroes to building ships? Who ever imagined such an absurdity? But could they not hire white men to do such things? No; for, in the first place, southern white men have no skill in such matters; and, in the second place, northern workmen cannot be hired in the south, without receiving a heavy premium for working in a slave state.
The boast of our West Virginia is the good city of Wheeling. Would that she was six times as large, that she might equal Pittsburg, and that she grew five times as fast, that she might keep up with her!
We glory in Wheeling, because she only, in Virginia, deserves to be called a manufacturing town. For this her citizens deserve to be crowned,—not with laurel,—but with the solid gold of prosperity. But how came it that Wheeling, and next to her, Wellsburg,—of all the towns in Virginia,—should become manufacturing towns? Answer: They breathe the atmosphere of free states, almost touching them on both sides. But again; seeing that Wheeling, as a seat for manufactures, is equal to Pittsburg, and inferior to no town in America, except Richmond; and that, moreover, she has almost no slaves; why is Wheeling so far behind Pittsburg, and comparatively so slow in her growth? Answer: She is in a country in which slavery is established by law.
We shall explain, by examples, how a few slaves in a country may do its citizens more immediate injury than a large number.
When a white family own fifty or one hundred slaves, they can, so long as their land produces well, afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for though each yields only a small profit, yet each member of the family has ten or fifteen of these black work-animals to toil for his support. It is not until the fields grow old, and the crops grow short, and the negroes and the overseer take nearly all, that the day of ruin can be no longer postponed. If the family be notveryindolent andveryexpensive, this inevitable day may not come before the third generation. But the ruin of small slaveholders is often accomplished in a single lifetime.
When a white family own five or ten slaves, they cannot afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for one black drudge cannot support one white gentleman or lady.Yet, because they are slaveholders, this family will feel some aspirations for a life of easy gentility; and because field work and kitchen work are negroes’ work, the young gentlemen will dislike to go with the negroes to dirty field work, and the young ladies will dislike to join the black sluts in any sort of household labor. Such unthrifty sentiments are the natural consequence of introducing slaves among the families of a country, especially negro slaves. They infallibly grow and spread, creating among the white families a distaste for all servile labor, and a desire to procure slaves who may take all drudgery off their hands. Thus general industry gives way by degrees to indolent relaxation, false notions of dignity and refinement, and a taste for fashionable luxuries. Then debts slyly accumulate. The result is, that many families are compelled by their embarrassments to sell off and leave the country. Many who are unable to buy slaves leave it also, because they feel degraded, and cannot prosper, where slavery exists. Citizens of the valley! is it not so? Is not this the chief reason why your beautiful country does not prosper like the northern valleys?
We have examined the census of counties for the last thirty or forty years, in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, with the view to discover the law of population in the northern slave states. The following are among the general results:—
When a county had at first comparatively few slaves, the slave population, except near the free borders, gained upon the whites, and most rapidly in the older parts of the country.
The population, as a whole, increased so long as the slaves were fewer than the whites, but more slowly as the numbers approached to equality. In our valley, a smaller proportion of slaves had the effect of a larger one in East Virginia, to retard the increase of population.
When the slaves became as numerous as the whites in the eastern and older parts of the country, population came to a stand; when they outnumbered the whites, it declined. Consequently, the slave population has tended to diffuse itself equally over the country, rising more rapidly as it was further below the white population, and going down when it had risen above them.
The price of cotton has regulated the price of negroes in Virginia; and so it must continue to do; because slave labor is unprofitable here, and nothing keeps up the price of slaves but their value as a marketable commodity in the south. Eastern negroes and western cattle are alike in this, that, if the market abroad go down or be closed, both sorts of animals, the horned and the woolly-headed, become a worthless drug at home. The fact is, that our eastern brethren must send off, on any terms, the increase of their slaves, because their impoverished country cannot sustain even its present stock of negroes. We join not the English and American abolition cry about “slave-breeding” in East Virginia, as if it were a chosen occupation, and therefore a reproachful one. It is no such thing, but a case of dire necessity, and many a heartache does it cost the good people there. But behold in the east the doleful consequences of letting slavery grow up to an oppressive and heart-sickening burden upon a community! Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
Good policy will require the Southern States, ere long, to close their markets against northern negroes. When the southern slave market is closed, or when, by the reduced profits of slave labor in the south, it becomes glutted,—then the stream of Virginia negroes, heretofore pouring down upon the south, will be thrown back upon the state, and, like a river dammed up, must spread itself over the whole territory of the commonwealth. The head spring in East Virginia cannot contain itself; it must find vent; it will shed its black streams through every gap of the Blue Ridge and pour over the Alleghany, till it is checked by abolitionism on the borders. But even abolitionism cannot finally stop it. Abolitionism itself will tolerate slavery, when slaveholders grow sick and tired of it.
In plain terms, fellow-citizens, eastern slaveholders will come with their multitudes of slaves to settle upon the fresh lands of West Virginia. Eastern slaves will be sent by thousands for a market in West Virginia. Every valley will echo with the cry, “Negroes! Negroes for sale! Dog cheap! Dog cheap!” And because they are dog cheap, many of our people will buy them. We have shown howslavery has prepared the people for this; how a little slavery makes way for more, and how the law of slave increase operates to fill up every part of the country to the same level with slaves.
And then, fellow-citizens, when you have suffered your country to be filled with negro slaves instead of white freemen; when its population shall be as motley as Joseph’s coat of many colors; as ring-streaked and speckled as father Jacob’s flock was in Padan Aram,—what will the white basis of representation avail you, if you obtain it? Whether you obtain it or not, East Virginia will have triumphed; or, rather,slaverywill have triumphed, and all Virginia will have become a land of darkness and of the shadow of death.
Then, by a forbearance which has no merit, and a supineness which has no excuse, you will have given to your children, for their inheritance, this lovely land blackened with a negro population,—the offscourings of Eastern Virginia, the fag-end of slavery, the loathsome dregs of that cup of abomination which has already sickened to death the eastern half of our commonwealth.
Delay, not, then, we beseech you, to raise a barrier against this Stygian inundation, to stand at the Blue Ridge, and with sovereign energy say to this Black Sea of misery, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.”
FOOTNOTES:[1]Mr. Madison thought the original ordinance to be clearly invalid. See Federalist, No. 38. It is just as clear that he thought the constitution gave validity to it. See Federalist, No. 43.[2]Here Mr.Hilliard, of Alabama, rose to ask if the south, by the Missouri compromise, had not surrendered its right to carry slavery north of the compromise line? His question was not understood. If it had been, it would have been replied, that the existence of slavery at New Orleans, and a few other places in Louisiana, at the time of the treaty with France, by no means established the right to carry it to the Pacific Ocean, if the treaty extended so far. Slavery being against natural right, can only exist by virtue of positive law, backed by force sufficient to protect it. It could not lawfully exist, therefore, in any part of Louisiana, which had not been laid out, organized, and subjected to the civil jurisdiction of the government. Such was not the case with any part of the territory north of the compromise line, and therefore nothing was surrendered. On the other hand, in the formation of the territorial governments of Orleans, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida, a vast extent of country was surrendered to slavery. And this is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution, has any more right to establish slaveryany wherethan it has to establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.[3]Essays on Domestic Industry, or an Inquiry into the Expediency of establishing Cotton Manufactories in South Carolina, 1845.
[1]Mr. Madison thought the original ordinance to be clearly invalid. See Federalist, No. 38. It is just as clear that he thought the constitution gave validity to it. See Federalist, No. 43.
[1]Mr. Madison thought the original ordinance to be clearly invalid. See Federalist, No. 38. It is just as clear that he thought the constitution gave validity to it. See Federalist, No. 43.
[2]Here Mr.Hilliard, of Alabama, rose to ask if the south, by the Missouri compromise, had not surrendered its right to carry slavery north of the compromise line? His question was not understood. If it had been, it would have been replied, that the existence of slavery at New Orleans, and a few other places in Louisiana, at the time of the treaty with France, by no means established the right to carry it to the Pacific Ocean, if the treaty extended so far. Slavery being against natural right, can only exist by virtue of positive law, backed by force sufficient to protect it. It could not lawfully exist, therefore, in any part of Louisiana, which had not been laid out, organized, and subjected to the civil jurisdiction of the government. Such was not the case with any part of the territory north of the compromise line, and therefore nothing was surrendered. On the other hand, in the formation of the territorial governments of Orleans, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida, a vast extent of country was surrendered to slavery. And this is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution, has any more right to establish slaveryany wherethan it has to establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.
[2]Here Mr.Hilliard, of Alabama, rose to ask if the south, by the Missouri compromise, had not surrendered its right to carry slavery north of the compromise line? His question was not understood. If it had been, it would have been replied, that the existence of slavery at New Orleans, and a few other places in Louisiana, at the time of the treaty with France, by no means established the right to carry it to the Pacific Ocean, if the treaty extended so far. Slavery being against natural right, can only exist by virtue of positive law, backed by force sufficient to protect it. It could not lawfully exist, therefore, in any part of Louisiana, which had not been laid out, organized, and subjected to the civil jurisdiction of the government. Such was not the case with any part of the territory north of the compromise line, and therefore nothing was surrendered. On the other hand, in the formation of the territorial governments of Orleans, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida, a vast extent of country was surrendered to slavery. And this is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution, has any more right to establish slaveryany wherethan it has to establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.
[3]Essays on Domestic Industry, or an Inquiry into the Expediency of establishing Cotton Manufactories in South Carolina, 1845.
[3]Essays on Domestic Industry, or an Inquiry into the Expediency of establishing Cotton Manufactories in South Carolina, 1845.