Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 1).djvu/317

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sentiments from their mothers' breasts; they (all the white race) entertain an utter abhorrence of being put on a level with blacks, whether in the field or in the workshop. Could Slavery be abolished, there would be a greater demand for labourers, and the prices of labour must be greatly enhanced. These may be termed the internal evidences of the abolitionism of foreigners.

"But we may find near home facts to corroborate these 'internal' evidences: It is well known that there exists a great antipathy among the draymen and rivermen of New Orleans (who are almost to a man foreigners) to the participation of slaves in these branches of industry."


It is obvious that free men have very much gained the field of labour in New Orleans to themselves. The majority of the cartmen, hackney-coach men, porters, railroad hands, public waiters, and common labourers, as well as of skilled mechanics, appear to be white men; and of the negroes employed in those avocations a considerable proportion are free.

This is the case here more than in any other town in the South, although the climate is torrid, and inconvenient or dangerous to strangers; because New Orleans is more extensively engaged in commerce than they are, and because there is, by the passing and sojourning immigration from Europe, constantly in the city a sufficient number of free labourers to sustain, by competition and association with each other, the habits of free-labour communities. It is plainly perceptible that the white working men in New Orleans have more business-like manners, and more assured self-respect, than those of smaller towns. They are even not without some esprit du corps.

As Commerce, or any high form of industry requires intelligence in its labourers, slaves can never be brought together in dense communities, but their intelligence will increase to a degree dangerous to those who enjoy the benefit of their labour. The slave must be kept dependent, day by day, upon his master for his daily bread, or he will find, and will declare his independence, in all respects, of him. This condition dis-