Southern Slavery Reduces Northern Wages by George M. Weston
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Title:Southern slavery reduces northern wages. An address by George M. Weston, of Maine, delivered in Washington, D. C., March 25, 1856.

Author:Weston, George M. (George Melville), 1816-1887.

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Print Source:Southern slavery reduces northern wages. An address by George M. Weston, of Maine, delivered in Washington, D. C., March 25, 1856.

Weston, George M. (George Melville), 1816-1887.

8 p. 23 cm.

[Washington,

1856]

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4! ,t A 5’ and 21Z reh Bed~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Im ae Ol,1 m 7 t i sIat AN ADDRESS BY GEORGE M-STON, OF MAINE. DELIVERED IN

WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 25 1856. Iowa of half a degree. The northern boundary of Kansas as actually fixed is half a degree south of the northern boundary of Missouri, so that Missouri covers it and overlaps it.

The object of the repeal of the Missouri Com promise, as always apparent and now avowed, was then, in brief, to carry slavery west of the Mississippi, north of the parallel of 36~ 30’, into the latitudes in which it exists in Ken tucky, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, east of the Mississippi. This extension of slavery over a belt of three and one-half degrees of latitude, stretching from Missouri w to Oregon, is a large question in geography, in morals, and in politics, and is not to be concluded by a snap-judgment here or else where. No larger question ever appealed to the interests, aroused the passions, or ad dressed the moral convictions of this nation. Under our form of government, as worked in practice, it can only be settled by a last and final appeal to the collective will of the people, made effective in the electiohof the Chief Magistrate of the Union. To this it must come at last. Great hazards have been. incurred, and alarming animosities!rve been inflamed, but as yet, the misch~ oeiginated, by the agitators and incendiar3 of 1854, are not irretrievable. What is proposed to be done by the men who now conduct public affairs, is to give & northerly direction to the development of the negro. race. This is a new policy. It is a de parture from principles, settled upon great consideration, by those who have preceded us. This policy is not necessarily to be con demned because it is new, but it is an innova tion, and is not to be received with favor or partiality. If we undo the work of our fathers, it should be for substantial reasons and for good cause shown. The maxim, stare decisio, imperative in the judicial forum, is weighty and persuasive in the political forum. The men of 1820, in fixing th e nor thern limit of slavery in the territory west of the Alississippi, adopted a line which is an extension o f the souther n boundary of Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. They acted upon the belief that its existence in those States was not called for by their climate or staples, and that its extension into similar latitudes, under national authori ty, should be forever interdicted. This was the judgment of the men’of:1820, which they embodied in a solemn and memorable settle ment of this question, and khich,.during’ Al& IT was never really and intelligently doubted, that the object of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was to extend slavery over regions into which, under that Compromise,-it could not h ave en tered; and that the boundaries of Kansas w ere defined expressly and exclusively in aid of th at o bject. At the present time, it is hardly thought worth while to deny wha t eve nts have made so unaistakeable, and within a f ew days a gentle man on the floor of the National Ho use of Represe ntatives, occupying rel ation s the m ost intimate and c onfidential with the men who originated th e r evolutionary legislations of 1854, fully and f airly avow s the purposes they had in view. That gentleman, Mr. Cadwalader, of Pennsylvania, in a s peech made on t he 5th of March, 1856, says: “The whol e of wh i t is now comprised under the names of Kansas and Nebraska had, until 1854, been rear ded a s a single Territory, and had borne the name of Nebraska. * ‘The greater portion of Nebraska comprising not lessa n o than four-fifths of this unorganized territory was to the northward of 40~, and therefore probably not open to settlement by slaveholders. But in Kansas, occupying the space between 40~ and 37~7 there was at least the probability of a partial equivalent for the loss by the slaveholding States of a participation in the beneficial adjustment of the territory on the Pacific. “Between 40~ and the latitude of the’southern boundary, slavery already existed in Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware.

North of 40~ no slaveholder could have been expected to establish himself.

We have already seen that if the whole had formed a single Territory, the arba of the portion to the northward of 40~ would have been about four times that of the portion to the southward. Such an organization would have been a fraud upon the slaveholding States. Emigrants from their country would inevitably have been outnumbered by a majority from the non-slaveholding country.” According to Mr. Cadwalader, than whom nobody is letter entitled to speak by authority, what ” had, until 1854, been regarded as. a single Territory,” was not organized “a o a single Territory,” for the reason that under such an organization, slavery would have been excluded from it; but was divided into two territories, and by a line which secured the souithern of these two territories, in all ordinary p-.obability, to slavery. In adopting this line nf division, no regard was had either to equal’ f area, or suitability -of boundary. Ne’ Hia, was made four times as large as Kansas. t, ttte river was a natural boundary, but ld have given Kansas a front on fieQ a,.. I $

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I ‘ same time, it would be most uncandid and most ungenerous to deny, that the voluntary con tribution by the British people of twenty mil lions sterling, towards the liberation of the black race in their colonies, Was a great and most signal act of humanity and benevolence. Let it be conceded even, that the act was un wise, and that its consequences have been dis astrous; still, of unquestionable purity in its motive, and elevated even to sublimity by the sacrifices it involved, it must ever stand an imperishable monument to the honor of the British race, and indeed, of human nature. Negro slavery being established in fifteen of the States of this Union, whose area is 851,508 square miles, while the area of the sixteen free States is only 612,597 square miles, it is evident, considering the absolute freedom of commercial intercourse between the States, that that system of labor does, or may, exert a decisive and controlling influence upon the interests of free labor. That it does so, in re ference to free labor within the slave States themselves, producing a lamentable degree of degradation among the poorer whites, is quite notorious. And a little examination will show, that it does now act to some extent in the same direction upon free labor in the free States, and that under certain circumstances, its further action in that direction may be come most serious. So far as the slave labor of the southern States has been directed, as it mainly has been in times past, to the production of cotton, to bacco, rice and sugar-it is not easy to per ceive, that the northern laborer has been oth erwise than benefitted by it, in the cheapening of those important and essential articles of universal consumption. Indeed, southern wri ters affirm, with’no little petulance, that their slaves have worked heretofore for the north, and that it would be for the interest of the south and a just punishment for the abolition ists, to work them hereafter, to some extent, aygainst the north, in factories, in which, it is well established, that the negro is a servicea able laborer. So far as this is threatened as a mere matter of retaliatian against the north, we need attach little importance to it. It his been well said, that men resort to hard words and sometimes to hard blows, but never build houses, in a passion. If the southern slaves are ever work ed largely in factories, it will not be out of hostility to the north, but because, with in creasing density of population, such a diver sion of a portion of them from agriculture may be found profitable. Such a contingency is neither distant or improbable, and it be hooves the north to look the approaching evil fairly in the face. Some means may, perhaps, be found to avert it, and even if it be inevita ble, it is no part of manly wisdom to shut our eyes to it. In considering this matter, it is to be ob served, that the: expense of the labor of slaves consists of two parts; the hire paid to the owners, and-the cost of supporting and-man aging the slaves themselves. The first item, that of the hire paidl to the owners, is at thit, em States eneratn on, has commen ded thie univer smasse nt of all men and of all parties. It is ~e “apr ao ofEuroe.

Shenfesteerwtisenthanbenefitted bitinthe chieapein ow protposed to reverse this judgment of our fatnto n the rs, to und o their work, and to c a rry th e negro rac e and the sy stem of slavery to t he north, ins tead of pressing them s outhward. The question of slavery’ha s many aspects, and indeed, is inexhaustible in the topics which it presents for discussion.

Upon the present occasion, I propose to cal l your attention to the effects likely to be produced upon the in t er ests of free labor in the northern and west ern S tate s, and upon the numbers and ultimate des tiny of the nesro race, by the northerly di rection now attempted to be given to the de velopment of that race. In the present age of free commercial inter course, nations have a direct and immediate interest in the productive systems of each other; an interest, however, varying with their relative positions. Thus, New England, as a matter of mere interest, and aside from considerations of gen eral humanity and benevolence, might view with indifference, or even complacency, an or ganization of labor, which, however wasteful of life, and however stained with cruelty, yet enables Cuba and other tropical regions, to furnish in abundance and at low prices, arti cles of which she is a large purchaser and con tumer. In this case New England does, in fact, share the profits of a sin, without sharing either its guilt, or its dangers. New England cannot view, and has not viewed, with equal complacency, that social organization out of which arises what is called he “pauper labor” of Europe. She feels the E -ssure of it, in the competition of commerce - and manufactures, and has insisted upon pro tection against it by tariffs. The cheapness of slave labor engaged in raising sugar, enures to her benefit; the cheapness of English labor, engaged in manufacturing cotton, interferes in the markets of the world with her own productions. So intimate, indeed, are the relations of even distant nations in these latter days, and so wide-reaching are the influences of modern commerce, that the serf’system of eastern Eu rope is felt on the shores of Lake Michigan. The grains of Podolia and the Ukraine, are produced at prices, and brought to Odessa by methods of transportation, impossible if labor was paid, and sold there at rates which affect the markets and profits of the farmers of Wis consin. England has numerous and extensive inter tropical colonies, of which she is, indeed, not merely the political sovereign, but to a large extent, through her citizens, the proprietor. Negro slavery having been abolished in these colonies, they find themselves, it is said, unable to compete with other tropical regions in which negro slavery is still retained: and to this fact, rather than to any special philan thropy, many attribute the efforts of England to abolish negro slavery elsewhere, as well as in her own colonies. It cannot be doubtful, that such considerations do somewhat infiu oneo Xd present policyr of England, but at the .4 4, l I.11’, -,,:’

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I li, Z *,, .3 of Louisiana,” of the following items of expense, on a cotton plantation with 100 slaves: Medicines, Doctor’s bills, &c…………..$.250.0b To clothe 100 slave~, shoe them,rfurnish bedding, sacks for gathering corn, &c… 750.00 A writer in the Carolinian newspaper, quoted in the same work of De Bow, vol. 1, page 161, gives the following statement of certaii items of expense, on a plantation with forty slaves: Medicine and medicinal attendance…….. $30.00 Blankets, 30 in number, at $1.12S each…. 33.75 Shoes, 25 pairs, at $1.25 per pair………..31.25 Cotton osnaburgs, 300 yards, at 3 cents per yard………………………………. 24.00 Salt, 6 sacks, at $2.00
each…………….. 12.00 Sugar and coffee for sick, 75 lbs., at 10
cents per lb…………………………….. 7.50 It is stated in reference to this plantation that ” the winter but not summer clothing wot manufactured at the place.” There are no other items in the account, of e xpense incurred in feeding, or clothing the slaves. The item( put down amount to $138.25, being $3.46 to each slave. Solon Robinson, quoted in the same work of De Bow, gives the following items of th e expense of supporting 254 s la ves, indepe ndent of the food raised by themselves, on Colonel William s’ plantation, Socie ty o ill, S. C.: Medical attendance, $1.25 per he ad…… $317.50 200 pairs of shoes…………………….

1 5.00 Annual supply of hats……………….. 100.00 Bill of c otton and woollen cloth……….. 810.00 100 on cotton comforters, in lieu of be d blan kets…………………………….. 125.00 100 oil-clothe capotes (New-York cost)…. 87.50 Calicoldress andhandkerchief for each Wo C man and girl (extra of other clothing)… 82.00 Christmas presi ent s, gi ven l ie u of “ne gr ro wo…………………………. 175.0,a 50
sacks of salt………… 30.00 400 gallons of molasses………………

100.00 3 kegs tobacco, $60; 2 bbls. flout - 10…..’ 70.00 2,122.00 This makes an average of $8.35 to each slave. Mr. Robinson gives also, the following items of expense on the plantation of Robert Mon tague, Esq., Alabama, with one hundred and twenty slaves: Medical bill, average, not exceeding…… $ 40.00 Blankets, hats and shoes (other clothing all homemade)………………………… 250.06 A ” Mississippi Planter”

(Indust. R.sour, vol. 2, page 331,) says: “I allow for each hand that works out, four pounds of clear meat, and one peck of meal per week.”

Another writer on the ” Management, of l;e groes,” (Ind. Resources} vol.

2, page 333,) says: ,,What is sufficient food? For as there is a dif ference in practice, there must be also in opinion among owners. The most common practice is to allow each hand that labors, whether man, woman or child, (for a boy or girl ten years old or over, who is healthy and growing rapidly, will eat qmte as much as a full grown man or woman,) three and a-half pounds bacon, if middling, or four pounds if shoulder, per week, and bread at *ill’; if allow anced in this also, a’ peckt of meal is usuatly thought sufficient.. With? plenty of vegetables, this’allbw ance is-quite suffic-ielt; btit if:~onfined to’ nleat and bread. negroes w ho work hard will eat a peck and a-half? of meal per week.” A ” Small Farmer,” (Industrial Resources, vol. 2, page 336,:) Hats:. -. time exceedingly high. It may be supposed to bear a proportion to the market price of slaves, which has greatly increased of late years, being now six times as great as it was in 1790. This item is to be reckoned, even where slaves are worked by their owners, b ecause they thereby forego what they would receive by hiring them ou. What may be the future course of the prices of slaves, is a matter of uncertainty, and will depend upon events. The received opinion is, both at the north and south. that with increasing numbers, their marfcet value will fall, and this must certainly happen, unless either a more considerable proportion of them be diverted to mining and manufacturing, or unless the agricultural area upon which they are worked is constantly enlarged. There are no prudential checks operating to restrain the expansion of that species of population, and in the end, their labor must, in the circumstances supposed, be obtainable at the cost, or possibly a little more than the cost, of supporting and governing them. To this complexion it must come at last. Just in proportion as the two systems of labor, -lave and free, come in contact with each other by being directed to the same pursuits, just in that proportion must the free laborers of the North and West be brought within the range of that fatal influence, which now acts. with direct and unmitigated force upon the great mass of the whites at the South. In his e ss ay upon Manufactures in the South and West, Air.

Tarver of Missouri, says: “-Without entering into a comparison of the present nominal price of labor in this and other counrtries, it is sufficient to say that whatever the price may be, none can produce any given article as cheap with hired labor, as he who owns it himself. In the latter case the labor is so much capital in hand, and it is not so much a question with the owner whether he can produce a yard of cloth or any other given article, as low as it can be produced in England or in Massachusetts, but whether by applying his labor to the production of the cloth, or other article, he can make it more profitable than he can by using it in agriculture. It matters nothing to him how low others call produce the article; he can produce it lower still so long as it is the best use that he can make of his labor, and so long as his labor is worth keeping. It is upon this principle, that the Southwest is destined to monopolize the manufacture of the whole cotton crop of the United States.”

The slave owner and the free laborer, so far as thev are engaged in producing the same articles, being direct competitors with each other, and the power of the slave owner to sustai n t his compet ition b eing reg ulate d and measured by t he rate at which his slaves can be maintaine d in a condition of efficiency; it becomes important to have clear and exact: ideas as to what this rate actually is. No question can be mo r e inte resting, than th at of the true cost of a species of labor, which does now actually control the condition of the noaproperty holding whites of the South, and which may hereafter regulate the waves of the workingmen of the North and West. In De Bow’s Industrial Resources of the South and West, volume 1, page 150, will be found an estimate by “a practical cotton lantrer

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4 average amount expended for the food, cloth ing and m edical attendance of each negro is only twenty-six dollars and ninety-eight and one-half cents. In an account of another sugar plantation in Cuba, given bI Dr.

Wurdemay, thle clothing an d food f or the negroes are set down at two dollars each per anndm, without giving the items, and the phyhsician’s b ill is put down at two dollars each per annum. This whole question of the cost of support - ing slaves, bot h as a matter of fact, an d a matter of theory, is summed up by Chancel lor Harper of South Carolina, in hi s “wr iemoir upon Negro Slavery,” in the following language: “If the income of every planter of the South ern State s were permanently red uced one-half, or much more than that, it would nae eotake one jot from the support and comforts of the slaves. And this ca n never be materially altered until the y shall be come so unprof itable that s lavery must ot necessity be abandoned.” From the n ature of the case, the owners of slave s only furnish th at de gree and amount of support which are necessary to mai nt a in the ir efficiency and numbers. They ca nout do less than this, i f their incomes are diminished; they will not do more, if thei r incomes are doubled. 3 There is n o pos sibility of tretrench ment, wh ere econo my has already done its most and its worst. The housing of the negro is upon the same scale as his fbo ad and clothing. The negro cabin hardly figure s at all it in the inventories of pl antatio n stock. Nothing b e ing expe nded upon the education or p leasures of the negro; a nd bo th se xes and nearly all ages being made available fo r wor k; the cheapness of slave labor is abundantly apparent. A woman is worth i n the field about two-thirds as much as a ma n, and ” when a breeding woman gets too heavy to go to thefield,” she may be made otherwise useful, as explain ed be S
outher n writers upon Roural Economy, (see Industrial Resources, volume 3, page 334.) The farmers and mechanics of the North and West support th ei r fa milies as well as themselves; they are not content to have their w{ives follow the plough; and they have children at school to feed and clothe.

All this must be changed, when they are brought fairly within the range of the competition of the slave o wner. Of the six hundred and seventy-three thousand bales of cotton manufactured in the United States, as appears by document 57, ap pended to the last annual report of the Secre tary of the Treasury, eighty thousand were manufactured during the last year, “South and West of Virginia,” and mainly, it is presumed, by slave labor. It is not understood that the amount of slave labor so employ ed has much increased within four or five years past; such increase being prevented by the advancing rates of the hire of negroes for agricultural purposes. The experiment, however, has been tried long enough, and upon a scale large enough, to demonstrate the adaptation of that species of labor to fkctories, and it only needs a turn of events, a change of price in some of ,the products of agriculture, to precipitate that “I think four pounds of clear meat [per week] is too much. I have negroes here that have had only half a pound [per day] each for twenty years, and they bid fair to outlive their master.” A” Virgirian” from Matthews County, has furnished estimates for the Albany Cultivator, which I find quoted in the Review for the South and West, vol. 3, page 271. Hlie esti mates clothing and taxes for twenty field hands, men, women and boys, at ten dollars, and their food at twenty dollars, each per annum. In an Address delivered before the South Carolina Institute, in 1850, Gov. Hammond Bays: “Our Northern brethren have one, to mention only one, fatal and ominous disqualification for car rying such a contest [with Great Britain for manu facturig supremacy] to extremes. With them, owing to their social and political condition, the tendency of wages is constantly to rise. If they are lowered much, or lowered long, the security of pr o perty is at an end.

They can substitute no labor e for that which is virtually entitled to suffrage, and their governments, controlled by those who live by wages, have no power to protect capital against the demands of labor, however unjust. In the South, it is wholly different. * The great item of cost in manufacturing, next to the raw material, is that of labor. And the final result of the great struggle for the control and enjoyment of the most important industrial pursuit of the world, will probably depend on its comparative cheapness. * In Engiand factory labor is now limited by law to sixty hours a week. In our Northern States, the average of availa ble weekly labor is estimated at seventy-three and a half hours. *

Tlle steady heat of our summers is not so prostrating as the short, but frequent bursts of northern summers. If driven to that necessity, there is no doubt we can extend our hours of labor be yond any of our rivals. The necessary expenses of the Southern laborer are not near so great as those of one in Northern latitudes. Corn and bread and , bacon, as much as the epicure may sneer at them, with fresh meat only occasionally, and a moderate use of garden vegetables, will, in this region at least give to the laborer greater strength of muscle and constitution,enable him to undergo more fatigue,and insure him longer life and more enjoyment of it, than any other diet. And these, indeed, with coffee; constitute the habitual food of the great body of the Southern people. Thirteen bushe~s of corn, worth now, even in the Atlantic Southern States only about $6 on the average, and one hundred and sixty pounds of bacon, or its equivalent, worth about $9, is an ample yearly allowance for a grown person. Garden vegetables bear no price except in cities. If sugar and coffee be added, $18, or at most, $19 will cover the whole necessary annual cost ofa full supply of wholesome and palatable food, purchased in the market. In an article upon “Sugar Culture in the West Indies,”

(Industrial Resources, volume 3, page 310,) there is given a detailed account of the operations of a sugar estate in Cuba, in 1846, with 310
negroes. Among the expenses are the following, and they are all which relate to the support of the negroes: Annual consumption of meat for 310
ne groes, 140 lbs., at $6 per 100 lbs………$2,604.00 nual consumption of corn, 325 lbs. per day, at $1.20 per 100 lbs…………… 1,423.50

300 mule loads of plantain s at 75 cents… 600.00 Clothing at $3.50 per head…………… 1,035.00 Salary of physician…………………

510.00 Minor expenses, including the hospital and medicine bill…………………………………2,143.00 $8,385.50 It does not appear how much of this last item should be set down to the account of the megroes, but iacluding the whole of it, the I I -i

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6 its results and all its influences, it is irresistibly and unmistakably cheaper, when applied to the. -ruder processes of agriculture, than free labor, which it overpowers and reduces to its own level. This gift of cheapness, which is its only recommendation, is, in truthi, its most fattal characteristic, because cheap labor im plies an uneducated laborer, general ignorance, .an absence of the arts and universal impoverishment.

In the energetic language made use of in 1832 by Hon. C.J. Faulklner, amember of the present Congress from Virginia, “it banishes free white labor; it exterminates the me chanic, the artisan, the manufacturer; it deprives them of occupation; it deprives them of bread; it o e s he eer a converts the energ y of a community nt o indo lence; its power into imbecility; its eiciency into weakness.” W hether or not it be, a s Gov.

tammond supposes, l”a fatal an d o minous disqualifica tion” that th e governments of th e Nor thern a nd Western States are “controlled by those who live by wages,” and that under their “social andpolitical condition, the teindency of wages is constantly to rise,” while “in the South it is wholly different;” it is nevertheless the system and condition under which we choose to live, and which we are bound to protect against\ the inevitable and eternal antagonism of slave labor. In human affairs, the final arbitrament is that of power, and if the philosophy of the South was as sound, as it seems to us to be false and shallow, it would still be a question of opposing interests, and the weaker must go to the wall. The system of reducing the laborer to a bare subsistence, is hostild to the individual and personal well-being of the great mass of the fifteen millions of people who wield the political control of the free States; and it will be passing strange if they do not so wield it as to protect themselves and their own. If slavery was removed to the extreme South, and confined to cotton, sugar and rice, it would, at any rate, not oppress white labor by its disastrous competition. But in the Northern slave States, it is directed to the same agricultural productions as in the free States. The white free man in Pennsylvania, who raises wheat, works against the black slave in Maryland and Virginia who does the same thing.

The producers of pork and corn at the West, encounter a similar competition in Ken tucky and Missouri. At a period of high prices, under which the owner of the slave receives a large hire for him, and under which the free laborer receives large wages, this com petition is not felt, and perhaps not thought of. But the Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri owners of slaves must work them when prices fall, and the free laborers of the adjoining States will then realize the full severity of slave competition. A correspondent of the St. Louis Republi can, wnriting from Pike county, Missouri, ad joining Illinois, and only separated from it by the Mississippi rivser, gives the following ac count of the rates at which negroes were sold and hired there on the 1st dayr of January~ 1856: .

extensive appro priation of it to such and similar employmnents, which is sure to come, sooner or lat er, with e nasne of the increasing numbersof the enslaved ra ce. The ti m e predicted by tir. Tarver, when the Southwest will trmon o vpolize” ce of the ctton maiufactureof the Uitted States may never come; but it is no idle speculation to suppose, that in th is br anch of industry t he free laborer may soon beg in sensibly to feel the ompetint r p r essu re of the slave owner. Another mat ter, not more certain, but establ ished by a longer experie nc e and more universally acknowledgedi to be true, is the superior cheap nes s of the enslaved netro in the simpler operations of agriculture, in any latit hde i n which the black race will thrive, over any species of fre e labor.

Conceding the full f orce of the fact, that wages are a better stimuIes t o industry than the lash, it is still impossible for th e f ree lab or er t o maintain the contest wi th a race, so hardy in their own proper climate. so docile, and so cheaply supported. Dr. Franklin invited his enemy to di ne with him, and after sharing with him a bow l of milk, admo nis hed hi m that one able to live always with such simplicity, was not easily to be got rid of as a competitor in busi ness. Th e slave owners of the South may, with equal triumph, point th e whole world to t he b ill o f far e of their laborers, and exult wi th Gov. Hammond, that they can outwork even the “a pauper labor” of Eu rope. In contras ting free labor with slave labor and claiming superiority for the f orm er o ve r the latter, we naturally think of free labor as it actually exists at the N
ort h a nd West, where it is educated and intelligent. But free labor is not necessarily either, nor is it in fact either, exc ep t u nder th e co ndition of being fairlv paid. Wh en i t s remunera tion is lowered by successive g ra dations, as i t ut must be when ex posed to the comp etition of slave labor, the f r eeman ceases to be educated, or intelligent, o r to have any superiority to the nef lro except that o f race. And this point is reached con siderably b efore wages sink to the equivalent of the support required by the slave, because slavery, wi th all it s faults and mischiefs, does y et sa ve its subjects by the strong hand of coercion from many v ices which w ast e the m eans and energies of the freeman.‘It is of no avail, therefore, tha t educated and itil t elli gent fre e l abor may be an overmatch for slave labor, because in truth, educated and intelli gent free labor cannot coexist with slavery. s lave labor wins the victory, not merely by it s own streng th, but by weakening and de terioratinig free labor. It is certainly true that wealth is more rapidly augmented, under free, than under slave systems, and that, in a large sense, free labor is cheaper than slave labor. The reduc tion of the laborer to the minimum of physical subsistence, is the philosophy of Gov.

Ham mond and of the South. A better philosophy, even for capital, is to pay the laborer a rate of wages which will uphold his self-respect and educate his family. Slave labor, like many other cheap things, is dear in the end. But al though exhausting and impoverishlirg in all

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6 the production of the same staples. I will n ow endeavor to satisfy you that this north ward direction of slavery, if not arrested and prelvented, must result in a marked increase of the aggregate of slaves, and must thereby enlarge an evil already so gigantic as to seem hopeless and irremediable. Certain]ly, it can require no elaboration of reasoning, to demonstrate the -wisdom of con fining the blacks to those latitudes least favora ble to the increase of the human species, so as to give the greatest scope’for the expansion of the superior race of the whites. Above a cer taim parallel of latitude, which most writers fix at 35~, the tendency of the species is to in crease until the utmost possible limit of sub sistence is reached; while below it, numbers are kept down by tropical diseases, where the means of subsistence seem to be illimitable. Precisely where the line is may be doubtful but its existence is certain. The temperate North has always been the hive of nations; oncincgentium. If the subject o f negro slaver y in this Union ha d been wit hin the scope of national authority, and if that authority had been exercised with any tolerable discretion, the black race would now be small in num bers, and confined to pursuits to which white labor does not appear to be adapted.

As it is, the fecundity of the negro has been aided and stimulated by the admirable climates of Mary land and Virginia and Kentucky, and it is at this day doubtful, whether we are not about to commit as a crime West of the Mississippi, what we have suffered as a misfortune East of it; whether we are not about to permit there under national license and authority, what lhas been forced upoIn us here by the coercion of State sovereignty; the appropriation of the finest regions and the most salubrious cli mates to the growth and expansion of a race, which is the shame and scandal and weakness of our country. It has been shown [see H. C. Carey on the Slave Trade, Domestic and’ Foreign,] that whereas only 660,000 slaves -were found in the British West India Islands and Colonies In the tropical regions of South America at the period of emancipation, 2;000,000 of blacks had been imported into those possessions at various times from Africa. All the natural increase and two-thirds of tbe] original importation had disappeared. The same thing is true of the slave colonies of France and Spain in the same latitudes. These results are doubtless attributable, in part, to the lack of females among the negroes brought from Africa, and in part, perhaps, to a. treatment less humane than is experienced by the black race in this country. But, after all, they are mainly attributable to climate. This is illustrating a principle by an extreme case. There is no part of this Union where any, such destruction of the black race, as has been witnessed in the West India Islands, is lkely to occur, even if suchx a catastrophle could he regarded as desirable. But it is certatin, that the fine and healthy regions of Virginia are the breeding grounds which supply laborers for the sugar plantations of Lou ‘Mr. Editor:-Negro men sold on yesterday at the following prices: $1,365, $1‘5412 $f,4 05, $1,15, 1,275. These men were common crop hands, rang ing from 30 to 45 years of age. Women blio ugt from eight to ninle hundred dollars. and o6ne w,ent as high as $1,040; another as high as $1.753. These two last good house servants and seamstresses. The women bringiing $800 and.$900 were over middle ae.

“While negroes sold for these prices, they hired at corresponding rates.

Common farm hands, young and likely, hired for $2:0 to $,23-2; boys of 15
and 17 years of age, or thereabouts, hired for $140 and $150 -in every instance the individual hiring, and not t he ow n er, paying all charges of every description.s With thes e rates of negro hire in Missouri, the fa rmers and laborers of Iowa and Illinois, ilabo ow,n the mselves, may receive good wages. But such rates cannot be ermanent, a nd when they fall, the w ages of adjacent free labor mu st fall in a correspond ing ratio. Over slavery in MIar land and Virginia, the nati on has no t now, and n ever had, any con t rol, and the evil is easier borne, because we may feel that we did not cause it by our own act or neglect. The Pennsylvania laborer, wrho now encounters the competition of Vir ginia blacks-i n p roducing wheat, and who w ill encounter it in producing c oal and iron, may console himnself th at the mischief is not imputable, ei ther to himself, or to his fathers. It is not so in the case of Missouri, where, if the North and West had exhibited more firm ness i n 1820, there would not now be a single slav e. Or even if the men of that day had insisted upon the least restrictive of the two m easures proposed, and had p r ohibit ed the further immigration of slaves into Missouri; the ten thousand then there would, at the, most,. have grown to twent y thous and by n atural increase, in stead of b eing, a s they ac tually are, one hundred th ousand by natural increase and importation. Somethinte would ha ve been gained,.if the Northern bogndary of Missouri had been pushed South to the mouth of the Missouri river. A s i t is, slavery is ca rri ed up to the latitude of 40~ 30T, where, on any view of the s ubj e ct, it has no right to go. In conclu ding this branch of the discussion, it is no t inappropriate to observe that in many of th e St ate s in which the system of penitentiaries exists, very considerable objection has been m a de to the employmen t of their inmates in tr ade s and handicrafts, in which they would compete with honest citizens. In some of the States, if parties have not been formed upon th i s question, certainly candidates fbr office have been interrogated in reference to it, and it has ente red as an active element into the pop u lar elections “If this jealousy on the part of’workingmen of the competition of a few hundred persons condemned to penal servitude, was natural and justifiable, an occasion for it immeasurably greater exists in the competition of the three millions of persons condemned to perpetual servitude in the Southern States. I have thus far endeavored to satisfy you, that the attempt being made under the auspices of the dynasty now in power, to bring slavery northward, will, if successful, depress and degrade the free labor of the North and West, by subjecting it to slave competition in,

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7 tsisana; it is certain that the natural increase’ future hangs a more portentous and impenetraof the blacks is much more rapid in the North-ble gloom, than that which darkens the destiny ern slave States than in the extreme South; of the South and throws ominous shadows it is certain, in fine, that just in proportion as even upon its present life. What seem to be we crowd slavery toward the tropic, we shall its cries of anger, are, to the appreciating ear, diminish the number, dt at least retard the cries of distress, wrung from the tost and increase of the number, of the blacks. The distempered fancies of suffering and disease. sugar regions alone, of Florida, Louisiana and The South needs outlets. This is most true. Texas, are sufficient to absorb them, and this But not outlets which Will increase the volis the true euthanasia of slavery. It was this ume of the mischief; not outlets which will view of the subject which reconciled the North establish new sources and springs of the fatal to the annexation of Texas. In truth the stream; not outlets which will carry the disquestion of slavery, except in reference to the ease to new regions while it is left unmitiga balance of political power, was not involved ted in its old seats. Some things may be di in that measure, slavery being already firmly luted by being diffused, but slavery however established in Texas. But so far as the scattered, retains everywhere all the strength question of the extension and direction of of its original malignity.

Virginia had such slavery was supposed to be involved, or an outlet in Kentucky, but the temporary re might possibly be involved in that measure, lief has long since become only a duplication the people of the North were well content to of the mischief. Missouri, in its turn, instead aid in giving a Southern direction to slavery. of being a market for slaves, will soon com Such a line of policy accorded with their old pete with Virginia and Kentucky in breeding and established opinions; it accorded with slaves. If the policy of 1854 is persisted in, the ideas which led to the adoption of the this breeding ground of wretched Africans Missouri Compromise; it accorded, indeed, will stretch uninterrupted from the Atlantic with what was until recently the general ex-to the Rocky Mountains, furnishing to the pectation and wish of the country, that sla-States upon the Gulf of Mexico a perennial very would disappear from Maryland, Vir-supply, and securing to slavery and the slave ginia, Kentucky and Missouri. The legisla-trade an expansion in time and space, amaz tion of 1854, revolutionary in its inception, in ing in its extent and inconceivable in its con the practices by which it was carried through sequences. Congress, and in the incidents which have at-The South needs outlets. This is most true. tended its execution, runs counter to all the But outlets not merely, or mainly, for its old, established and well settled opinions of blacks. If the South could be supposed to the country, Nortland South. It is an off-be absolutely pent up, the first and greatest shoot of violent and dangerous veiws of danger to its peculiar social organization modern growth. It contemplates a complete would come from the side of the whites, upon reversal of the entire policy of our govern-the great mass of whom that organization ment from its foundation.

It proposesto push bears with crushing and destructive force. North as far as it can possibly exist and with Revolutionary outbreaks are common, servile a view to its indefinite duration and ascen-wars are rare, in the history of mankind. dancy, an odious and fatal institution, which The slave is not often a rebel. Negro slavery our fathers through nearly three generations has been perfectly secure in the West India have systematically labored to narrow, to limit, Islands and in inter-tropical South America, and especially to divert Southward with a under a ratio of blacks to whites many fold view to its ultimate and possible extinction.

greater than the present ratio even in South If the negro race was actually established in Carolina. It fell in St. Domingo, not fiom a Kansas, its removal South might be objected preponderance of the blacks, butfrom the in to as inhumane. But in determining with terference of the French Assembly. The which of two races we will people a new and slaveholder fears everybody, but t is the unoccupied region, we are unembarrassed with white man, and not the black man whom he any such consideration as that. We are not fears and has reason to fear as his first enemy. perplexed by vested rights, or vested wrongs, The legislation of all the Southern States and can consult the interests of one race, proves it. In the two States out of which without the fear of doing an injustice to the this District was formed, the legislative power other. is secured to the slaveholders as against the I have never been insensible to the force of majority of the whites, by constitutional the appeal made by the Southern States, gerrymanders. In most of the Southern a g a i n s t being left to be overwhelmed, without States,‘the power to touch the question of r e l i e f, escape, or outlet, by the accumulating slavery is taken from the people by cconstitu n umb e r s of their blacks. To that appeal of tional prohibitions. This is particularly true alarm and despair, eloquent in the genuine in those cases in which there was reason to and unmistakeable tones of nature, no man apprehend popular movement s to get rid of who knows the true condition of the South, slavery. The doctrine of allowin g the peo can turn a deaf, or reluctant ear. If fraternal ppe to fashion their own institutions, which counsel and fraternal aid can avail anything’ Southern gentlemen recommend to us in ref in presence of this great misfortune, never, erence to Kansas, they expressly repudiate at was there a call for them more urgent, mov-home.

Nobody knows better than you do, ing and irresistible. The sun in all his cir-with what indignant unanimity they would cult does not shine upon a people, over whose scout it. if attempted to be applied here, with I 4

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a, in what-is left of the ten miles square. The munity. It is a subterranean fire, whose ex doctrine is limited to Kansas, and even there, plosion may at any moment overturn the the perplexing commentary of its practical whole edifice of society. application, so contradicts and obscures the I repeat, therefore, that the South needs out-, text, as to render it unintelligible. lets, not mnerely or mainly for its blacks but Of 1,260,982 free persons born in Virginia, is vitally interested in -the preservation of free and living in 1850 in the United States, 388, territories, as places of refuge for its whites, 059 or a fraction short of 31 per cent, lived whose accumulation at home, with all the in out of Virginia.‘Of 8,607,X59 persons born vincible circumstances and causes of social in Ireland and living in 1851, the number of degradation which surround them there, por 2,131,365, or a fraction short of 25 per cent.

tends the gravest dangers. livedoutof Ireland. (Seenote.) Theexodus In every point of view, the northern direc of the Irish has astonished the world, and al-tion which it was the sole object of the repeal though manifestly attributable in part to of the Missouri Compromise to give to the in, cramped limits and crowded population, is” stitution of slavery, ought to provoke resist justly regarded as striking evidence of British ance. It is an alarming innovation upon old, tyranny and misrule. Yet as proved by the and established principles. It will bring slave greater proportion of free persons who have labor int6 more immediate and active compe fled from Virginia, the oppressions of the tition with free labor.

It will augment the slave system are more unendurable, than’ all numbers of the black race, and render the the wrongs which Ireland has suffered under peaceful extinction of slavery forever impossi a government established by-conquest and ble. It is injurious to both sections of the matintained by force against the antagonisms Union and to both the races which inhabit it. of religion and race. Certainly, this amazing It provokes indignation to reflect that such emigration from Virginia is not due to corn-a measure, big with incalculable consequences pressed limits, or exhausted physical resources. affecting the destinies of a continent through That State abounds in everything except peo-indefinite ages, was precipitated upon us with ple. Virginia is decrepid in the” midst of out warning, and consummated by treachery vigorous nature, poor in the midst of over-to the free States on the part of individualsi flowing wealth, who command no respect, either by theif “MAarnas inter opes inops.”

talents or their characters, and who had A No fairer or ampler heritage, was ever wast-pretensions to places which they occupied only ed and impoverished by prodigal possessors. through ithle inattention of the country. Let I have spoken first of Virginia, because she it console us to know that the mischief is not is your immediate neighbor, but if you turn yet irremediable, and that it will only become to the Carolinat, you will find that the same so, by the deliberate sanction of those who terrible scourge which has driven Qff 31 per are to be affected by it. cent. of the people of Virginia, hags?7 n off 34 per cent. of the free people of North Carolina, and in South Carolina, where the devel-NOTr.-The total emigration from Great Britain: ouent of the slave systemn is most complete and Ireland during a period of twenty-six years, opm’-enohsic, from 1825
to 1851, assuming that onehundred thou it has driven off 42 per cent. of the free peo-sand ciame to the Unietted tates ia the British ple. The new slave States will, in their turn, North American colonies, was distributed as fol yield to the same pressure which has already lows:- E depopulated the old. To the United States……………….. 1,635,467 depopulated to. To British colonies and other places…..987 603 If the egress of people, white and black, As there were found living in 1850, in the Unted from Virginia, could be supposed to be abso-Stattes, 1,340,812 persons born in Great Britain and lutely prevented, it seems to me impossible reland, it may be assumed that there were then in lutely prevented, it seem-s to me impossible that the sta~bility of the social oganization “British colonies and other places” 807,000 persons that the stability of the social organization born inl Great Britain and Ireland. could be maintained against the accumulating Of 262?,839 persons born in Great Britain and Ire& numbers of ignorant, impoverished and brui-land, founid in Upper Canada in 1848, it was ascer talized whites. With the courage and spirit tamied by a census that 54 per cent. were born in Irelaid. If this proportioni beassunied fortiewhole of freemen, but-without the training and dis-807,000 persons in the “British Colonies and other cipline and reflection essential to the perma-places,’ it would give 435,i78 as the number born nent existence of freedom, they have the pre-il Ireland. This is, however, probably too large cise characteristics to render them fitting and a proporntoi, as the pe i rentagt of Irish born io l,, ainoig the emigra,ts to An,tialia, than a g dangerous instruments of revolutionary lead-the emigrants to thie Britis,1 North American Colo-.

ers. In the violent subjugation. of Kansas nies. We lave thus the following results:this class of people in Missouri has been used Whole nn.be. of.is born living..ar by-and for the slaveholders, but under other Irish borni in Great Buita-ui, per census of circumstances it may be used against them. March, 1851……………………… 733,866 A brute force like this, at once savage, blind Irish bon in U. States per census of 1850. 961,719 Irish born in “‘British colonies and other and powerful, is a threatening and onminous places”……………………435,780 element in the composition of a political corn-Irishl born iv in Ireland, r, 1851..,47574

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