ON ABOLITIONISM.
487
consequences to both races.[1] We would, therefore, act the part of wisdom, and of many evils choose the least — it being the abuse and not the legitimate use of the institutions wisely ordained by God, and sanctioned by human experience, that constitute the evil growing out of them.
- ↑ "Sir, if any evils have grown out of the existence of slavery, they have not at least affected the North. During the days of slave trade, which (as I formerly had occasion to remark) was continued down to 1808, by New England votes in the convention, the northern ship-owners realized large profits by purchasing negroes on the coast of Africa at thirty or forty dollars per head, and selling them to southern planters for several hundred dollars. The bringing in of these slaves caused large tracts of the southern country, too unhealthy to have been cleared out by white men, to be brought under profitable cultivation. The price of cotton has thereby been brought down from fifty, to ten, and even five cents per pound. An immense amount of capital and labor is employed profitably in its manufacture at the North. In England, also, not less than six hundred millions of dollars is thus invested, and a vast population exists by being employed in the manufacture. It is ascertained that at least five millions of white persons, in Europe and this country, get their employment, are fed, and exist, on the manufacture of cotton alone. The cheap southern production of the raw material not only is the means of thus giving subsistence to a great portion of the population of this country and Europe, but is clothing the world at a cheap rate. In addition to cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and various tropical productions are supplied at a cheap rate for northern consumption. On the other hand, our slaves seldom come in competition with northern labor, and are good customers of its productions. While the North has derived these great advantages, the negroes themselves have not been sufferers. Their condition not only compares most advantageously with that of the laboring population of the world, but is in advance of the position they have been able, at any time, to occupy at home. The researches of Gliddon and other antiquarians, show that four thousand years ago in Africa they were slaves, and black as they now are. Since then, in that country, where they were placed by Providence, and where, from peculiar constitution, they enjoy the best health, they have existed only as savages. They are there continually made slaves by the men of more intelligent
