2d. The second Southern, or slavery-engendered element that is antagonistic to free institutions, is contempt of labor.
Could anything else be expected? Because slaves work, and are compelled to it by the overseer's lash, all labor necessarily partakes of the disgrace which is thus attached to it. It is surprising how perverted the Southern mind is upon this point. Because slavery degrades labor, they maintain that the converse must also be true, viz., that all who labor must unavoidably possess the spirit of slaves; and hence they supposed that the North would not make a vigorous opposition, because all Northerners are addicted to labor.
The truth however is this: Where labor is despised no community can flourish as it is capable of doing; much less one with free institutions. We might just as well talk of a body without flesh and bones; of a house without walls or timbers; of a country without land and water, as of free institutions without skilled and honorable labor. It is the very ground on which they stand.
This then is another source of antagonism between slave and free institutions.
3d. A third point, not only of difference, but also of antagonism between slave society and free, consists in the permanent contraction or limitation of the field of labor in the former, and its perpetual expansion and multiplication of the branches of industry in the latter. Not only does the slave perform as little work as he can with safety, but besides this, the sphere in which slave labor can be profitably employed is a limited one. Agriculture on an extensive scale, on large plantations, is the only one that the slaveholder finds to repay him. All articles, or the vast majority of them, used by the South, that require for their production a great number of different and subdivided branches of labor, come from the North.
We have said that labor, skilled, honored, educated labor, is the material foundation, the solid ground upon which free institutions rest. We now further add this undeniable and important truth, viz., that as branches of labor are multiplied; as each branch itself is subdivided and diversified; as new branches and new details are established by the aid of the ever-increasing light of scientific discovery, and the exhaustless fertility of human inventive genius; as all these numerous industries are more or less connected and interlocked; as this great network of ever-multiplying and diversified human labors expands its circumference, while also filling up its interior meshes, in the degree that all this takes place, the broader and firmer becomes this industrial foundation for free institutions.
It is on this broad platform of diversified and interlocked labors that man meets his brother man and equal. The variety and diversity of labors adapts itself to a like and analogous diversity of human characters, tastes, and industrial aptitudes and capacities. And the mutual dependence and interlocking of these multiplied branches of industry bring the laborers themselves into more numerous, more close, and independent relations. Men are first drawn together by their mutual wants and their social impulses; but when thus brought together, they tend to remain united, not merely by affinity of character, but also, and often mainly by their having something to do in common—by their common labors and pursuits. Advancing civilization, since it ever brings out and develops more and more of man's nature, must, as a natural result, ever also multiply his wants. These multiplying wants can be satisfied for each individual only by the diversified activities of multitudes of his fellows; the results of whose united labors, brought to his door, are seen in the countless articles that go to make up a well-built and well-furnished modern dwelling. Labor is thus the great social cement; and can any one fail to see that it is upon the basis of such a diversified and interwoven industry that a corresponding multiplicity, intermingling, and union of human relations are established; and also that it is only under free institutions in the enjoyment of equal rights, where all are equal before the law, and where political authority and order emanate from the people themselves, that labor itself can be free; and not only free, but ennobled, and at full liberty to expand itself broadly and widely in all departments, without any conceivable limits? While at the same time, by the interlacing of its countless details, it cements the laborers, the respective communities, the entire nation into a noble brotherhood of useful workers.
We have yet to learn the elevating, refining power of labor, when organized as it can, and assuredly will be. At present we have no adequate conception of this influence. It is solely for the sake of labor, for the sake of human activity, that it may fill as many and as wide and deep channels as possible, and thus permit man's varied life and capacities to flow freely forth, and expand to the utmost; it is solely for this end that all government is instituted; and under a free, popular government, under the guidance of religion and science, labor is destined to reach a degree of development and a perfection of organization, and to exert a reactive influence in ennobling human character that shall surpass the farthest stretch of our present imaginings. Our rare political organization is but the coarse, bold outlines—the rugged trunk and branches of the great tree of liberty. Out of this will grow the delicate and luxuriant foliage of a varied, beautiful, scientific, and dignified industry and social life.
This is the glorious, towering, expanding structure, which the insane rebellion, the dark slave power, is raging to destroy! to tear it, branch by branch, to pieces, and scatter the ruins to the four winds, in order to set up, what? in its place. A foul, decaying object—a slave oligarchy, which, do what it will, is, at each decennial census, seen to fall steadily farther and farther into the rear even of the most laggard of the Free States, in all that goes to make up our American civilization.[1] And all this because it sees that the life of the republic is the death of slavery, and free labor the eternal enemy of slave.
This difference in the conditions of labor, then, forms the third point of antagonism between free and slave institutions.