Suppose a plantation stocked with 100 slaves, men, women, and piccaninnies,

at 8500 each,$50,000
Interest at 8 per cent., a low rate for the South,4,000
Customary allowance for life insurance or mortality,1,000
Overseer's wages,1,000
House and provisions,500
Doctor's fees, hospital, and medicines,500
Renewal and repairs of negro quarters,500
Clothing and food, at $1 per week for each slave,5,200
______
12,700

Credit.

Increase to keep good the mortality,2
Annual gain, 2-335/1000, say3
Gain, 5, at $5002,500
Net cost,10,200

The usual allowance for field hands is one-third,—allow it to be forty in a hundred, the cost of each would be $255 per annum, or $21.25 per month.

Let each one make his own allowance for the disadvantage of having the larger portion of the capital of a State locked up in a tool which would do more and better work if recognized as a man and representing no invested capital. How much productive industry would there be in New England, if every laborer or mechanic cost his employer $800 to $1500 before he could be set to work, and if each one who undertook to labor upon his own account, and was not so purchased, were stigmatized and degraded and termed 'mean white trash?'

It will again be objected that the theory of the cotton planter is to raise all the food and make all the clothing on the plantation. The cultivation of cotton in the best manner is described by Southern writers as a process of gardening. Now what would be thought of a market gardener at the North who should keep a large extra force for the purpose of spinning yarn on a frame of six to ten spindles, and weaving it up on a rude hand loom? Would this not be protection to home industry in its most absurd extreme? But this is the plantation system.

The correctness of the estimate of cost can be tested in some degree by the rates at which able-bodied slaves are hired out. Many lists can be found in Southern papers; the latest found by the writer is in De Bow's Review of 1860.

A list of fourteen slaves, comprising 'a blacksmith, his wife, eight field hands, a lame negro, an old man, an old woman and a young woman,' were hired out for the year 1860, in Claiborne Parish, La., at an average of $289 each, the highest being $430 for the blacksmith, and $171 for 'Juda, old woman.'

The Southern States have thus far retained almost a monopoly of the cotton trade of the civilized world by promptly furnishing a fair supply of cotton of the best quality, and at prices which defied competition from the only region from which it was to be feared, viz., India. This monopoly has been retained, notwithstanding the steadily increasing demand and higher prices of the last few years.

Improvements in machinery have enabled manufacturers to pay full wages to their operatives, both in this country and in England, and to pay higher prices for their cotton than they did a few years since, without materially enhancing the cost of their goods, the larger product of cloth from a less number of hands and the saving of waste offsetting the higher price of cotton; but it is not probable that the cost of labor upon cotton goods can be hereafter materially reduced. The cost of labor upon the heavy sheetings and drills which form the larger part of our exports is now only one and one-half cents per yard, and the cost of oil, starch, and all other materials except cotton, less than one-half cent, making less than two cents for cost of manufacturing; but with cotton at ten cents to the planter and twelve and one-half cents to the spinner, the cost of cotton in the yard of same goods is five cents.

With cotton at the average price of the last few years, we have supplied a very small portion of India and China with goods, in competition with their hand-made goods of same material. With new markets opening in Japan and China, and by the building of railroads in India, we have to meet a constantly decreasing supply of raw material as compared with the demand. Give us cotton at six to seven cents, at which free labor and skill could well afford it, and the manufacturing industry of New England would receive a development unknown before. But when we ask more cotton of slavery, we are answered by its great prophet, De Bow; that because we are willing to pay a high price we can not have it; for he says, 'Although land is to be had in unlimited quantities, whenever cotton rises to ten cents, labor becomes too dear to increase production rapidly.'

And this is what the great system of slave labor has accomplished. The production of its great staple, cotton, is in the hands of less than 100,000 men. In 1850 there were in all the Southern States only 170,000 men owning more than five slaves each, and they owned 2,800,000 out of 3,300,000.

These men have by their system rendered labor degrading,—they have driven out their non-slaveholding neighbors by hundreds of thousands to find homes and self-respect in the free air of the great West,—they have reduced those who remain to a condition of ignorance scarcely to be found in any other country claiming to be civilized—so low that even the slaves look down upon the 'mean white trash,'—they have sapped the very foundations of honor and morality, so that 'Southern chivalry' has become the synonym for treachery, theft, and dishonor in every form,—they have reached a depth of degradation only to be equalled by those Northern men who would now prevent this war from utterly destroying slavery,—they have literally skinned over a vast area of country, leaving it for the time a desert, and with an area of 368,312,320 acres in the eight cotton States, they have now under cultivation in cotton less than 6,000,000 (an area scarcely larger than the little State of Massachusetts); they have less than two slave laborers to the square mile; and their only opposition to the re-opening of the African slave-trade is upon the ground that an increase of laborers will but reduce the price of cotton, give the planters a great deal more trouble and less profit, and only benefit their enemies in New and Old England.

Have not the manufacturer, the consumer, the business man, the farmer, the soldier, every free man, every friend of the poor whites of the South who are not yet free men, a right and an interest in claiming that this monopoly of 100,000 cotton planters shall cease, their estates be confiscated for their treason, and divided among our soldiers, to repay them for their sacrifices in the cause of their country? First of all, however, let us claim the 100,000,000 acres, not the property of any individual, but fought for and paid for by the United States, and then given to that most ungrateful of all the rebel States, Texas—the great 'Cotton State.'

Upon these fertile lands, and in this most profitable branch of agriculture, let us find the bounty for our soldiers, the reward for their sacrifices, and our own security for the future good order of the state.

By so doing we shall silence the outcry of the South that ours is a war of conquest (since the right of the government to the public lands of Texas is unquestionable), and, at the same time, furnish a powerful incentive to the zeal of our soldiers.

I have compiled a few facts and statements in regard to the soil and climate of Texas from Capt. Marcy's Exploration of the Red River, in which he was accompanied by Captain, now General, McLellan, from the Texas Almanac, a most violent pro-slavery publication, and from the letters of a friend, a loyal Texan, who has been driven from his home, and is now in the North.

In advocating the Memphis and El Paso route for the Pacific Railroad, Captain Marcy writes as follows:—

The road alluded to, immediately after leaving Fulton, Ark., leads to an elevated ridge dividing the waters that flow into Red River from those of the Sulphur and Trinity, and continues upon it, with but few deviations from the direct course for El Paso and Dona Ana to near the Brazos River, a distance of three hundred and twenty miles, and mostly through the northern part of Texas. This portion of the route has its locality in a country of surpassing beauty and fertility, and possesses all the requisites for attracting and sustaining a dense farming population. It is diversified with prairies and woodland, and is bountifully watered with numerous spring brooks, which flow off upon either side of the ridge above-mentioned. The crest of the ridge is exceedingly smooth and level, and is altogether the best natural or artificial road I ever traveled over for the same distance.

After leaving this ridge, the road crosses the Brazos near very extensive fields of bituminous coal, which burns readily, with a clear flame, and is very superior in quality.

From the Brazos, the road skirts small affluents of that stream and the Colorado for two hundred miles. The soil upon this section is principally a red argillaceous loam, similar to that in the Red River bottoms, which is so highly productive.

As this route is included within the thirty-second and thirty-fourth parallels of latitude, it would never be obstructed with snow. The whole surface of the country is covered with a dense coating of the most nutritious grass, which remains green for nine months in the year, and enables cattle to subsist the entire winter without any other forage.

The line of this road east from Fort Smith would intersect the Mississippi in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., and would pass through the country bordering the Arkansas River, which can not be surpassed for fertility.—Marcy's Red River Exploration.

The route thus described lies through the following counties, and attention is specially directed to their several products in 1858:—

Acres
CountyWhiteSlaveCornWheatCottonSug.Misc'lTotal.
Bowie2,0772,32110,3921,4218,240233,23223,308
Cass6,1124,81628,4745,55220,168364,36858,508
Titus6,0251,89118,9872,2729,872926,22736,450
Upshur5,9992,80122,5153,09216,692453,12246,065
Wood3,2547338,3361,0903,194311,84114,501
Van Zandt2,5482426,5048371,21385968,160
Henderson2,7588278,4708454,7687090815,061
Navarro2,8851,57910,5312,7854,6781272,60920,730
Hill1,8585085,1613,1891812017619,493
Bosque8871822,70287222445834,026
34,40315,800121,07222,56469,33067822,748236,392

Let us allow the usual proportion of field hands to the whole number of slaves, viz., one-third, and we have a force of 5297; if whites do not labor in the field, each field hand must cultivate 44 64/100 acres of land. The customary allotment is ten cotton and five corn, or, where corn and wheat are the principal products, from twenty to twenty-five acres.

July 15, 1852. We were in motion at two o'clock in the morning, and, taking a north-east course towards the base of the mountain chain, passed through mezquite groves, intersected by brooks of pure water flowing into the south branch of Cache Creek, upon one of which we are encamped.

We find the soil good at all places near the mountains, and the country well wooded and watered. The grass, consisting of several varieties of the grama, is of a superior quality, and grows luxuriantly. The climate is salubrious, and the almost constant cool and bracing breezes of the summer months, with the entire absence of anything like marshes or stagnant water, remove all sources of noxious malaria, with its attendant evils of autumnal fevers.—Marcy's Exploration of the Red River, p. 11.

Our camp is upon the creek last occupied by the Witchitas before they left the mountains. The soil, in point of fertility, surpasses anything we have before seen, and the vegetation in the old corn-fields is so dense that it was with great difficulty I could force my horse through it. It consisted of rank weeds growing to the height of twelve feet. Soil of this character must have produced an enormous yield of corn. The timber is sufficiently abundant for all purposes of the agriculturist, and of a superior quality.

We have now reached the eastern extremity of the Witchita chain of mountains, and shall to-morrow strike our course for Fort Asbuekl.

The more we have seen of the country about these mountains, the more pleased we have been with it. Bounteous nature seems here to have strewed her favors with a lavish hand, and to have held out every inducement for civilized man to occupy it. The numerous tributaries of Cache Creek, flowing from granite fountains, and winding like net-work through the valleys, with the advantages of good timber, soil and grass, the pure, elastic and delicious climate, with a bracing atmosphere, all unite in presenting rare inducements to the husbandman.—Marcy's Red River Exploration.

This section of country is in latitude 34°, longitude 99°; the latitude the same as the central part of South Carolina and the southern part of Arkansas.

We will now give statements from the Texas Almanac.

The south winds are the source of comfort and positive luxury to the inhabitants of Texas during the hot weather of summer. The nearer the sea-coast, the cooler and more brisk the current; but the entire area of prairie, and a large portion of the timbered country, feel it as a pleasant, healthful breeze, rendering our highest temperature tolerable.—Prof. Forshey, of the Texas Military Institute.