The Cotton Kingdom, volume 2 (of 2)

by Frederick Law Olmsted

Admitting that, in this view, slavery is not beneficent, or is no longer beneficent, or can be but for a time beneficent to the slave, the present attitude of the South still finds a mode of justification with many minds, in the broad assertion that the negro is not of the nature of mankind, therefore cannot be a subject of inhumanity. This, of course, sweeps the field, if it does anything: thus (from the Day-Book)—

“The wide-spread delusion that Southern institutions are an evil, and their extension dangerous—the notion so prevalent at the North that there is a real antagonism, or that the system of the South is hostile to Northern interests; the weakened union sentiment, and the utter debauchment, the absolute traitorism of a portion of the Northern people, not only to the Union, but to Democratic institutions, and to the cause of civilization on this continent; all these, with the minor and most innumerable mischiefs that this mighty world-wide imposture has engendered or drags in its midst, rest upon the dogma, the single assumption, the sole elementary foundation falsehood, that a negro is a black man.”

This bold ground is not as often taken at the South as by desperate bidders for Southern confidence among ourselves. I have heard Christian men, however, when pushed for a justification of the sealing up of the printed Bible, of the legal disregard of marriage, of giving power to rascally traders to forcibly separate families, and so on, refer to it as a hypothesis not at all to be scouted under such circumstances. Yet, as they did so, there stood behind their chairs, slaves, in whose veins ran more Anglo-Saxon blood than of any African race’s blood, and among their other slaves, it is probable there were many descendants of Nubians, Moors, Egyptians, and Indians, all interbred with white and true negro tribes, so that it would be doubtful if there remained one single absolutely pure negro, to which animal alone their argument would strictly apply. If the right or expediency of denying the means of preparing themselves for freedom to these beings could even be held to be coexistent with the evident preponderance in them of certain qualities of form, colour, etc., the number of those who are held unjustly or inexpediently in the bonds of a perpetual slavery is already quite large in the South, and is gradually but surely increasing—is increasing much more rapidly than are their means of cultivating habits which are necessary to be cultivated, before the manliest child of white men is capable of enjoying freedom.

There are but two methods of vindicating the habit of depending on the labour of slaves for the development of wealth in the land, which appear to me, on the face of them, entitled to be treated gravely. One of these, assuming the beings held in slavery to be as yet generally incompetent to take care of themselves in a civilized manner, and dangerous to the life as well as to the wealth of the civilized people who hold them in slavery, argues that it is necessary for their humane maintenance, and to prevent them from acquiring an increase of the disposition and strength of mind and will which has always been felt a source of danger to the well-being of their masters, that all the present laws for their mental repression should be rigidly maintained. It is not to be denied, I think, that there is some ground for this assumption. Inasmuch as it is also argued that the same necessity requires that these beings, and with them all these laws, should be carried on to territory now free from them, we are called upon to give a sober consideration to the argument which is based upon it. This I shall do in the last chapter. The other method to which I refer assumes that by having a well-defined class set apart for drudging and servile labour, the remainder of a community may be preserved free from the demeaning habits and traits of character which, it is alleged, servile and menial obligations and the necessity of a constant devotion to labour are sure to fix upon those who are subject to them. Hence a peculiar advantage in morals and in manners is believed to belong to the superior class of a community so divided. I am inclined to think that there is no method of justifying slavery, which is more warmly cherished by those interested to maintain it, than this. I am sure that there is none which planters are more ready to suggest to their guests.[55]

No sensible man among us shuts his eyes to the ignorance, meanness, vice, and misery which accompanies our general prosperity; no class of statesmen, no politicians or demagogues, no writers deny or ignore it. It is canvassed, published, studied, struggled with, by all honest men, and this not in our closets alone, but in our churches, our legislatures, our colleges, our newspapers, our families. We are constantly urging, constantly using means for discovering it and setting it forth plainly. We commission able men to make a business of bringing it to the light, and we publish the statistics which their labours supply as legislative documents to be circulated at the general expense, in order that our misfortune may be as well known and as exactly comprehended as possible.

From much of all this, which so painfully and anxiously concerns us, we are told that the South is free. We are told that what we bewail is seen at the South to be the result of a mistaken social system; that the South escapes that result by slavery. We do not deny, we daily acknowledge that there are mistakes in our system; we endeavour to remedy them; and we not unfrequently have to acknowledge that in doing so, we have made some of our bad things worse. Does slavery relieve all? And without compensation? We often find, upon a thorough review, that our expedients, while they have for a time seemed to produce very valuable results, have in fact corrected one evil by creating or enhancing another. We have borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. In this way we find investigation and discussion to be constantly essential to prevent errors and mistakes from being exaggerated and persevered in unnecessarily. Thus we—our honestly humane part at least—are ever calling for facts, ever publishing, proclaiming, discussing the facts of our evil. It is only those whose selfish interest is thought by themselves to be served by negligence, who resist investigation and publication, who avoid discussion. Thus we come to habitually associate much activity of discussion, much consideration, much publication with improvement—often no doubt erroneously—still it is natural and rational that when we find no discussion of facts, no publication, no consideration, where we find general consideration and general discussion practically prevented by a forcible resistance to publication, we cannot but suspect there is something sadly needing to be made better. And this last we do find to be the case at the South, and with regard to slavery. Why, if their system has such tangible evidence of its advantages within the personal knowledge of any citizen, do they object to its alleged disadvantages being set forth for consideration, and, if it should happen, discussion? True, we may be wrong, we may be mistaken in supposing that this, our constant publication and challenge to discussion is a good thing. Perhaps if we were better, we should talk less, know less of what evil remained to be gradually grown out of. It might be found that the constant consideration of our evil had had a bad effect upon us. But I have not found that the people of the South are inclined to shut their eyes, and close their ears, and bar their imaginations to the same evil. With the misery which prevails among us, Southerners generally appear to be, indeed, more familiar than the most industrious of our home philanthropists. Great as it is, it is really over-estimated at the South—over-estimated in the aggregate at least; for it is perhaps impossible to over-estimate the sufferings of individuals. South of Virginia, an intelligent man or woman is rarely met who does not maintain, with the utmost apparent confidence, that the people who do the work of the North are, on the whole, harder driven, worse fed, and more destitute of comfort than are the slaves at the South, taking an average of both classes; and this I heard assumed by gentlemen, the yearly cost of maintaining whose own slaves, according to their statement to me, would not equal the average monthly expenses of an equal number of the poorest class of labourers I have ever known at the North. I have heard it assumed by planters, who not only did not themselves enjoy, but who never imagined or aspired to a tithe of the comfort to which most journeymen mechanics whom I have known are habituated. I have heard it assumed by gentlemen, nine-tenths of whose neighbours for a hundred miles around them lived in a manner which, if witnessed at the North, would have made them objects of compassion to the majority of our day-labourers.

A gentleman coming up the Mississippi, just after a recent “Southern Commercial Convention” at Memphis, says:

“For three days I have been sitting at a table three times a day opposite four of the fire-eaters. * * * It was evident that they were sincere: for they declared to one another the belief that Providence was directing the South to recommence the importation of Africans, that she might lead the world to civilization and Christianity through its dependence upon her soil for cotton. All their conversation was consistent with this. They believed the South the centre of Christianity and the hope of the world, while they had not the slightest doubt that the large majority of the people of the North were much more to be pitied than their own negroes. Exclusive of merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and politicians, they evidently imagined the whole population of the North to be quite similar to the poor white population of the South. Yet they had travelled in the North, it appeared. I could only conclude that their observation of northern working men had been confined to the Irish operatives of some half-finished western railroad, living in temporary shanties along the route.”

I have even found that conservative men, who frankly acknowledged the many bad effects of slavery, and confessed the conviction that the Northern Slave States were ruined by it; men who expressed admiration of Cassius Clay’s course, and acknowledged no little sympathy with his views, and who spoke with more contempt of their own fanatics than of the Abolitionists themselves; that such men were inclined to apologize for slavery, and for their own course in acting politically for its extension and perpetuation, by assuming certain social advantages to exist where it prevailed. “There is a higher tone in Southern society than at the North,” they would say, “which is, no doubt, due to the greater leisure which slavery secures to us. There is less anxiety for wealth, consequently more honesty. This also leads to the habit of more generous living and of hospitality, which is so characteristic of the South.”

I think that there is a type of character resulting in a secondary way from slavery, of which Mr. Clay is himself a noble example, which attracts admiration and affection in a rare manner. I shall explain this secondary action of slavery by-and-by. I have come to the conclusion that whatever may be the good results of slavery in the way I shall then describe, this so constantly asserted, so generally conceded, of inducing a “higher tone” of breeding, and especially of nourishing the virtue of hospitality, is chimerical.