The question of the productiveness of slave labour may be anticipated, so far as to point out the fact, that this benevolent diversion of the large incomes from luxurious expenditures to the comfortable maintenance of the slaves, was a diversion from unproductive to productive consumption. The slaves were a productive class; and the increased comfort of their living added greatly to their increase, and their ability to labour. No student of political economy need be told how powerfully national wealth is promoted by any cause which substitutes productive consumption for unproductive.

The truth of these views is confirmed by this fact, which is attested by all experienced slaveholders: that the slaves throughout the South lived in far more comfort than they did a generation ago. And this is truest of those Southern communities where population is densest, and the price and rents of land are highest. As these influences, elsewhere so depressing to the poor, advanced, the standard of comfort for our slaves rose rapidly, instead of falling. How can a more splendid vindication of the benevolence of our system be imagined? Our slaves generally ate more meat, wore more and better clothing, and lived in better houses, than their fathers did.

That a palpable view may be given, to those who are not personally acquainted with our system, of its true working, the reader's indulgence will be asked for the statement of a few homely details. In Virginia, all slaves, without exception, had their own private funds, derived from their poultry, gardens, "patches," or the prosecution of some mechanic art, in what is termed "their own time." These funds they expended as they pleased, in Sunday-clothing, or in such additions to their diet and comfort as they liked. The allowances which we proceed to state, are strictly those which the master usually made out of his funds. The allowances fixed by usage in this State were generally these: for clothing of adults, one complete suit of stout woolens, two pair pantaloons of cotton or flax, two shirts, two pair of worsted half-hose, and a hat and a blanket, each year. For shoes, the old rule was, one pair each winter, of the quality of best army shoes or boots, to be replaced at harvest with new ones, in the case of ploughmen and reapers, while the "less able-bodied hands" only got their old shoes repaired. But in latter years, the prevalent custom had come to be, to issue shoes to all adults, as often as is required, to keep them shod throughout the year; while the children were universally shod during the winter only.

For diet, the slaves shared jointly the garden-stuff, fruits and milk of the master's plantation and garden. But their essential and preferred food was a certain daily or weekly allowance of corn meal and bacon, issued in addition to the above. The common rule in Virginia, where these were given in the form of rations, was to allow each adult a half-pound of bacon, and two quarts of meal per day. The meal of Indian corn, when uninjured by the mustiness of a sea-voyage, and properly baked at a bright wood-fire, is an excellent and nutritious food, as is shown by the fact that it fills more than an equal place with bread of wheat, on the tables of the richest planters. In many other families, the allowance of meal was unlimited; and the bacon was not issued in formal rations, the servants living at a common board. The supply laid in was then usually according to the following rule: one hundred and fifty pounds of pork per year, for every soul, white and black. When it is remembered that the sucklings and the white females used almost none of this supply, a simple calculation will show that it is equivalent to at least a half-pound per day for each adult. Such were the customary usages in Virginia. There were probably as many cases where the above rules were exceeded, as where the allowances fell below them. In the new States of the South West, where agriculture is still more profitable, it is said that the allowances were more liberal than in the old slave States.

It happens that the census returns of the United States for 1860, published by our enemies themselves, more than confirm this view of the abundant and comfortable living of our labouring population. According to those returns the free States had in 1860, not quite nineteen millions of people, and the slave States twelve and a quarter millions. Of the cereals used by Americans for human food, the free States raised five hundred and sixty-one millions bushels; and the slave States four hundred and ninety-four millions bushels. That is, while the people of the free States had about thirty bushels each of these cereals, those of the slave States had forty-one bushels per head. Moreover, the North boasts that breadstuffs are her great export crops, while cotton and tobacco were ours. Our people, including our slaves, must therefore have used more than four bushels each, to their three. In neither country does each person eat either thirty or forty-one bushels per year; because horses and other live stock eat a part, which it is impossible accurately to estimate. Again: of the animals used for human food, (horned cattle, sheep, and swine,) then free States had about forty millions, or a little more than two per head to each inhabitant; while the slave States had forty and a half millions, or about three and a half to each inhabitant. But as bacon or pork is the flesh most commonly consumed by Americans, and especially by farm labourers, the proportion of swine is still more significant. The free States had not quite twelve millions of swine, and the slave States twenty millions six hundred thousand. This gives a little more than six-tenths of one swine to each inhabitant of the North, and one and seven-tenths to each inhabitant of the South. But this is not all,—for the North (especially the prairie States) exported vast quantities of the flesh of swine to the South, while the slave States exported none to the North. It should in justice be said, that the disparity is not so enormous as would thus appear, because the swine reared in the South are usually smaller than those of the North.

§ 3. Comparative productiveness of Slave Labour.

From the days of Adam Smith, anti-slavery men have been pleased to consider it as a point perfectly settled, that slave labour is comparatively unfavourable to production, and thus, to publick wealth. So settled is this conviction among the enemies, and so often has it been admitted by the apologists of our system, it will probably be hard to secure even a hearing, while we review the grounds on which the common opinion is based. One would think that the fact that those grounds have usually been urged by men who, like Adam Smith, knew nothing of slavery themselves, should bespeak for us at least a little patience and candour.

One of those grounds is, that slavery, by making manual labour the peculiar lot of a servile class, renders it disreputable. This, they suppose, together with the exemption from the law of necessity, fosters indolence in the masters. But, we reply, is manual labour the peculiar lot of the servile class alone, in slave States? Is not this the very question to be settled? Yet it is assumed as the premise from which to settle it. So that the reasoning amounts to no more than this ridiculous petitio principii: "Because the slaves do all the work, therefore the masters do none of the work." This should be made a question of fact. And we emphatically deny that Southern masters were an indolent class, as compared with the moneyed classes elsewhere. In fact, the general rule is that rich men do not work, the world over. It was less true, probably, in Virginia, than in any other commonwealth. The wealthy man of the North, with his grown sons, is more indolent, and more a fine gentleman, than the wealthy slaveholder. If it be said that, in free States, a multitude of small farmers cultivate their lands with their own hands, it is equally true that a multitude of small planters in the South, who owned one, three or five slaves, laboured along with them. That the land shall be owned by the very persons who cultivate it, is an exceptional condition of things, resulting, to some extent in New England, from a very peculiar history, origin and condition of society, and not destined to continue general even there. It is as true of hireling as of slave States, that the tendency of civilized institutions is, and ever has been, and ever will be, generally, to collect the lands in larger properties, in the hands of a richer class than that which actually tills them. Nor is there one syllable of truth in the idea, that labour was among us more disreputable, because usually done by slaves. In all countries, there is foolish pride, and importance is attached, by the silly, to empty badges of station. But it was less so among slaveholders than among the rich, or the would-be rich, of other countries. The reason is obvious. In free States there is just as truly a servile class, bearing the servile inferiority of social station, as among us. That class being white, and nominally free, its addiction to manual labour is the only badge of its social condition. Hence whites of the superior class have a far stronger motive, in their pride, to shun labour. But the white master could freely labour among his black servants, without danger of being mistaken by the transient observer for one of the class, because his skin distinguished him: just as the man of unquestioned wealth and fashion can wear a plain coat, which would be shunned as the plague, by the doubtful aspirant to ton. We repeat: the planters of Virginia were more often seen performing, not only the labours of superintendence, but actual manual labour, than any wealthy class in America. They were proverbial for perseverance and energy. There is a fact which bears a peculiar testimony to this. While Yankee adventurers and immigrants have intruded themselves into every other calling among us, like the frogs into the Egyptian houses and their very chambers and kneading-troughs, those of them who have attempted to act the tobacco planter have, in almost every case, failed utterly. They lack the requisite energy for the calling.

Another reason of the anti-slavery man is, that the free labourer, stimulated by personal interest in his own success, must be more thrifty, industrious, and economical than the slave, who is stimulated only by fear. We reply: both the premises are absolutely false. Slaves were not stimulated only by fear. They felt at least as much affection as the Red Republican or Chartist hireling. They comprehended their own interest in their master's prosperity as fully as hired labourers do. But, in the second place, the labour of free States is not usually performed by men who have a personal interest in their own success: it is performed, in the main, by a landless class, who are as very hirelings as our slaves were slaves; who need just as much the eye of an overseer, and who must be pricked on in their labour, at least as often, by the threat, not of the birch, but of the more cruel penalty of discharge; which they know is their dismissal to starvation or the work-house. This delusive reasoning proceeds by comparing the yeoman landholder in fee-simple, tilling his own soil with his own hands, with the slave tilling the land of his wealthy master. But are the lands of hireling States prevalently tilled by their yeomen owners? Is this the system to which free society tends? The Englishman will not dare to say so, when he looks around him, and sees how rapidly the small holdings have been swallowed up into larger farms, which are now worked by capitalists with organized gangs of hirelings; nor the Scotchman, with the sight of an old tenant peasantry swept away before the ruthless Bothy-system of his country. And, as we have asserted, the class of yeomen landholders, labouring personally among their few slaves, was at least as large, and as permanent in the South, as in any civilized country.

Here again, the actual experiment of abolition has ridiculously exploded all these baseless reasonings for the superior zeal of the white free labourer, and the thriftless eye-service of the slave. All intelligent men knew before that they were precisely contrary to fact; for they saw all hireling labour at the North obviously required a supervision much more constant and stringent, to prevent the hirelings from bringing the employers to bankruptcy by their worthless eye-service, than the labour of our own merry and affectionate servants. If the white hireling labour was aggregated in masses, we uniformly saw it distributed in gangs, to sturdy "bosses," who stood with their formidable bludgeons in their hands, from morning to night, with just fourfold the persistency of any Southern "head-man" or "overseer," and actually indicted blows on his free white fellow-citizens, as frequently as our overseers on the servant children. If the white hireling labour was employed on their little farms, in small numbers, then the proprietors always informed us, that they must be present in the field all the time, to shame and encourage them by their example, or else their "help" would cheat them to their ruin. But in the South, nothing was more common than to see estates farmed by the faithful slaves, for widows, orphans, professional men, or non-resident proprietors, without any other superintendence than an occasional visit. Now, all this is at an end. The labourers are free hirelings, who, according to the anti-slavery argument, should be so superior in enlightened zeal and fidelity. But lo, the Southern people have found that eye-service has thereby increased ten-fold; and if there is any lesson which the South has effectually learned in these two years, it is, that perpetual and jealous supervision is the sole condition on which a meagre profit can be extracted from this wretched and grinding system; and that else, the impositions of the hired labourers inevitably result in speedy bankruptcy. Hard fact has demonstrated that the truth is precisely opposite to the pretty postulates of the anti-slavery philosophers, so called.

It was currently asserted that one free white labourer did as much work as two or three slaves; and Southern gentlemen used often to be heard assenting to it. But here the reader should be reminded of what has been already shown; that if this industrial evil existed among us, that evil was not slavery, but the presence among us of four millions of recent pagans, characterized by all the listlessness, laziness, and unthrift of savages. Slavery did not make the intelligent and industrious worthless; nor does freedom turn the lazy barbarian into a civilized and diligent citizen. If there ever was any truth in this comparison of the efficiency of the African labourer with the free white, it doubtless existed when the former were newly brought into our country. The estimate then formed became traditionary, and prevailed after the partial training and civilization of the blacks had wholly removed its grounds. Several facts prove that no white agricultural labour was so efficient (especially under our ardent sun) as the Africans, had become. Of this, the crowning proof is, again, given us by the unfortunate experiences of actual abolition. Many Virginian proprietors, having still retained the old, but false prejudice, that the negro slave was a less efficient labourer than the white hireling, and being well assured that the labour of the slaves would be deteriorated by emancipation, procured white labour from the North. What was the result? An almost universal conviction that the freed negro, deteriorated as he was, proved still a better labourer than the white hireling! Consequently, the importation of white labour is totally relinquished. Another of these facts is, that in Middle Virginia, where the best free labour in America exists, and was once almost exclusively used, the slave population was, up to the war, steadily supplanting it in agriculture; and was more and more preferred by the most enlightened agriculturists. Another is, that the great contractors on our public works, many of them Northern men, who came to us provided with white labour, gradually convinced themselves that their works could be executed more cheaply, quickly, and quietly, by slaves. The third fact is, that along the line which separates Virginia and Pennsylvania, or Kentucky and Ohio, the lands immediately south of the line were more valuable than those immediately north of it. This is so well known that Senator Sumner, in his notorious libel on the South, admits its existence, and endeavours to evade its force by the following preposterous solution. He says: freedom, by its proximity, infuses something of its own vigour, virtue, and life, into the adjoining Southern community; so as to stimulate its prosperity; whereas, the blighting slave-power contaminates and palsies freedom along the line of its contact, so as to make it exhibit less than its usual happy effects. That is, we are invited to believe that the indirect influence of free labour is so potent that it can go across Mason's and Dixon's line, or the Ohio River, into the midst of the very blight and curse of slavery, and act so happily as to raise the price of slave-tilled lands to eighty dollars per acre; while its direct influences at home, on a soil uncursed with slavery, cannot sustain the price of exactly similar land at sixty dollars! And we are required to believe that while the mere shadow of slavery, falling across the border, sinks the price of land, otherwise blessed with the most profitable system, to sixty dollars, the actual incubus of the horrid monster on a soil unredeemed by the better system, raises it to eighty dollars! Common sense shows us the true solution. Two farms divided only by the imaginary line of the surveyor, of course differ nothing in the natural advantages of soil, climate and productions. Why, then, did the Virginian farm sell for twenty dollars more per acre? Because the owner could combine all the economy and efficiency of a system of slave labour, with the partial advantages of the system of free labour near him; and thus make his farm more profitable than his Pennsylvanian neighbour.

But we are told that actual inspection showed the labour of the South to be wasteful, shiftless, and expensive, as compared with the free labour of the North. We reply, if it seemed so in any case, it is because the comparison is unfairly made. On the Northern side, the specimen is selected near some great city, in some "crack farming district," where the labour is stimulated by abundant capital, supplied with costly implements, and directed by the best skill of that section. On the Southern side, the specimen was taken from some ill-informed population, or some soil originally thin, and in a community depressed and depleted by the iniquitous taxation of Yankee tariffs. But let the best of each be compared; or the medium specimens of each; or the worst of each; and we fearlessly abide the test. Where slave labour was directed by equal skill and capital, it is shown to be as efficient as any in America. There was nowhere on our continent, more beautiful, more economical, or more remunerative farming, than in our densest slaveholding communities.

A third argument against the economy of slave labour, is thus stated by Dr. Wayland: "It removes from both parties, the disposition and the motives to frugality. Neither the master learns frugality from the necessity of labour, nor the slave from the benefits which it confers," etc.

Now we emphatically and proudly admit that Southern society has not learned the frugality of New England; which is, among the middle classes, a mean, inhospitable, grinding penuriousness, sacrificing the very comfort of children, and the kindly cheer of the domestic board, to the Yankee penates, Mammon and Lucre; and among the upper classes a union of domestic scantiness and stinginess with external ostentation and profusion; a frugality which is "rich in the parlour, and poor in the kitchen." The idea of the Southern planter is the rational and prudent use of wealth to procure the solid comfort of himself, his children, and his servants at home, coupled with a simple and unostentatious equipage abroad, and a generous hospitality to rich and poor. But we fearlessly assert, and will easily prove to every sensible reader, that slavery was peculiarly favourable to the economical application of labour, and of domestic supplies and income. The attempt to carry the freehold tenure of land down to the yeomanry, subdivides land too much for economical farming. The holdings are too small, and the means of the proprietors too scanty, to enable them to use labour-saving machines, or to avail themselves of the vast advantages of combined labour. How can the present proprietor of a farm of five or ten acres in France or Belgium, afford a reaper, a threshing-machine, a three-horse plough, or even any plough at all? The spade, the wheel-barrow, the donkey, and the flail, must do his work, at a wasteful cost of time and toil. But the Southern system, by placing the labour of many at the direction of one more cultivated mind, and that furnished with more abundant capital, secured the most liberal and enlightened employment of machines, and the most convenient "division of labour." Moreover, the administration of the means of living for the whole plantation, by the master and mistress, secured a great economy of supplies. The mistress of Southern households learns far more providence, judgment and method in administering her stores, than are possessed by free labourers or by blacks. The world over, those who have property are more provident than those who have none. For, this providence is the chief reason why they have property; and the improvidence of the poor is the cause of their being poor. But even if the slaveholders had no more of these qualities, all can see that an immense saving is made by having one housekeeper for ten families, with one kitchen, store-house, and laundry, instead of ten kitchens, ten store-houses, and ten varying administrations of stores. A smaller supply of provisions secures a greater amount of comfort to all, and a great saving of labour is effected in preparation of food, and housekeeping cares. A system of slave labour is, therefore, more productive, because it is more economical.

In all this argument, the anti-slavery men keep out of view a simple fact which is decisive of the absurdity of their position. They shall now be made to look it in the face. That fact is, that in free States, a large portion of all those who, from their moneyless condition, ought to pursue manual labour, are too lazy to do so voluntarily. But they must live, and they do it by some expedient which is a virtual preying on the means of the more industrious, by stealing, by begging, by some form of swindling, by perambulating the streets with a barrel-organ and monkey, or by vending toys or superfluities. Their labour is lost to the community; and their maintenance, together with their dishonest arts and crimes, is a perpetual drain from the public wealth. But slavery made the lazy do their part with the industrious, by the wholesome fear of the birch. Slavery allowed no loafers, no swindlers, no "b'hoys," no "plug-uglies," no grinders of hurdy-gurdies, among her labouring class. Who does not see that, even if the average slave in Virginia did only two-thirds of the day's work accomplished by the industrious free labourer in New York, yet, if all the idle classes in that great commonwealth, together with those now industrious, were compelled to do just the tasks of the average Virginia slave, there would be, on the whole, a vast and manifold gain to the public?

Another potent source of the economy of the slave system in its influences upon publick wealth, is found in a fact which Northern men not only admit, but assert with a foolish pride. It is the far greater development of the local traffic of merchants among them. When your down-East commercial traveller, whose only conception of productive industry was of some arts of "living by his wits," saw this contrast between Northern and Southern villages and country neighbourhoods, he pointed to it with undoubting elation, as proof of the vastly superior wealth and productive activity of the North. But in fact, he was a fool; he mistook what was a villainous, eating ulcer upon the public wealth of the North, and on the true prosperity of the people, for a spring of profits. In a farming neighbourhood of the hireling States, he saw at every hamlet and cross-road, pretentious shingle-palaces, occupied as large stores, where great accumulations of farm produce were paraded; sacks of meal, barrels of flour, bins of corn, packs of wool, garners of wheat, tubs of eggs, cans of butter, hogsheads of bacon, and even kegs of home-made soap, together with no little show of cheap finery. In the farming districts of the South, he rode along a quiet, shady road, with the country-seats of the planters reposing at a distance, in the bosoms of their estates; and found at long intervals a little country store, where a few groceries, medicines, and cloths were exposed for sale to sparse customers. Now this narrow trafficker, whose only heaven was buying and selling, very naturally jumped to the conclusion, that the South was so much poorer than the North, as she exhibited less local trade. Whereas in fact, she was just so much richer. And this unpopular assertion is, still, perfectly easy to demonstrate. The necessary labour of distributing commodities from producers to consumers, is a legitimate element of that fair market value, which they have when they finally reach the hand which consumes them. But political economists well know, and uniformly teach, that if any unnecessary middle-men interpose themselves between first producer and ultimate consumer, whose labour is not truly promotive of the economical distribution of commodities, then their industry is misdirected, the wages they draw for it in the shape of increased price of commodities passed through their hands is unproductive consumption, and they are a useless, a mischievous drain upon the common wealth. For instance, if a class of middle-men, retailers, or forwarding merchants, juggle themselves unnecessarily into the importing dry-goods trade of the country; if they place themselves between the manufacturer in England, and the consumer in rural New York, grasping wages for their intervention, in the shape of an additional profit which falls ultimately upon the retail purchaser; while yet they really contribute nothing to the economical distribution of the dry-goods; every one sees that they are a nuisance; they grasp something for nothing; and are preying upon the publick wealth, instead of promoting it like the legitimate merchant. Honest men will speedily require legislation, to expel them and abate the nuisance. Apply now this well-known principle to the case in hand. The simple system of slaveholding distributed that part of the products of farms, which properly went to the labourers' subsistence, direct to the consumers, without taxing it unnecessarily with the profits of the local merchant. The master was himself the retail merchant; and he distributed his commodities to the proper consumers, at wholesale prices, without profit. The consumers were his own servants. He remarked, in the language of the country, that, for this part of his products, he "had his market at home." Now, is it not obvious that the consumer, the slave, got more for his labour, and that the system of hireling labour, by invoking this local storekeeper, instead of the master, to do this work of distribution to consumers, which the master did better without him, and without charge, has brought in a useless middle-man? And his industry being useless and unproductive, its wages are a dead loss to the publick wealth. This coarse fellow behind the counter, retailing the meal and bacon and soap, at extortionate retail prices, to labourers, should be compelled to labour himself, at some really productive task; and the labourers should have gotten these supplies, untaxed with his extortion, on the farms where their own labour produced them, and at the farmer's prices. Is not this true science, and true common sense? But this is just the old Virginian system.

The justice of this view may be seen by a familiar case. A given landholder was, under our beneficent system, a slaveholder. He employed ten labourers; and for them and their families he reserved four hundred bushels of grain in his garners, which their labour and his capital jointly had produced. This grain is worth to him wholesale prices; and it is distributed by him to his servants, throughout the year, without charge. It is, in fact, a part of the virtual wages of their labour; and they get it at the wholesale price. But now, abolition comes: these ten labourers become freemen and householders. They now work the same lands, for the same proprietor; and instead of drawing their wages in the form of a generous subsistence at wholesale prices, they draw money. Out of that money they and their families must be maintained. One result is, that the landholder now has a surplus of four hundred bushels more than before. Of course it goes to the corn-merchant. And there must these labourers go, with their money wages, to buy this same corn, at the enhanced retail price. They get less for their labour. The local merchant, thus unnecessarily invited in, sucks a greedy profit; a vain show of trading activity is made in the community; and all the really producing classes are made actually poorer; while this unproductive consumer, the unnecessary retail trader, congratulates himself on his mischievous prosperity. It is most obvious, that when the advocate of the hireling system attempts to reply to this, by saying that his system has opened a place for an additional branch of industry, that of enlarged traffic, he is preposterous. The answer is, that the additional industry is a loss: it is unproductive. As reasonably might one argue that crime is promotive of publick prosperity, by opening up a new branch of remunerative industry,—that of police and jailors, (a well-paid class!)

But sensible men ever prefer facts to speculations—the language of experience to that of theoretical assertion. Let us then appeal to the fact, as revealed by the statistics furnished of us, by the anti-slavery government of the United States. By the census of 1860, while the population of the Free States was not quite nineteen millions, their total of assessed values, real and personal, was $6,541,000,000: being three hundred and forty-six ($346) dollars to each soul. The free white population of the South was a little more than eight and a quarter millions, and our total of assessed values was $5,465,808,000: being six hundred and sixty ($660) dollars to each soul; nearly double the wealth of the North. But if the four millions of Africans in the South be added, our people still have four hundred and forty-seven ($447) dollars of value for each soul, black and white.

§ 4. Effects of Slavery in the South, compared with those of Free Labour in the North.

The citations just made introduce a topic upon which anti-slavery men have usually abounded in sweeping assertion; the actual effects of our system on our industrial concerns. A fair example of these assertions may be seen in Dr. Wayland, Moral Science, p. 210, (Boston, 1838:) "No country, not of great fertility, can long sustain a large slave population. Soils of more than ordinary fertility cannot sustain it long, after the first richness of the soils has been exhausted. Hence, slavery in this country is acknowledged to have impoverished many valuable districts; and hence it is continually migrating from the older settlements to those new and untilled regions, where the accumulated manure of centuries of vegetation has formed a soil, whose productiveness may, for a while, sustain a system at variance with the laws of nature. Many of our free, and of our slaveholding States, were peopled about the same time. The slaveholding States had every advantage, both in soil and climate, over their neighbours; and yet the accumulation of capital has been greatly in favour of the latter," etc.

The points asserted here are, that Northern men have grown rich faster than Southern men; that slavery has so starved itself out by its wasteful nature, as to be compelled to migrate from "many valuable districts," to virgin soils; and that it is slavery which exhausts those virgin soils. Each of these statements is absolutely false. That the first and most important of the three is so, we have just shown, by the overwhelming testimony of fact. Southern citizens have accumulated capital faster than Northern, in the ratio of six hundred and sixty to three hundred and forty-six. And the manner in which these thrice refuted lies are obtruded, may fairly illustrate the morality with which anti-slavery men have usually conducted their argument against us That a conceited, pragmatical Yankee parson should be misled by rancourous prejudice around him, and by the concessions of foolish Southerners, to publish such statements thirty years ago, on a subject of which he knew nothing, is not very surprising. But surely Dr. Wayland, President of Brown University, Christian Divine, Instructor of youth, and Teacher of Ethicks,(!) would hardly have been expected to continue to print the falsehoods in successive editions of his work, after three successive census returns had utterly exploded them.

The second statement we contradict by the census as categorically as the first. It is not true that slavery was compelled to emigrate, by its own exhaustion, to virgin soils in the South West. For, in fact, slavery has not emigrated at all. Slaves have emigrated, in large numbers; [as we presume, Yankees have.] But the institution has not receded, and, at the beginning of our war, was not receding from its old ground in Virginia and the Carolinas. The slave population of the old States has shown a steady increase at each decennial period, and except where the penchant of the Yankees for stealing them had rendered them insecure, they occupied substantially all the old counties, and spread into new ones, as they were settled.

But we shall be asked: can it be possible that the representations so uniformly made by travellers, of the ragged, impoverished, and forlorn appearance of many districts of Eastern Virginia and the Carolinas, and of their poor and slovenly agriculture, are all mistaken? That there is much exhausted, and still more poor land, in these sections; that through extensive districts the soil and crops are now very thin, and the tillage rude, we explicitly admit. But this is by no means the same as admitting that it is slavery which has impoverished those regions. In the first place, of the larger part it is utterly false to say that they have ever been impoverished, by any cause; for they never had any fertility to lose. The statement usually made, as to the most of these old lands, is monstrously false. It has been usually represented that the Atlantic slope of Virginia was originally excessively rich, and has been brought to its present condition by slavery and tobacco. But in truth, this region, with the exception of limited spots, was naturally poor and thin; as every sensible person who has examined it knows. A vast proportion of it would scarcely have been judged susceptible of settlement at all, but for the attraction of its healthy climate, and the one or two crops of tobacco which its thin mould would produce. And it is only the thrifty industry of its inhabitants, together with the value of their staple, tobacco, which enabled them to live as plentifully as they did on so poor a soil.

In the next place, the exhaustion is really far less than it appears to the Englishman or New Englander, and the tillage far more judicious and thorough. The agriculture of planting regions is, necessarily, very different from that of farming regions; and especially is the culture of the grasses to a very large extent precluded by the nature of the crops, the soil, and the climate. Hence, excellent lands in the South, especially during fall and winter, often lack that appearance of verdancy, which to the English eye is the chief measure of fertility. But to suppose those lands as exhausted as fields equally bare or brown would be correctly judged in grass regions, would be an amazing mistake. Nor is the management always indolent where it seems slovenly. The Southern planter is proverbially disinclined to consult mere appearances at the cost of substantial advantage. Though the fencing seem rough, and the farm ill kept in many respects, the accurate observer will find his cultivation of the valuable staples, cotton and tobacco, thorough and skillful. There is no neater culture than that of the tobacco fields of Virginia.

Again: wherever the soil was originally fertile, in the Atlantic slope, as in the red lands of the Piedmont region, and the alluvial valleys of the great rivers, there the supposed decline of agriculture is unknown. All those lands which by nature were really fine, are now finer. The tillage was better, the yield per acre larger, the culture more remunerative, at the opening of the war, than at any date since the virgin forests were cleared away.

But so far as there has been an actual exhaustion of Southern soil, [and that there has been is admitted,] it can be proved to be due to other causes than slavery. For an exhaustion precisely similar can be pointed out in many of the free States. In both regions, it has arisen from two causes: the proximity of new and cheap lands, to which the exhausting farmer could easily resort, and the possession of a valuable staple crop, whose profits powerfully stimulated large operations. Those free States which lay under the same circumstances, have undergone the same exhaustion, except in so far as a natural depth of soil has made the process slower. If any parts of our country have escaped the "skinning process" after their first settlement, it has been simply because they were not so fortunate as to possess any valuable staple, or else were too remote from a market. Western Vermont, sixty years ago, was resorted to as a fertile wheat growing district. Long ago it was so exhausted that the culture of wheat was nearly relinquished, and its inhabitants emigrated to the new lands of Western New York to raise wheat; while the wheat fields of Vermont are now sheep-walks, and her farmers buy their flour. But Western New York, in its turn, has declined, till its average crop per acre is only one-half the original; and its farmers have sought the fertile plains of Illinois and Michigan, to subject them in turn to the same exhaustion. Even Ohio, fertile Ohio, the boast of abolitionists, whose black loam seemed able to defy human mismanagement, is proved by the stubborn census tables to have declined one-half, already, in its yield per acre. And her own children acknowledge, that if the appearance of the older parts be compared with that of twenty years ago, the signs of exhaustion are manifest. This vicious system, then, is not traceable to slave labour, seeing it prevails just as often where no slave labour exists; but to the cheapness of new lands, and facility of emigration.

Virginia presents other facts demonstrating the economy and efficiency of slave labour. The great Valley of Virginia (between the Blue Ridge and North Mountain Ranges,) is a farming and grazing region, of fertile soil and prosperous agriculture. In its great extent, some counties are occupied almost exclusively by free labour, and some have a large slave population. Now it is perfectly well known to all intelligent persons here, that precisely in those counties of this beautiful valley where there are most slaves, is the land highest in price, the agriculture most profitable and skillful, the farm buildings most elegant, and the community most prosperous and wealthy. Virginia east of the Blue Ridge is partly a farming and partly a planting region, having a mixed agriculture. Its soil is exceedingly different from that of the great valley, even where as fertile; and consequently the tillage is unlike. But there too, the neatest, most thorough and most profitable agriculture, and the highest priced lands, the finest farm stock, and the most prosperous landholders, are to be found precisely where the slave labour is most prevalent. And there is no agriculture in America superior to that of these favoured regions.

But, in conclusion, even if the industrial pursuits of the South were in the unfavourable condition which the Yankees love to assert, the sufficient cause would be found, not in slavery, but in the exactions and swindlings of their own section, through sectional federal legislation. Let a sober statement of these exactions be weighed, and the wonder will be, not that the South should be depleted, but that she is not bled to death. In the first place, the Federal Government, at its foundation, adopted the policy of giving a fishing bounty, (to encourage, as it said, a school of sailors for the national marine,) which went wholly into the pockets of New Englanders. It is said that the bounties paid are yearly about one and a half millions. Supposing that half only of the sum thus taken from the Federal Treasury was paid in by the South, (which we shall see is less than the truth,) this bounty, with that part of its increase which has accrued by simple interest alone, amounts now to one hundred and seventy-one millions, transferred by this unfair legislation from the South to the North. Next are to be mentioned the tonnage duties on foreign ships carrying between American ports, which, as the South had few ships, constituted a perpetual tax on us for the benefit of the North. Its amount cannot possibly be estimated with exactness, but it must have amounted to millions annually. Next came the oppression of a protective tariff, raising upon imports as high a revenue as sixty or seventy millions annually, in the last years of the government. As the South had few manufactures, and the North many, and as these duties, even where laid for revenue, were discriminating against the cheaper and better foreign manufactures which the South desired, in every case where discrimination was possible; it is manifest that the system constituted a simple robbery of the South of annual millions, for the benefit of the North. But we lost far more than the actual tariff on that portion of the national imports which were consumed at the South; because the restrictive policy, by throwing the balance of trade against the nations which took our grand staples of tobacco and cotton, deprived them of the ability to buy so freely, and at so large prices, as they would have done under a policy of free trade. Thus, the Southern planter not only paid the Northern manufacturer a profit on his goods equal to the protective tariff, but in the process of that robbery, lost several times as much more, in the prices which he should have received for his cotton or tobacco, had he been permitted to go with it to a free European market. This method of legislative plunder was so wasteful, that the Yankee, in stealing one dollar from us, annihilated several other dollars of our values. Next may be mentioned the advantage which the North gained in the funding of the Federal debt incurred at the Revolutionary war. This was so juggled by the Hamilton party, as to give the avails of it chiefly to the North. The enjoyment of that fund, with its increase since, has made a difference of untold millions in favour of the North. Last: the North twice enjoyed the advantage of having the National Bank situated in its midst, and wielding for purposes of traffic a large part of the funds of the Government. This superior command of ready money, acquired in these various ways, enabled the North to develope commercial centres, and to fix the great markets in her territory, thus ensuring to her the countless profits of commissions, freights, etc., on Southern trade.

Is it wonderful that the industry of a people thus swindled and plundered should languish? Who does not know the power of abundant capital, and especially of ready money, in stimulating enterprise and facilitating industry? Yet, under all this incubus the South has more than kept pace with its rapacious partner. When, therefore, the Yankee abolitionist points to any unfavourable contrasts in our condition, as evidence of the evil of slavery, he adds insult to falsehood: his own injustice has created the misfortune with which he taunts us, so far as that misfortune exists at all.

§ 5. Effects of Slavery on Population, Disease, and Crime.

But our enemies argue that slavery must be an obstacle to national growth and strength; for this is evinced by the very fact that they are nearly nineteen millions, and we only twelve and a quarter; when, at the beginning, the two sections were nearly equal in strength. Let us, therefore, look into this question. The increase of population is usually a sure test of the physical well-being of a people. Hardship and destitution repress population, by obstructing marriages, by breeding diseases, and by increasing the mortality of infants. If the population of the South be found to have a rapid natural increase, it will prove, therefore, the general prosperity of the people; and if the black race be found to multiply rapidly, it will be an evidence that their physical condition is happy, or in other words, that the institution of slavery is a humane one for them. Sufficient access being denied us to the statistics collected in 1860, our remarks must be based in part on the returns of 1850, and previous periods. These returns show that between 1840 and 1850, the whites of the free States increased thirty-nine and a half per cent., (39.42,) and the whites of the slave States increased thirty-four and a fourth per cent., (34.26.) The climate, the occupations, and the African labour of the South, repel almost the whole of that teeming immigration from Europe which has been rushing to our shores; so that making allowance for this source of population, it will be seen that the natural increase of Southern whites is as rapid as that of Northern.

In 1860, the whites in the free States had increased to about eighteen and a half millions; and in the slave States, to about eight and a quarter millions. The increase for the free States was, therefore, forty-two (42) per cent., and for the slave States thirty-three per cent., (33.) The census showed that in the decade between 1840 and 1850, four-fifths of the foreign immigration, for the reasons mentioned, went into the free States. If we suppose the same ratio to have prevailed in the last decade, then the fact that the North has received four-fifths of the immense rush of Europeans who resorted to our shores in the last ten years, will abundantly account for this difference of increase. The South has grown as fast in white population, as the North would have done, left to itself.

But the increase of the slave population of the South is obscured by no such disturbing cause. The South having magnanimously concurred, and even gone before, in suppressing the foreign slave trade, from a conviction of its immorality, the African race has received no accession whatever, in our day, from immigration. Between 1840 and 1850, the increase of the slave population solely from the excess of births over deaths, was twenty-eight and eight-tenths per cent., (28.8,) and between 1850 and 1860, it was twenty-three and three-tenths (23.3) per cent. One cause for the diminished rate of increase in the latter decade, was doubtless the growing passion of the Yankees for the abduction of our slaves; which, towards the last, carried off thousands annually. But either rate of increase is more rapid than the whites, either North or South, ever attained without the aid of immigration. The native increase of the free States in ten years has probably been between eleven and fifteen per cent. So that tried by this well-established test, the physical well-being of the slaves is higher than of any race in the world. Meantime, the miserable free blacks of New England, in the midst of the boasted philanthropy of abolitionism, only increase at the rate of one and seven-tenths of one per cent. in ten years! Such is the stern and impartial testimony of fact. How calamitous must be that load of social oppression, of disease and destitution, which thus nearly annihilates the increase of this fruitful race! Yet this is the condition to which the benevolent abolitionist would reduce the prosperous servants of the South.

This seems the suitable place to notice the most insulting and preposterous of the abolitionists' slanders. It is that expressed by calling Virginia the "slave-breeding commonwealth." What do these insolent asses mean? Do they intend to revile Virginia, because she did not suppress the natural increase of this peaceful and happy class of her people, by wholesale infanticide? Or because she did not, like the North, subject them to social evils so cruel and murderous, as to kill off that increase by the slow torture of vice, oppression, and destitution? It was the honour of Virginia, that she was a man-breeding commonwealth; that her benignant government made existence a blessing, both to the black man and the white, and, consequently, conferred it on many of both. If it has been proved, which we claim, that servitude was the best condition for the blacks, and that it promoted their multiplication, then this is a praise and not a reproach to Virginia. How perverse and absurd is the charge, that Virginia was actuated by a motive beastly and avaricious, in bestowing existence on many black men, and making it a blessing to them; because, forsooth, her wise government of them made them useful to the State and to themselves! By the same reason, the Christian parents who rejoice in children as a gift of the Lord, and a blessing to him "who hath his quiver full of them," are "slave-breeders," because they make their children useful, and hope to find them supports to their old age.

But medical statistics have revealed the fact, that another sure test of the physical well-being and progress of a people may be found, in the per-centage of hereditary disease, idiocy, and lunacy among them. The hardships, destitution, and immoralities of a bad state of society have a powerful influence to propagate blindness, deafness, idiocy, scrofula, cretinism, and to harass the feebler minds into derangement; while the blessings of good government, abundant food and raiment, and social happiness, strengthen and elevate the "human breed." The returns of the census of 1850 were collected by authority of Congress, on these points, and they show that of whites, North and South, about one person in every thousand is either deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic. Of free blacks in the North, one person in every five hundred and six was in one or the other of these sad conditions! Of the black people of the South, one person among every one thousand four hundred and forty-six, was thus afflicted. So that, by this test, Southern slaves are three times as prosperous, contented, happy, and moral as Northern free blacks, and once and a half times as much so as the whites themselves. The frightful proportion which these elemental maladies have reached among the wretched free blacks of abolitiondom, does more to reveal the misery of their condition there, than volumes of description.

The statistics of crime and pauperism reveal results yet more astounding for our enemies, and triumphant for us. While the free States had, in 1850, about thirteen and a half millions, including a few hundreds of thousands of free blacks, and the South about nine and a half millions of whites and blacks, there were, in that year (23,664) twenty-three thousand six hundred and sixty-four criminal convictions in the North, and (2,921) two thousand nine hundred and twenty-one in the South. The same year, the North was supporting (114,704) one hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and four paupers; and the South (20,563) twenty thousand five hundred and sixty-three. One of the most remarkable things is the great excess of both crime and pauperism in the New England States, "the land of steady habits," not only as compared with the South, but as compared with the remainder of the North, except New York. In Boston and its adjacent county, in Massachusetts, the persons in jails, houses of correction or refuge, and alms-houses, bore, among the blacks, the ratio of one to every sixteen: and among the whites, of one to every thirty-four. In Richmond, Virginia, the same unhappy classes bore, among the blacks, the ratio of one to every forty-six, and among the whites, of one to every one hundred and twelve. By this test, then, the white people of Richmond are three times as happy and moral as the white people of Boston, and the negroes of Richmond have proportionably one-third less crime than the white people of Boston, and are nearly three times as moral as the free blacks of that city.

We have thus examined the testimony of facts, as given to us under the unwilling authority of the Congress of the United States. They show that, by all the tests recognized among statesmen, slavery has not made the South less populous, less rich, less moral, less healthy, or less abundant in the resources of living than its boastful rival, in proportion to its opportunities. On this evidence of experience we rest ourselves.

In dismissing this head of our discussion, we would briefly touch two points. One is the annual production of the industry of the North and the South. Without burdening the reader with statistical details, it is sufficient to sum up the annual results of the three great branches, of agriculture, mining, and manufactures. The North exceeds the South in proportion to population, in wheat, hay, dairy products, and manufactures; while the South greatly exceeds the North in the great staples of Indian corn and tobacco, and surpasses it almost immeasurably in rice, cotton, and naval stores. Summing up the varied productions of each section, we find that the industry of the South is, on the whole, more productive than that of the North, relatively to its numbers. And of the great commodities which constitute the basis of foreign commerce, the South yields more than the North, in about the ratio of four to one!

The other point is the relative improvement of the soil. According to the census of 1860, there were four acres of improved land to each inhabitant of the North, appraised, with their rateable proportion of stock and implements, at $223. This gives about $56 for each acre and its stock. In the South, on the other hand, each inhabitant claims nine acres of improved land, valued, with their stock and implements, at $322. This allows about $36 for each acre and its stock. It has been argued that this evinces the slovenly and imperfect agriculture of the slaveholding States, and the comparative exhaustion of their soils. It is said, their rude tillage is spread over a far wider surface, and conducted with inferiour appointments. And this depreciating result slavery has brought about, they assert, in spite of superiour natural advantages. We remark that, contrary to the usual assertion, the natural fertility was superiour in the free States. The soil of the Middle States had a better natural average than that of the old Atlantic slave States, and the North-western States had a vastly larger proportion of fertile lands than the South-western. In the next place, the agriculture of the South is of such a character that it requires a wider area; and yet this requirement argues nothing of its greater imperfection. It may require more space to fly a kite than to spin a top, and yet it does not follow that the kite-flying is less skillful sport than the top-spinning. An iron manufactory must necessarily cover more ground than a chemical laboratory; but no one argues thence, that the ironmonger is less a master of his trade than the manufacturer of drugs, of his. Last: the fact that the Southern planter accounts the labour of his farm as property, and so, as a part of his invested capital, causes a lower nominal valuation of his lands, though there be no inferiority of actual production. Grain and grass lands in the county of Rockingham have always sold higher than grain and grass lands in the county of Albemarle, which were actually yielding the same products annually. The former were tilled by free labour, and the latter by slave; but the Albemarle farming was confessedly as skillful, as economical, and as profitable, as the Rockingham. The explanation is the following: The Rockingham farmer, hiring his free labour, needed no more capital for this purpose than was sufficient to pay the wages of a few months in advance of the realization of his crop. The Albemarle farmer expended a large portion of his farming capital in the purchase of slaves, and afterwards paid no money in hire. The former, investing twenty thousand dollars in agriculture, could expend the whole sum in land, except what was required to stock it and pay wages for a few months. Thus he would begin by buying three hundred acres of land for eighteen thousand dollars. But the slaveholding farmer began by expending eight thousand dollars in the purchase of servants, leaving him but ten thousand to pay for the three hundred acres of land. For this reason land of the same actual value must be rated at a smaller nominal price among slaveholders than among farmers employing free labour. But the true profits of the farming are not reduced thereby, in the proportion of eighteen thousand to ten thousand. For the slaveholder no longer has to tax his crops, (equal in gross amount to those of the Rockingham farmer,) with the hire of labourers. That tax he pays in the shape of the annual interest on the eight thousand dollars, which, in the first instance, he paid for his servants. Hence the facts do not argue that the land is intrinsically less productive or less profitable; they only argue a different distribution of capital between the two sources of production, land and labour. In consequence of that difference, the land must be represented by less money. This obvious explanation explodes much that has been taught concerning the comparative barrenness of Southern farming.

CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION.

These facts, then, have been established beyond question: That slavery was forced upon Virginia against her protests, by the cupidity of New England, and the tyranny and cupidity of Old England: That the African race being thus placed in the State without her agency, she adopted the remedy of domestic slavery, which is proved by the law of God in the Old and New Testaments to be innocent, and shown by events to be beneficent to the Africans: That, according to history, the laws of nations, and the laws of the British Empire inherited by the American States, slaveholding was lawful throughout the territories of the United States, save where it was restrained by State sovereignty: That it was expressly recognized and protected by the Constitution; such recognition having been an essential condition, without which the Southern States would never have accepted the Union: That every department of the government, and all political parties, habitually recognized the political equality of the slaveholding States, and of slaveholding citizens: That the Supreme Court, the authorized expounder of the Constitution, also recognized the equal rights of slaveholders in all the common territories: And that slavery proved itself at once, not only lawful, but eminently promotive of the well-being of the Africans, of the interests of the whole government, and of the publick wealth. Then the North, having ceased to find its own interest in the slave trade and slavery, changed its ground, and began to cast about, merely from a desire of sectional power in the confederacy, for means to destroy the institution. It is unnecessary to argue that the whole free-soil controversy, and the war which grew out of it, were really designed by them to destroy slavery in the States: for they themselves, in the pride of success, have long ceased to conceal that fact.

Now, had slavery been intrinsically a moral and social evil, yet its protection was in the compact between the States; and to the honest mind, there was but one course for the North to adopt when she concluded that she could no longer endure her connexion with slavery. This was, to restore to the South the pledges, the fulfilment of which had become irksome; and to dissolve the Union peacefully and fairly, as it had been formed, leaving us in possession of our own country and rights, to bear our own sin, and pursue our own destiny. It was the federal compact alone, which gave the North any right to govern the South. If they repudiated that contract, it was annihilated equally for both parties. Thenceforward their claim to legislate for the South, or exercise any power over her, was baseless and iniquitous. No fair mind will dispute, that even though slavery had been an indefensible wrong, the South ought not to have permitted herself to be assailed for it, in an equal Union which she had sovereignly entered with this institution expressly recognized. But that basis of argument we utterly repudiate. We will not defend ourselves from such premises. We claim to have been justified, not only by the Constitution of the United States, but by God and the right, in our rights to slaves. Our status in the Federal Union was, so far, as equal, as honourable, as legal, as free from ethical taint, as that of any other States with their property in horses, ships, land, and factories.

We have, in another place, (the Life of Jackson,) stated with sufficient fulness, the admitted facts and doctrines of the Constitution, which justified the Southern States in resuming their independence, when the compact, to which they had partially yielded it, was destroyed. The indisputable proofs (now fully admitted by anti-slavery men) might be cited, which showed that their election of a sectional President, with other aggressions, were intended to destroy the most acknowledged and vital rights of the States. Had Virginia assumed her attitude of resistance upon that event, she might have defended it by that maxim, so obvious to every just mind, that it is righteous and wise to meet the first clear aggression, even though its practical mischiefs be unimportant: that "a people should rather contend for their rights upon their threshold than upon their hearthstone." But we had stronger justification still. The aggression intended was practically vast and ruinous in its results. It has been shown in previous chapters, that the destruction of African slavery among us was vital to us, because emancipation by such means would be destructive of the very framework of society, and of our most fundamental rights and interests. All our statesmen, of all parties, had taught us, not only that the reserved rights of the States were the bulwarks of the liberties of the people, but that emancipation by federal aggression would lead to the destruction of all other rights. A Clay, as much as a Calhoun, proclaimed that when abolition overthrew slavery in the South, it also would equally overthrow the Constitution. Calhoun, and other Southern statesmen, with a sagacity which every day confirms, had forewarned us, that when once abolition by federal aggression came, these other sure results would follow: that the same greedy lust of power which had meddled between masters and slaves, would assuredly, and for the stronger reason, desire to use the political weight of the late slaves against their late masters: that having enforced a violent emancipation, they would enforce, of course, negro suffrage, negro eligibility to office, and a full negro equality: that negro equality thus theoretically established would be practical negro superiority: that the tyrant section, as it gave to its victims, the white men of the South, more and more causes of just resentment, would find more and more violent inducements to bribe the negroes, with additional privileges and gifts, to assist them in their domination: that this miserable career must result in one of two things, either a war of races, in which the whites or the blacks would be, one or the other, exterminated; or amalgamation. But while we believe that "God made of one blood all nations of men to dwell under the whole heavens," we know that the African has become, according to a well-known law of natural history, by the manifold influences of the ages, a different, fixed species of the race, separated from the white man by traits bodily, mental and moral, almost as rigid and permanent as those of genus. Hence the offspring of an amalgamation must be a hybrid race, stamped with all the feebleness of the hybrid, and incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race. And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa, then they will never again have occasion to tremble before the righteous resistance of Virginian freemen; but will have a race supple and vile enough to fill that position of political subjection, which they desire to fix on the South.

But although Virginia well knew that the very existence of society was assailed by these aggressions, so strict was her loyalty to the Constitution, she refused to make the election of a sectional President the immediate occasion of resistance, because, outrage as it was, it was nominally effected by the forms of the Constitution. When her sisters, more advanced than herself in the spirit of resistance, resumed their independence, she refused to follow them. When, warned by thickening events, she assembled her Convention, immediate embodiment of her own sovereignty, it was not a convention of secessionists. Only twenty-five, out of the hundreds of members, advocated that extreme remedy. But she did by this Convention, what she had already done by her General Assembly: she repeated the assertion of the great principles on which the government was founded; that it was built on the free consent of States originally sovereign, and not on force; that however wrongfully any State might resume its independence without just cause, the only remedy was conciliation, and not force; that therefore the coercion of a sovereign State was unlawful, mischievous, and must be resisted. There Virginia took her stand—on this foundation right, as essential to the well-being of assailant as of assailed. It was not for slavery that she deliberately resolved to draw the sword, cardinal as she knew circumstances rendered slavery at this time; but for this corner-stone of all constitutional liberty, North and South. And this, too, was a principle which she had always held against all assailants, in all ages of the Republick. She had asserted it firmly against her own favourite, Andrew Jackson, in the case of South Carolina, notwithstanding her disapproval of the nullifying doctrine then held by that State. She only asserted her time-honoured creed now. It was not until the claim to subjugate sovereign States was practically applied, that Virginia drew the sword; and then, not for slavery, but for the Constitution, and the liberties of a continent, which it had protected.

It is therefore a great and an odious perversion of the truth, to say that the defensive movement of the South was a war to extend and perpetuate slavery. African slavery was not the cause, but the occasion of the strife, on either side. On the Northern side it was merely the pretext, employed by that aggressive section to carry out ambitious projects of domination. To the South, it was merely the circumstance of the controversy, that the right assailed was our right to the labour of our servants. It was not the circumstance for which we contended, but the principle—the great cause of moral right, justice, and regulated liberty. It was therefore a gross injustice to burden our cause, in the minds of the rest of the world, with the odium which the prejudices of Christendom have attached to the name of slaveholder. Even those who are unable to overcome those prejudices, would, if just and magnanimous, approve our attempt to defend ourselves.

Finally: the means by which this defence has been overpowered were as iniquitous as the attack. A war was waged, precipitated by treachery, aggravated by every measure of barbarity condemned by the laws of nations, by the agency of multitudinous hordes of foreign mercenaries, and semi-civilized slaves seduced from their owners; against captives, women, children, and private property; with the attempt to let loose upon our little community (which they found otherwise unconquerable) a servile insurrection and all the horrors of domestic assassination—an attempt disappointed only by the good feeling and good character which the servants themselves had learned from the humanity of their masters. The impartial and magnanimous mind which weighs these facts cannot but feel itself swelling with an unutterable sense of indignation. The Southern people feel little impulse to give expression to their sense of the enormous wrongs, in reproaches or vituperations of those who have thus destroyed them. When resistance was practicable, they gave a more expressive and seemly utterance to this sentiment, in the energy of their blows. Let the heroick spirit in which the soldiers of Virginia and the South struck for their liberties, and suffered, and died, represent our appreciation of this injustice. A righteous God, for our sins towards Him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies and His. It is vain to complain in the ear of a maddening tempest. Although our people are now oppressed with present sufferings and a prospective destiny more cruel and disastrous than has been visited on any civilized people of modern ages, they suffer silently, disdaining to complain, and only raising to the chastening heavens, the cry, "How long, O Lord?" Their appeal is to history, and to Him. They well know, that in due time, they, although powerless themselves, will be avenged through the same disorganizing heresies under which they now suffer, and through the anarchy and woes which they will bring upon the North. Meantime, let the arrogant and successful wrongdoers flout our defence with disdain: we will meet them with it again, when it will be heard; in the day of their calamity, in the pages of impartial history, and in the Day of Judgment.

EDWARD J. HALE & SON,

(Late of Fayetteville, North Carolina,)

Publishers & Wholesale Booksellers & Stationers,

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Publish the following works:—

They are prepared to furnish any of these, or complete sets of North Carolina Reports, as far as extant. Also, Battle's New and Complete DIGEST of these Reports, brought down to 1866, and superseding all former Digests. 3 vols.

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NORTH CAROLINA READERS. By Rev. C. H. Wiley, Superintendent of Common Schools in North Carolina, and Rev. Dr. Hubbard, Professor in the University of North Carolina.

THE UNIVERSITY SERIES OF SCHOOL AND COLLEGE TEXT-BOOKS. By Professors Holmes, Venable, Gildersleeve, De Vere, and Le Comte, of Southern Universities, and Captain M. F. Maury, one of the most distinguished of living Geographers.

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