The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It

by Hinton Rowan Helper

There, friends of the South and of the North, you have the conclusion of the whole matter. Liberty and slavery are before you; choose which you will have; as for us, in the memorable language of the immortal Henry, we say, “give us liberty, or give us death!” In the great struggle for wealth that has been going on between the two rival systems of free and slave labor, the balance above exhibits the net profits of the former. The struggle on the one side has been calm, laudable, and eminently successful; on the other, it has been attended by tumult, unutterable cruelties and disgraceful failure. We have given the slave drivers every conceivable opportunity to vindicate their domestic policy, but for them to do it is a moral impossibility.

Less than three-quarters of a century ago—say in 1789, for that was about the average time of the abolition of slavery in the Northern States—the South, with advantages in soil, climate, rivers, harbors, minerals, forests, and, indeed, almost every other natural resource, began an even race with the North in all the important pursuits of life; and now, in the brief space of scarce three score years and ten, we find her completely distanced, enervated, dejected and dishonored. Slave-drivers are the sole authors of her disgrace; as they have sown so let them reap.

As we have seen above, a careful and correct inventory of all the real and personal property in the two grand divisions of the country, discloses the astounding fact that, in 1850 the free States were worth precisely two thousand seven hundred and sixty-six million eighty-one thousand three hundred and seventy-one dollars more than the slave States! Twenty-seven hundred and sixty-six million of dollars!—Think of it! What a vast and desirable sum, and how much better off the South would be with it than without it! Such is the enormous amount out of which slavery has defrauded us during the space of sixty-one years—from 1789 to 1850—being an average of about forty-five million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum. During the last twenty-five or thirty years, however, our annual losses have been far greater than they were formerly. There has been a gradual increase every year, and now the ratio of increase is almost incredible. No patriotic Southerner can become conversant with the facts without experiencing a feeling of alarm and indignation. Until the North abolished slavery, she had no advantage of us whatever; the South was more than her equal in every respect. But no sooner had she got rid of that hampering and pernicious institution than she began to absorb our wealth, and now it is confidently believed that the merchants and negro-driving pleasure-seekers of the South annually pour one hundred and twenty million of dollars into her coffers! Taking into account, then, the probable amount of money that has been drawn from the South and invested in the North within the last six years, and adding it to the grand balance above—the net profits of the North up to 1850—it may be safely assumed that, in the present year of grace, 1857, the free States are worth at least thirty-four hundred million of dollars more than the slave States! Let him who dares, gainsay these remarks and calculations; no truthful tongue will deny them; no honorable pen can controvert them.

One more word now as to the valuation of negroes. Were our nature so degraded, or our conscience so elastic as to permit us to set a price upon men, as we would set a price upon cattle and corn, we should be content to abide by the appraisement of the slaves of the South, and would then enter into a calculation to ascertain the value of foreigners to the North. Not long since, it was declared in the South that “one free laborer is equal to five slaves,” and as there are two million five hundred thousand Europeans in the free States, all of whom are free laborers, we might bring Southern authority to back us in estimating their value at sixty-two hundred million of dollars—a handsome sum wherewithal to offset the account of sixteen hundred million of dollars, brought forward as the value of Southern slaves! It is obvious, therefore, that if we were disposed to follow the barbarian example of the traffickers in human flesh, we could prove the North vastly richer than the South in bone and sinew—to say nothing of mind and morals, which shall receive our attention hereafter. The North has just as good a right to appraise the Irish immigrant, as the South has to set a price on the African slave. But as it would be wrong to do either, we shall do neither. It is not our business to think of man as a merchantable commodity; and we will not, even by implication, admit “the wild and guilty fantasy,” that the condition of chattelhood may rightfully attach to sentient and immortal beings.

In this connection, we would direct the special attention of the reader to the following eloquent passage, exhibiting the philosophy of free and slave labor, from the facile pen of the editor of the North American and United States Gazette:

“In the very nature of things, the freeman must produce more than the slave. There is no conclusion of science more certain. Under a system which gives to a laboring man the fruit of his toil, there is every motive to render him diligent and assiduous. If he relies on being employed by others, his wages rise with his reputation for industry, skill, and faithfulness. And as owner of the soil, there is every assurance that he will do what he can to cultivate it to the best advantage, and develope its latent wealth. Self-interest will call forth what powers of intellect and of invention he has to aid him in his work, and employ his physical strength to the greatest possible advantage. Free labor receives an immediate reward, which cheers and invigorates it; and above all, it has that chief spring of exertion, hope, whose bow always spans the heaven before it. It has an inviolate hearth; it has a home. But it looks forward to a still better condition, to brighter prospects in the future, to which its efforts all contribute. The children in such a household are chief inducements to nerve the arm of labor, that they may be properly cared for, fed, clothed, educated, accomplished, instructed in some useful and honorable calling, and provided for when they shall go out upon the world. All its sentiments, religious and otherwise, all its affections for parents and kindred, all its tastes are so many impelling and stimulating forces. It is disposed to read, to ornament its home, to travel, to enjoy social intercourse, and to attain these ends, it rises to higher exertions and a stricter economy of time; it explores every path of employment, and is, therefore, in the highest degree productive.

“How different is it with slave labor! The slave toils for another, and not for himself. Whether he does little or much, whether his work is well or ill performed, he has a subsistence, nothing less, nothing more; and why should he toil beyond necessity? He cannot accumulate any property for the decline of his years, or to leave to his children when he is departed. Nay, he cannot toil to better the present condition of his children. They belong to another, and not to him. He cannot supply his hut with comforts, or embellish it with the adornments of taste. He does not read. He does not journey for pleasure. Inducements to exertion, he has none. That he may adapt himself to his condition, and enjoy the present hour, he deadens those aspirations that must always be baffled in his case, and sinks down into ease and sensuality. His mind is unlighted and untutored; dark with ignorance. Among those who value him most, he is proverbially indolent, thievish, and neglectful of his master’s interests. It is common for even the advocates of slavery to declare that one freeman is worth half a dozen slaves. With every cord to exertion thus sundered, the mind benighted, the man nearly lost in the animal, it requires no deep philosophy to see why labor cannot be near as productive as it would be were these conditions all reversed. Though ever so well directed by the superior skill, and urged forward by the strong arm of the master, slave labor is necessarily a blight to the soil—sterility follows in its steps, and not afar off.

“What a difference, plain and heaven-wide, between the outward and interior life of a slave and of a free community, resulting directly and palpably from this difference in its labor. The cottage-home, amid trees and shrubbery, its apartments well adorned and furnished, books on its shelves, and the passing literature of the day scattered around; the few, perhaps, but well-tilled acres, belonging to the man who tills them; the happy children with sunny prospects; the frequent school; the church arrayed with beauty; the thriving, handsome village; the flourishing cities and prosperous marts of trade; the busy factories; railroads, traffic, travel—where free labor tills the ground, how beautiful it all is in contrast to the forlorn and dreary aspect of a country tilled by slaves. The villages of such a country are mainly groups of miserable huts. Its comparatively few churches are too often dilapidated and unsightly. The common school-house, the poor man’s college, is hardly known, showing how little interest is felt in the chief treasures of the State, the immortal minds of the multitude who are not born to wealth. The signs of premature old age are visibly impressed upon everything that meets the eye. The fields present a dread monotony. Everywhere you see lands that are worn out, barren and deserted, in consequence of slave tillage, left for more fertile lands in newer regions, which are also, in their turn, to be smitten with sterility and forsaken. The free community may increase its population almost without limit. The capacity of slave countries to sustain a population is soon at an end, and then, it diminishes. In all the elements of essential prosperity, in all that elevates man, how striking the contrast between the region that is tilled by slave, and the region that is tilled by free labor.”

For the purpose of showing what Virginia, once the richest, most populous, and most powerful of the States, has become under the blight of slavery, we shall now introduce an extract from one of the speeches delivered by Henry A. Wise, during the last gubernatorial campaign in that degraded commonwealth. Addressing a Virginia audience, in language as graphic as it is truthful, he says:—

“Commerce has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away from you. You have not, as yet, dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of gods in your own iron-foundries; you have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture, and such agriculture! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth, has seared the very bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through the sedge-patches to procure a tough beef-steak. The present condition of things has existed too long in Virginia. The landlord has skinned the tenant, and the tenant has skinned the land, until all have grown poor together.”