And what was England doing all this while? Having lost her supplies from the West Indies, she was quietly spinning away at American slave labor cotton; and to ease the public conscience of the kingdom, was loudly talking of a free labor supply of the commodity from the banks of the Niger! But the expedition up that river failed, and 1845 found her manufacturing 626,496,000 lbs. of cotton, mostly the product of American slaves! The strength of American slavery at that moment may be inferred from the fact, that we exported that year 872,905,996 lbs. of cotton, and our production of cane sugar had reached over 200,000,000 lbs.; while, to make room for slavery extension, we were busied in the annexation of Texas and in preparations for the consequent war with Mexico!
But abolitionists themselves, some time before this, had, mostly, become convinced of the feeble character of their efforts against slavery, and allowed politicians to enlist them in a political crusade, as the last hope of arresting the progress of the system. The cry of "Immediate Abolition" died away; reliance upon moral means was mainly abandoned; and the limitation of the institution, geographically, became the chief object of effort. The results of more than a dozen years of political action are before the public, and what has it accomplished! We are not now concerned in the inquiry of how far the strategy of politicians succeeded in making the votes of abolitionists subservient to slavery extension. That they did so, in at least one prominent case, will never be denied by any candid man. All we intend to say, is, that the cotton planters, instead of being crippled in their operations, were able, in the year ending the last of June, 1853, to export 1,111,570,370 lbs. of cotton, beside supplying near 300,000,000 lbs. for home consumption; and that England, the year ending the last of January, 1853, consumed the unprecedented quantity of 817,998,048 lbs. of that staple.[12] The year 1854, instead of finding slavery perishing under the blows it had received, has witnessed the destruction of all the old barriers to its extension, and beholds it expanded widely enough for the profitable employment of the slave population, with all its natural increase, for a hundred years to come!!
If political action against slavery has been thus disastrously unfortunate, how is it with anti-slavery action, at large, as to its efficiency at this moment? On this point, hear the testimony of a correspondent of Frederick Douglass' Paper, January 26, 1855:
"How gloriously did the anti-slavery cause arise . . . . . . in 1833-4! And now what is it, in our agency! . . . . . . What is it, through the errors or crimes of its advocates variously—probably quite as much as through the brazen, gross, and licentious wickedness of its enemies. Alas! what is it but a mutilated, feeble, discordant, and half-expiring instrument, at which Satan and his children, legally and illegally, scoff! Of it I despair."
Such are the crowning results of both political and anti-slavery action, for the overthrow of slavery! Such are the demonstrations of their utter impotency as a means of relief to the bond and free of the colored people!
Surely, then, if the negro is capable of elevation, it is time that some other measures should be devised, than those hitherto adopted, for the melioration of the African race! Surely, too, it is time for the American people to rebuke that class of politicians, North and South, whose only capital consists in keeping up a fruitless warfare upon the subject of slavery—nay! abundant in fruits to the poor colored man; but to him, "their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their vine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."[13]
The application of this language, to the case under consideration, will be fully justified when the facts, in the remaining pages of this work, are carefully studied.
