The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

The reader will now observe that it was in the period from 1830 to 1840 that the tendency to emancipation disappeared—that it was in that period were passed various laws adverse to the education of negroes—that it was in that period there was the greatest enlargement of the domestic slave trade—and the greatest decline in the price of cotton. Having remarked these things, and having satisfied himself that they, each and all, have their origin in the fact that the planter is compelled to depend on foreign markets and therefore to exhaust his land, he will be enabled to judge of the accuracy of the view contained in the following sentence :—

"The price of a negro on Red River varies with the price of cotton in Liverpool, and whatever tends to lower the value of the staple here, not only confers an inestimable advantage on our own manufacturing population, but renders slave labour less profitable, and therefore less permanent in Alabama."—Prospective Review, No. xxxii. 512.

It would be fortunate if philanthropy and pecuniary profit could thus be made to work together, but such unhappily is not the case. When men are enabled to come nearer to each other and combine their efforts, and towns arise, land acquires great value and gradually becomes divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his importance in the eye of his owner. When, however, men are forced to abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant owner. At death, the land cannot, under these circumstances, be divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such advertisements as the following are a necessary consequence of the system that looks to cheap wheat, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton.

HIGH PRICE OF NEGROES.—We extract the following from the Lancaster
(S. C.) Ledger of the 5th January last:—

We attended the sale of negroes belonging to the estate of the late
S. Beekman, on the 22d of last month, and were somewhat astonished at
the high price paid for negroes.

Negro men brought from $800 to $1000, the greater number at or near
the latter price. One (a blacksmith) brought $1425.

We learn from the Winsboro Register, that on Monday, the 3d inst., a large sale of negroes was made by the Commissioner in Equity for Fairfleld district, principally the property of James Gibson, deceased. The negroes were only tolerably likely, and averaged about $620 each. The sales were made on a credit of twelve months.—Charleston (S. C.) Courier.

The more the planter is forced to depend upon tobacco the lower will be its price abroad, and the more he must exhaust his land. The more rapid the exhaustion the more must be the tendency to emigrate. The more the necessity for depending exclusively on wheat, the greater the necessity for making a market for it by raising slaves for sale: and in several of the older Southern States the planter now makes nothing but what results from the increase of "stock."

Of all the exporters of food England is the largest, said a distinguished English merchant, in a speech delivered some years since. In some parts of that country it is manufactured into iron, and in others into cloth, in order that it may travel cheaply, and this is quite in accordance with the advice of Adam Smith. With a view, however, to prevent other nations from following in the course so strongly urged upon them by that great man, labour has been cheapened, and men and women, boys and girls, have been accustomed to work together in the same mine, and often in a state of entire nudity; while other, women and children have been compelled to work for fourteen or sixteen hours a day for six days in the week, and for small wages, in the mill or workshop—and this has been done in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson, who, from his place in Parliament, told his countrymen that in order "to give capital a fair remuneration, labour must be kept down"—that is, the labourer must be deprived of the power to determine for himself for whom he would work, or what should be his reward. It was needed, as was then declared by another of the most eminent statesmen of Britain, "that the manufactures of all other nations should be strangled in their infancy," and such has from that day to the present been the object of British policy. Hence it is that England is now so great an exporter of food manufactured into cloth and iron. The people of Massachusetts manufacture their grain into fish, cloth, and various other commodities, with a view to enable it cheaply to travel to market. Those of Illinois, unable to convert their corn into coal or iron, find themselves obliged to manufacture it into pork. The Virginian would manufacture his corn and his wheat into cloth, or into coal and iron, if he could; but this he cannot do, although close to the producer of cotton, and occupying a land abounding in all the raw materials of which machinery is composed; and having, too, abundant labour power that runs to waste. Why he cannot do it is that England follows the advice of Mr. Huskisson, and cheapens labour with a view to prevent other nations from following the advice of Adam Smith. The whole energies of the State are therefore given to the raising of tobacco and corn, both of which must go abroad, and as the latter cannot travel profitably in its rude state, it requires to be manufactured, and the only branch of manufacture permitted to the Virginian is that of negroes, and hence it is that their export is so large, and that cotton is so cheap.

Widely different would be the course of things could he be permitted to employ a reasonable portion of his people in the development of the vast resources of the State—opening mines, erecting furnaces, smelting iron, making machinery, and building mills. Fewer persons would then raise corn and more would be employed in consuming it, and the price at home would then rise to a level with that in the distant market, and thus would the land acquire value, while the cost of raising negroes would be increased. Towns would then grow up, and exchanges would be made on the spot, and thus would the planter be enabled to manure his land. Labour would become more productive, and there would be more commodities to be given in exchange for labour; and the more rapid the increase in the amount of production the greater would be the tendency toward enabling the labourer to determine for whom he would work and what should be his reward. Population would then rapidly increase, and land would become divided, and the little black cultivator of cabbages and potatoes would be seen taking the place of the poor white owner of large bodies of exhausted land, and thus would the negro tend toward freedom as his master became enriched. Nothing of this kind is, however, likely to take place so long as the Virginian shall continue of the opinion that the way to wealth lies in the direction of taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it—nor, perhaps, so long as the people of England shall continue in the determination that there shall be but one workshop in the world, and carry that determination into effect by "keeping labour down," in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson.