Where there is no vision, the people perish. Such blind leaders of the blind are liable, with their infatuated followers, to fall into a ditch worse than Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. This minister had undoubtedly run when he was not sent, though he “had hearn a call; a audible voice had, while he was a shucken corn, said unto him, Preach.” Though God does not need men’s learning, yet he has as little use for their ignorance. Learning is the handmaid of religion, but must not be substituted in its stead.
The causes which induce this “wilderness of mind” are patent to all who make even a cursory examination. There is a tendency in the poor to ape the manners of the rich. Those having slaves to labour in their stead, toil not physically; hence labour falls into disrepute, and the poorer classes, having no slaves to work for them, and not choosing to submit to the degradation of labour, incur all the evils resulting from idleness and poverty. Ignorance and vice of every kind soon ensue, and a general apathy prevails, which destroys in a great measure all mental and physical vigour.
The slaveholders buy up all the fertile lands to be cultivated by their slaves; hence the poor are crowded out, and if they remain in the vicinity of the place of their nativity, they must occupy the poor tracts whose sterility does not excite the cupidity of their rich neighbours. The slaveholders’ motto is, “Let us buy more negroes to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes, and so on ad infinitum.” To raise more cotton they must also buy more land. Small farmers are induced to sell out to them, and move further west. For this reason, the white population of the fertile sections of the older slave States is constantly on the decrease, while the slave population is as constantly increasing. Thus the slaveholder often acquires many square miles of land, and hundreds of human chattels. He is, as it were, set alone in the earth. Priding himself upon his wealth, he will not send his princely sons to the same school with the poor white trash; he either sends them to some distant college or seminary, or employs a private teacher exclusively for his children. The poor whites in the neighbourhood, even should they desire to educate their children, have no means to pay for their tuition. Compelled to live on poor or worn-out lands, honest toil considered degrading, and forced to submit to many inconveniences and disabilities (all the offices of honour and profit being monopolized by the slaveholders,) through the workings of the “peculiar institution,” they find it utterly impossible to educate their offspring, even in the rudiments of their mother tongue. As the power of slavery increases, their condition waxes worse and worse.
The slaveocracy becomes more exacting. Laws are passed by the legislature compelling non-slaveholders to patrol the country nightly, to prevent insurrections by the negroes. They denounce the law, but coercion is resorted to, and the poor whites are forced to obey. When their masters call for them, they must leave their labour, by day or by night, patrol the country, follow the bloodhounds, arrest the fugitive slave, and do all other dirty work which their tyrants demand. If they refuse to obey, they are denounced as abolitionists, and are in danger of death at the hands of Judge Lynch, the mildest punishment they can hope for being a coat of tar and feathers.
The house-negroes feel themselves several degrees above the poor whites, as they, from their opportunities for observation amongst the higher classes, are possessed of greater information and less rusticity than this less favoured class. The poor whites have no love for the institution of slavery. They regard it as the instrument of inflicting upon them many wrongs, and depriving them of many rights. They dare not express their sentiments to the slaveholders, who hold them completely under their power. A. G. Brown, United States Senator from Mississippi, to reconcile the poor whites to the peculiar institution, used the following arguments in a speech at Iuka Springs, Mississippi. He stated, that if the slaves were liberated, and suffered to remain in the country, the rich would have money to enable them to go to some other clime, and that the poor whites would be compelled to remain amongst the negroes, who would steal their property, and destroy their lives; and if slavery were abolished, and the negroes removed and colonized, the rich would take the poor whites for slaves, in their stead, and reduce them to the condition of the Irish and Dutch in the North, whose condition he represented to be one of cruel bondage. These statements had some effect upon his auditors, who believed, from sad experience, that the rich could oppress the poor as they chose, and might, in the contingency specified, reduce them to slavery. Labour is considered so degrading, that any argument, based upon making labour compulsory on their part, has its weight. Even the beggar despises work. A sturdy beggar asked alms at a house at which I was lodging. As he appeared to be a man of great physical strength, he was advised to go to work, and thus provide for his wants. “Work!” said he, in disgust; “niggers do the work in this country”—and retired highly insulted.
This people form a distinct class, distinguished by as many characteristics from the middle and higher classes of Southern society, as the Jews are from the nations amongst whom they sojourn. The causes which brought about their reduction to their present state of semi-barbarism, must be removed, ere they can rise to the condition whence they have fallen. They must rise upon the ruins of slavery. When the peculiar institution is abolished, then, and not till then, will their disabilities be removed, and they be in reality what they are nominally—freemen.
Slaveholders and their families form a distinct class, characterized by idleness, vanity, licentiousness, profanity, dissipation, and tyranny. There are glorious exceptions, it is true, but those are the distinguishing traits of the class. The middle class is the virtuous class of the South. They are industrious, frugal, hospitable, simple in their habits, plain and unostentatious in their manners. Some of this class are small slaveholders, but the great majority own none. The gross vices of the higher class are not found among them. They labour regardless of the sneers of their aristocratic neighbours. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, may call them mudsills; they regard it not, but pursue the even tenor of their way. The slow, unmoving finger of scorn may be pointed at them by the sons of pride, yet they refuse to eat the bread of idleness, and labour with their own hands, that they may provide things honest in the sight of all men. Equidistant from poverty and riches, they enjoy the golden mean, and immunity from the temptations incident to the extremes of abject poverty and great riches.
In the slave States all those born north of the “nigger line,” are denominated Yankees. This is applied as a term of reproach. When a southerner is angry with a man of northern nativity, he does not fail to stigmatize him as a Yankee. The slaveholders manifest considerable antipathy against the Yankees, which has been increasing during the last ten years. In 1858, the Legislature of Mississippi passed resolutions recommending non-intercourse with the “Abolition States,” and requesting the people not to patronize natives of those States residing amongst them, and especially to discountenance Yankee ministers and teachers. In the educational notice of Memphis Synodical College, at La Grange, Tennessee, it is expressly stated that the Faculty are of southern birth and education. The principals of the Female Seminaries at Corinth and Iuka, Mississippi, give notice that no Yankee teachers will be employed in those institutions. While on a visit at the house of a Methodist clergyman, quite a number of ministers, returning from Conference, called to tarry for the night. During the evening, one of them, learning that I was “Yankee born,” thus interrogated me: “Why is it, sir, that all kinds of delusions originate in the North, such as Millerism, Mormonism, Spirit-rappings, and Abolitionism?” To which I replied: “The North originates everything. All the text-books used in southern schools, all the books on law, physic, and divinity, are written and published north of Mason & Dixon’s line. The South does not even print Bibles. The magnetic telegraph, the locomotive, Lucifer matches, and even the cotton-gin, are all northern inventions. The South, sir, has not sense enough to invent a decent humbug. These humbugs once originated, the South is always well represented by believers in them. I have known more men to go from this county (Shelby county, Tennessee) to the Mormons, than I have known to go from the whole State of Ohio.”
When I had thus spoken, my inquisitor was nonplussed, and the laugh went against him.
When a candidate before the Presbytery of Chickasaw, in Mississippi, for licensure, one of the members of Presbytery, learning that I was a “Yankee,” asked me the following questions, and received the following answers: