Free-picked Cotton worth more than Slave-picked.

431 People that own 'niggers,' says Mr. Olmsted, are always mad with them about something or other, and it in consequence happens that half their time is spent in yelling at them. The so-much-lauded system of slavery also prevents the owners of slaves from having clean, quiet, comfortable, or happy homes. Most of the Southern planters are also in debt, and more especially in the Texas. The cotton, too, notwithstanding compulsory labour, is often entirely unpicked, for want of hands. When it is picked by free labour it is worth from one to two cents a pound more than when it is picked by slaves. In the Journey in the Back Country Mr. Olmsted says, 'In the Texas I was informed that 'the cotton picked by the free labour of the Germans was worth 'from one to two cents a pound more than that picked by 'slaves.'

It is only fair to admit that the first African sold in America was sold on James River, on the 20th August, 1620. The germs of the institution of slavery, therefore, were planted under the mother country; but the extensive inordinate development and spread of the system for the last half-century and more, is due to the cupidity and avarice of Yankee planters, slave growers, and slave dealers. Confined to the original States in which it was tolerated or existed, the system would have certainly died out, or been suppressed by humane laws. By a gradual process, such as was pursued in our own West India islands, which would have shocked no interest, and alarmed no prejudice, the United States would have been long ago rid not only of African slavery-which is an abomination, a sin, and a curse-but of the Negroes themselves, who would have died out if this increase had not been stimulated by the basest cupidity. But, as we before observed, from the period of the discovery of Arkwright, cotton became immeasurably more valuable, and for the lucre of gain, speculators in America gave themselves up to the breeding, buying, and selling of slaves. The evil has fearfully increased within every decade since the beginning of the century, and now there are, according to elaborate statistical accounts, three hundred and forty-seven thousand capitalists-some large, some small-who increase their unhallowed gains by the breeding, buying, and selling of human beings. In the Southern States, according to Mr. Helper's book, the magistrates in the villages, the constables in the districts, the commissioners of the towns, the mayors of the cities, the sheriffs of the counties, the judges of the various courts, the members of the legislatures, the representatives and senators in Congress, are all slaveholders. By means of management, intrigue, and corruption the Pro-slavery party have obtained, during the last half-century, much influence and control

over the general Government; and many consuls, ambassadors, envoys extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary have been chosen because of their Pro-slavery opinions. Nor are these the only functionaries who have been selected for their advocacy of the slave trade. According to Mr. Helper's book, the Presidency of the United States has been held forty-eight years by slaveholders from the South, and only twenty years by non-slaveholders from the North. The same gentleman states that the offices of Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, and Attorney-General have been under the control of the slave interest nearly two-thirds of the time. Even the bench of justice has been recruited from slave breeders from the southern side of the Potomac, and chief-justices, associate justices, presidents of the Senate, and speakers of the House of Representatives have, in a majority of instances, been Pro-slavery men.*

It is true that the greatest jurists and lawyers that America has produced, Chancellor Kent, Justice Story, Justices Jay and Marshal, Livingstone and Pinckney, and others, were against slavery; but undistinguished judges and lawyers, for half a century, have formed the majority in favour of it. Five slave-holding Presidents, it cannot be forgotten, were re-elected to the chief magistracy of the Republic, while no non-slaveholder has ever held the office more than a single term. The country, it cannot be denied, owes most of its energy, enterprise, intelligence, progress, and prosperity to natives of the North, who are against slavery and non-slaveholders, yet they have been denied a due participation in the honours and emoluments of federal office. Mr. Helper says, that for the last sixty-eight years slaveholders have been the sole and constant representatives of the South, and all they have accomplished is to produce thinly-inhabited States, low-priced land, desert cities, vacant harbours, and unused waterpower. In the South, there is squalid poverty of the whites, utter wretchedness of the blacks, and a dreary absence of commerce, shipping, and manufactures.

Of the effect of slavery on manners and morals we have heretofore spoken. The 'ill-breeding and ruffianism' of slave holding officials are thus described by Mr. Helper ;

Tedious, indeed, would be the task to enumerate all the homicides, duels, assaults and batteries, and other crimes of which they are the authors in the course of a single year. To the general reader, their career at the seat of Government is well known; there, on frequent occasions, choking with rage at seeing their wretched sophistries scattered to the winds by the logical reasonings of the champions of free

Helper On the American Crisis, pp. 126, 127.

Why a Policy of Aggression adopted by Southern States. 433

dom, they have overstepped the bounds of common decency, vacated the chair of honourable controversy, and in the most brutal and cowardly manner assailed their unarmed opponents with bludgeons, bowie-knives, and pistols. Compared with some of their barbarisms at home, however, the frenzied onslaughts at the national capital have been but the simplest breaches of civil deportment, and it is only for the purpose of avoiding personalities that we refrain from divulging a few instances of the unparalleled atrocities which they have perpetrated in legislative halls south of the Potomac. Nor is it alone in the national and State Legislature that they substitute brute force for genteel behaviour and acuteness of intellect. Neither court-houses nor public streets, hotels nor private dwellings, rum-holes nor law offices are held sacred for their murderous conflicts about certain silly abstrac tions that no practical business man ever allows to occupy his time or attention; they are eternally wrangling, and thus it is that encounters, duels, homicides, and other demonstrations of personal violence have become so popular in all slave-holding communities.'

The chil

The commerce between master and slave, it stands to reason, must have an unhappy influence on manners and generally on morals. It is in truth an interchange of boisterous tyranny on one side and degrading submission on the other. dren of tyrant masters perceive and con these lessons. They speedily learn to imitate their parents, for man is everywhere an imitative animal. Thus nursed, thus educated, boys of ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen follow in the footsteps of their fathers, sometimes giving loose to more capricious airs, but oftener more ungovernable passions. The errors and crimes of the slaveholders and slave breeders arise from a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. These rights, as Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the Republic, said, are not to be rummaged for among parchments. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of 'the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by 'mortal power.'

The time has at length arrived when this slavery system and policy must be checked with a view to final extinction and eradication, or it will completely overshadow the Republic. Already, for a considerable while, the questions of Slavery and Anti-slavery have been in presence in the States. The Northern States find the Southern representation to be out of all proportion with the population; while the South, jealous at the rapid growth of the population, trade, and manufactures of the Northern States, has adopted a policy of territorial aggression in order to keep up its numbers in the Senate of Washington. Each State in the Union, without reference to extent or population, sends two members to the Senate, while the members of the House of Representatives

nearly correspond with the population. As the Northern States abolished slavery, the South became alarmed lest the Slave States should become a minority in the Senate, as they must eventually do in the other House.

The advocates of slavery were, nearly half a century ago, well aware that, so long as the Slave States preserved a majority in the Senate, or even an equality, their policy must preponderate. For they have for more than thirty years succeeded in electing a President who was either expressly or tacitly pledged to forward their supposed interests by putting his veto on any law unacceptable to them. This is the explanation of the series of compromises that have taken place, of the series of tergiversations that have stained the political fame of American politicians, as it has been the origin of every aggression, of every annexation, and of every war carried on by America. Without entering into the cases of Michigan and Ohio, we may here remark that in 1820 there was a balance of Free and Slave States. The Northern States desired that the inhabitants of any new territory should choose their institutions for themselves, while it was the resolve of the South to secure the establishment of slavery in the candidate State, or to get a new State admitted for every Free one. It was about this period, when parties were balanced, and the Free and Slave States were equal, that a desperate struggle was made to establish slavery in Missouri, or to exclude it by the terms of the admission. Arkansas and Florida were meanwhile waiting for the entry of Missouri in order to apply for their own admission. The South, however, was determined to range them on the side of slavery, and thus to have a majority of six in the Senate. The struggle was fierce. It embittered the last days of Jefferson, Jay, and Adams, and it ended in what is called the Missouri Compromise, whose author was Henry Clay. Mr. Clay proposed that, on condition of Missouri being admitted on Southern terms, slavery should be prohibited for ever on all territory recently acquired lying north of 36 deg. 30 min. i.e., of the southern boundary of Missouri. The prohibition of slavery north of a certain line determined its existence in new States south of that line, and Florida and Arkansas were soon admitted as Slave States. Among the first-fruits of that arrangement, as Miss Martineau states, was the Seminole war. Compromises, in truth, between. the National Government and the separate States cannot be relied on when it is the interest of a strong party to violate them, and in the course of a dozen years from the date of the Missouri Compromise, the General Government found how difficult it was. to deal with the separate States when they wished to nullify the

provisions of the Constitution. Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, in a certain sense, nullified it in 1829. Mr. Clay was, in consequence of the South Carolina dispute about the tariff, the author of a second compromise in 1833, for which he was called the saviour of his country. But his efforts only deferred and delayed a crisis inevitable, and now again recurring. Compromises in a Federal Republic are, in truth, mere palliatives, mere postponements of a difficulty which is sure to rise up again sooner or later. The Missouri Compromise did not better the condition of the Slave States. Such is the bad quality of slave labour, that the oldest Slave States were becoming daily more deteriorated under it. Virginia was unprosperous, North and South Carolina were declining apace. In this position of things, the Abolitionists appealed to facts to show that slavery was not only against the laws of God and nature, but that, even in a commercial and mercantile sense, it was unprofitable. Governor Williams, of South Carolina, in his message to the State in 1817, spoke of it as 'a remorseless and merciless traffic,'' as a ceaseless dragging along the highways of suffering human beings destined 'to minister to the insatiable avarice of their owners.' To meet these facts and arguments, the Slavery party appealed to that lust of territory which lurks in the heart of every American. They pointed to the south-west, to Texas, and to Mexico, and for sixteen years Spain was harassed by an interminable diplomatic correspondence, which ultimately ended in annexation. Mr. Grattan states, and we believe the fact, that neither Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, nor Clay had the least belief in the justice of the claims which they put forward for a series of years on behalf of their country. These claims, however, gratified the national arrogance and vanity, pleased the Pro-slavery party, and paved the way for General Sam. Houston, who captured Santa Anna in April, 1836.

Dr. Channing opposed the infamy of the system in burning words in a letter to Mr. Clay :

'Some crimes there are,' he said, 'which are by their magnitude sublime. But it is in a civilized age, and amidst refinements of manners-it is amidst the lights of science and the teachings of Christianity-amidst exposition of the law of nations, and enforcements of the law of universal love-amidst institutions of religion, learning, and humanity, that the robbery of Texas found its instruments. It is from a free, well-ordered, enlightened, Christian country that the hordes have gone forth in open day to perpetrate this mighty wrong.'

While these lines were being penned the Slavery party were