What a Mississippi Slaveholder Thought.
An old Mississippian, a working man, though the owner of a dozen slaves, assured me earnestly that the people did not desire war; but the North had cheated them in every compromise, and they were bound to regain their rights, even if they had to fight for them.
"We of the South," said he, "are the most independent people in the universe. We raise every thing we need; but the world can not do without cotton. If we have war, it will cause terrible suffering in the North. I pity the ignorant people of the manufacturing districts there, who have been deluded by the politicians; for they will be forced to endure many hardships, and perhaps starvation. After Southern trade is withdrawn, manufactures stopped, operatives starving, grass growing in the streets of New York, and crowds marching up Broadway crying 'Bread or Blood!' northern fanatics will see, too late, the results of their folly."
This was the uniform talk of Secessionists. That Cotton was not merely King, but absolute despot; that they could coerce the North by refusing to buy goods, and coerce the whole world by refusing to sell cotton, was their profound belief. This was always a favorite southern theory. Bancroft relates that as early as 1661, the colony of Virginia, suffering under commercial oppression, urged North Carolina and Maryland to join her for a year in refusing to raise tobacco, that they might compel Great Britain to grant certain desired privileges. Now the Rebels had no suspicion whatever that there was reciprocity in trade; that they needed to sell their great staple just as much as the world needed to buy it; that the South bought goods in New York simply because it was the cheapest and best market; that, were all the cotton-producing States instantly sunk in the ocean, in less than five years the world would obtain their staple, or some adequate substitute, from other sources, and forget they ever existed.
Wisconsin Freemen vs. Southern Slaves.
"I spent six weeks last summer," said another planter, "in Wisconsin. It is a hot-bed of Abolitionism. The working-classes are astonishingly ignorant. They are honest and industrious, but they are not so intelligent as the nig-roes of the South. They suppose, if war comes, we shall have trouble with our slaves. That is utterly absurd. All my nig-roes would fight for me."
A Mississippian, whom his companions addressed as "Judge," denounced the Secession movement as a dream of noisy demagogues:
"Their whole policy has been one of precipitation. They declared: 'Let us rush the State out of the Union while Buchanan is President, and there will be no war.' From the outset, they have acted in defiance of the sober will of the masses; they have not dared to submit one of their acts to a popular vote!"
Another passenger, who concurred in these views, and intimated that he was a Union man, still imputed the troubles mainly to agitation of the Slavery question.
"The northern people," said he, "have been grossly deceived by their politicians, newspapers, and books like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' whose very first chapter describes a slave imprisoned and nearly starved to death in a cellar in New Orleans, when there is not a single cellar in the whole city!"