“7. The North seems to have a strange inclination to quarrel with England. The late war of 1812 to 1814 was a war for Northern claims and Northern interests, now we are in jeopardy from the unjust interference in favour of the patriots of Canada; and a dispute is threatened on account of the north-eastern boundary. The manufacturing and commercial interferences of the north with Europe will always remain a possible, if not a probable, source of disputes. The North raises what Europe raises; commercially they need not each other—they are two of a trade, they raise not what each other wants—they are rivals and competitors when they go to war. Does not the South, who is not interested in it, pay most part of the expense, and is not the war expenditure applied to the benefit of the North? Sever, if you please, the Union, and the North will have to pay the whole expense of her own quarrels.
“8. Our system of domestic servitude is a great eye-sore to the fanatics of the North. But there are very many wise and honest men in the North; ay, even in Massachusetts. I ask of these gentlemen, does not at least one-third of the labour produce of every Southern slave ultimately lodge in the purse of the North! If the South works for itself it works also for the Northern merchant, and views his prosperity without grudging.
“9. Nor is it a trifling article of gain that arises from the expenditure of southern visitors and southern travellers, who spend their summers and their money in the north. The quarrelsome rudeness of northern society is fast diminishing this source of expenditure among us. Sever the Union, and we relinquish it altogether. We can go to London, Paris, or Rome, as cheaply and as pleasantly as to Saratoga or Niagara.
“Such are some of the advantages which the north derives from a continuance of that union which her fanatic population is so desirous to sever. A population with whom peace, humanity, mercy, oaths, contracts, and compacts, pass for nothing—whose promises and engagements are as chaff before the wind—to whom bloodshed, robbery, assassination, and murder, are objects of placid contemplation—whose narrow creed of bigotry supersedes all the obligations, of morality, and all the commands of positive law. With such men what valid compact can be made? The appeal must be to those who think that a deliberate compact is mutually binding on parties of any and every religious creed. To such men I appeal, and ask, ought you not resolutely to restore peace, and give the south confidence and repose?
“I have now lived twenty years in South Carolina, and have had much intercourse with her prominent and leading men; not a man among them is ignorant how decidedly in most respects, the south would gain by a severance from the north, and how much more advantageous is this union to the north than to the south. But I am deeply, firmly persuaded that there is not one man in South Carolina that would move one step toward a separation, on account of the superior advantages the north derives from the union. No southern is actuated by these pecuniary feelings; no southern begrudges the north her prosperity. Enjoy your advantages, gentlemen of the north, and much good may they do ye, as they have hitherto. But if these unconstitutional abolition attacks upon us, in utter defiance of the national compact, are to be continued, God forbid this union should last another year.
“I am, sir, your obedient servant,
“Thomas Cooper.”
“Many fine looking districts were pointed out to me in Virginia, formerly rich in tobacco and Indian corn, which had been completely exhausted by the production of crops for the maintenance of the slaves. In thickly peopled countries, where the great towns are at hand, the fertility of such soils may be recovered and even improved by manuring, but over the tracts of country I now speak of, no such advantages are within the farmer’s reach.”—Captain Hall.
“Many, very many, with whom I met, would willingly have released their slaves, but the law requires that in such cases they should leave the state; and this would mostly be not to improve their condition, but to banish them from their home, and to make them miserable outcasts. What they cannot at present remove, they are anxious to mitigate, and I have never seen kinder attention paid to any domestics than by such persons to their slaves. In defiance of the infamous laws, making it criminal for the slave to be taught to read, and difficult to assemble for an act of worship, they are instructed, and they are assisted to worship God.”—Rev. Mr Reid.
“The law declares the children of slaves are to follow the fortunes of the mother. Hence the practice of planters selling and bequeathing their own children.”—Miss Martineau.