By adding the value of the foreign and domestic cotton fabrics, consumed annually in the United States, to the yearly cost of the groceries which the country uses, our total indebtedness, for articles of slave labor origin, will be found swelling up to the enormous sum of $162,185,240.[30]
We have now seen the channels through which our cotton passes off into the great sea of commerce, to furnish the world its clothing. We have seen the origin and value of our provisions, and to whom they are sold. We have seen the sources whence our groceries are derived, and the millions of money they cost. To ascertain how far these several interests are sustained by one another, will be to determine how far any one of them becomes an element of expansion to the others. To decide a question of this nature with precision is impracticable. The statistics are not attainable. It may be illustrated, however, in various ways, so as to obtain a conclusion proximately accurate. Suppose, for example, that the supplies of food from the North were cut off, the manufactories left in their present condition, and the planters forced to raise their provisions and draught animals: in such circumstances, the export of cotton must cease, as the lands of these States could not be made to yield more than would subsist their own population, and supply the cotton demanded by the Northern States. Now, if this be true of the agricultural resources of the cotton States—and it is believed to be nearly the full extent of their capacity—then the surplus of cotton, to the value of more than a hundred millions of dollars, now annually sent abroad, stands as the representative of the yearly supplies which the cotton planters receive from the farmers north of the cotton line. This, therefore, as will afterward more fully appear, may be taken as the probable extent to which the supplies from the North serve as an element of slavery expansion in the article of cotton alone.
CHAPTER VII.
Economical relations of Slavery further considered—System unprofitable in grain growing, but profitable in culture of Cotton—Antagonism of Farmer and Planter—"Protection," and, "Free Trade" controversy—Congressional Debates on the subject—Mr. Clay—Position of the South—"Free Trade," considered indispensable to its prosperity.
But the subject of the relations of American slavery to the economical interests of the world, demands a still closer scrutiny, in order that the causes of the failure of abolitionism to arrest its progress, as well as the present relations of the institution to the politics of the country, may fully appear.
Slave labor has seldom been made profitable where it has been wholly employed in grazing and grain growing; but it becomes remunerative in proportion as the planters can devote their attention to cotton, sugar, rice, or tobacco. To render Southern slavery profitable in the highest degree, therefore, the slaves must be employed upon some one of these articles, and be sustained by a supply of food and draught animals from Northern agriculturists; and before the planter's supplies are complete, to these must be added cotton gins, implements of husbandry, furniture, and tools, from Northern mechanics. This is a point of the utmost moment, and must be considered more at length.
It has long been a vital question to the success of the slaveholder, to know how he could render the labor of his slaves the most profitable. The grain growing States had to emancipate their slaves, to rid themselves of a profitless system. The cotton-growing States, ever after the invention of the cotton gin, had found the production of that staple highly remunerative. The logical conclusion, from these different results, was, that the less provisions, and the more cotton grown by the planter, the greater would be his profits. This must be noted with special care. Markets for the surplus products of the farmer of the North, were equally as important to him as the supply of Provisions was to the planter. But the planter, to be eminently successful, must purchase his supplies at the lowest possible prices; while the farmer, to secure his prosperity, must sell his products at the highest possible rates. Few, indeed, can be so ill informed, as not to know, that these two topics, for many years, were involved in the "Free Trade" and "Protective Tariff" doctrines, and afforded the materiel of the political contests between the North and the South—between free labor and slave labor. A very brief notice of the history of that controversy, will demonstrate the truth of this assertion.
The attempt of the agricultural States, thirty years since, to establish the protective policy, and promote "Domestic Manufactures," was a struggle to create such a division of labor as would afford a "Home Market" for their products, no longer in demand abroad. The first decisive action on the question, by Congress, was in 1824; when the distress in these States, and the measures proposed for their relief, by national legislation, were discussed on the passage of the "Tariff Bill" of that year. The ablest men in the nation were engaged in the controversy. As provisions are the most important item on the one hand, and cotton on the other, we shall use these two terms as the representatives of the two classes of products, belonging, respectively, to free labor and to slave labor.