Slavery in Maryland briefly considered

by John L. Carey

The south, then, must be content, so long as it retains Slavery, with the simplest modes of labor; it must expect to have every thing done in a clumsy, slovenly manner. It may grow cotton and sugar, while fertility remains to its soil; but it will be dependent on the north for the most ordinary implements of husbandry, from a cotton gin to a hoe, a spade, or sugar ladle. Let us here quote the language of a southern man:

“My recent visit to the northern states has fully satisfied me that the true secret of our difficulties lies in the want of energy on the part of our capitalists, and ignorance and laziness on the part of those who ought to labor. We need never look for thrift while we permit our immense timber forests, granite quarries and mines, to lie idle, and supply ourselves with hewn granite, pine boards, laths, and shingles, &c., furnished by the lazy dogs at the north—ah, worse than this, we see our back country farmers, many of whom are too lazy to mend a broken gate, or repair the fences, to protect their crops from the neighboring stock, actually supplied with their axe, hoe, and broom handles, pitchforks, rakes, &c., by the indolent mountaineers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The time was when every old woman in the country had her gourd, from which the country gardens were supplied with seeds. We now find it more convenient to permit this duty to devolve on our careful friends, the Yankees. Even our boat-oars, and handspikes for rolling logs, are furnished, ready made, to our hands, and what jimcrack can possibly be invented of which we are not the purchasers? These are the drains which are impoverishing the south—these are the true sources of all our difficulties. Need I add, further to exemplify our excessive indolence, that the Charleston market is supplied with fish and wild game by northern men, who come out here as regularly as the winter comes for this purpose, and, from our own waters and forests, often realize, in the course of one winter, a sufficiency to purchase a small farm in New England?”

The newspapers tell us from time to time of the establishment of manufacturing works in the south. In the western portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, where the country is hilly and water power abundant, cotton factories are beginning to spring up. Men of enterprise from the north go thither and embark in these undertakings, which are said, for the most part, to promise well. In many places in Virginia, manufactures have taken root firmly. In proportion as this movement goes on and prospers, in such proportion will Slavery recede; in such proportion will its hold at the south be loosened.

For let it be remembered that the blending of the mind of the community, with the labor of the community, implies necessarily freedom, to the extent of such combination.

Look at the diversified forms in which the mind of the north finds development: behold its manifold workings. What exhibitions of ingenuity! What variety of invention! What astonishing results! Lowell and Patterson and Pittsburg, each a living trophy of the achievements of man over the powers of nature, or rather of his achievements in alliance with the powers of nature. Yet what are these three illustrations? The number of such is innumerable. Look at the whole state of Ohio, the growing, gigantic embodiment of practical, intellectual energy applied to the arts of industry.

Nor can any limits be assigned to this progression, nor any restrictions be put upon the variety of its developments. The whole world of material things lies subject to the controlling hand of man, when his inquiring mind has discovered the laws of nature; and what can hold back the free spirit from its incessant investigations?

But in a slaveholding community there is no such progression, no such variety. The mind of the community is directed to other things than labor; nay, labor falls into contempt and is looked upon as derogatory; for it is servile to labor. How can society, under such circumstances, advance in the practical arts? Its industry is confined to one pursuit, and in that there can be no excellence attained, because slave labor is not imbued with intelligence. Evidently, such a social state can not be fitted for permanence; it is not in harmony with the laws of social existence and progress. Things can not be in a wholesome condition where it is discreditable to work, since with labor is conjoined every valuable attainment, including soundness of mind and body.

It must doubtless, sooner or later, come to pass that the soil of the Atlantic cotton growing States, worn out by servile culture, will be unable to sustain Slavery by the side of the competition of the rich alluvial lands of the south western portions of the Mississippi valley. Georgia and the Carolinas, not to mention Virginia, where Slavery must cease at an earlier date than in the more southern States, will find it necessary to fall upon some other occupation besides cotton growing. They must cultivate the vine, breed silk worms, rear the olive, turn to account their manufacturing facilities—these, or other such things, the inhabitants there must do if they would save the land from depopulation.

There is but one element in the agriculture of Maryland to which Slavery is attached with any affinity; and that is the Tobacco culture. Nor is this affinity of a very binding nature. Tobacco can be grown very successfully by free labor, as the statistics of Ohio demonstrate. One result of the abolition of Slavery in this particular, would be the subdivision of large plantations into small farms.

The system of cultivation would improve under this arrangement, and the product would be increased. I presume it would be no exaggerated calculation to estimate that the tobacco crop of Prince George’s county, under a system of small farms and free labor, would be of twice its present annual value ten years hence. The enhanced value of the land would be in about the same proportion.