The present number will conclude this series of letters. I have already given a resumé of my observations and the conclusions of my judgment with regard to the condition of the slaves and of the poor or non-slaveholding whites of the South, and my impressions, as a traveler, of the character of the people both in the social aspect and as an element in the material condition and prospects of the Slave States, In the present number I shall draw together in a similar way my observations and the conclusions to which they tend, upon the institution of Slavery in its economical and its moral and political relations.

It has been my principal object to inquire into the causes of the great difference known to exist in the industrial condition of the Free and Slave States.

The opinion has been universally formed by previous travelers in the South, and from its inherent probability is commonly received by those who have reflected upon the subject at all, throughout the world, that the institution of Slavery is unfavorable to the success of enterprises involving manual labor as a considerable element of expense, This opinion has, however, of late, [257] been strenuously and confidently opposed by Southern writers on political and industrial economy. The contrary opinion is assumed as an established axiom in a long article on the agriculture of the South in the Government publication called the Patent Office Report recently issued.

The advantages which are to be obtained by the combination of the force of many hands, when efficiently controlled and judiciously directed by a central administration, cannot be doubted. Such advantages are obtained to a greater degree under the Southern system of labor than in that of the Free States, as I have frequently been able to point out, in describing the large cotton, sugar and rice plantations. I have, however, also related many occurrences, of which I was a chance witness on these plantations, which went very strongly to show that where labor is not voluntarily and cheerfully applied to the intended purpose, it is not possible to combine and direct it without either great cruelty to the laborer, or very great (and probably compensating) economical disadvantages. I communicated, also, early in the series, a mass of facts and statistical results of actual experience of men interested in sustaining the value of slaves, from which it was demonstrable, in connection with results of my own experience and that of others, some of them also slave-owners, that where this description of labor is brought most closely and distinctly in competition with the free labor in the market, the former actually costs much the most, while it produces much the least. Except in a few cases where slaves were dealt with, measurably, as free men, being virtually paid wages, according to the excellence or amount of their labor, I have almost everywhere observed a depreciation of the standards of labor which obtain at the North, both as to quality and measure.

If, therefore, I have written with discrimination and faithfulness of what I have seen in the South, I am confident that those who have honored my letters with a perusal must have seen convincing reasons for the conclusion, that there are, in the system of labor, with which the South is unfortunately saddled, sufficient economical disadvantages to account for any difference there may be in its industrial prosperity, and that of the adjoining States in which a free competitive system of labor prevails.

The Southern States, in respect to every important branch of industry, are, at the present time, in a peculiarly prosperous condition. In the face of the largest production of Cotton ever known, prices have been sustained at an unusually high point. The case is nearly similar with Tobacco and several other slave labor staples of minor importance. The profits of Cotton growing, however, regulate the prosperity of the South, because the value of nearly all other Southern productions is regulated by the demand of them by the Cotton planters. Especially is this the case with labor, and the price of negroes was never so high, or the trade in them so brisk, as it has been this year. Prime field hands (described as “No. 1, cotton-pickers; guaranteed free from vice or malady”) are selling in Louisiana as high as $1,400. At a public sale this fall, a large lot of negroes of all descriptions were sold at an average price of $1,800; probably on [258] long credits. A gentleman disposed to be economical, told me lately that being about to marry, it would cost him at least $4,000 to provide himself with house servants. This will illustrate one great cause of difficulty of obtaining capital at the South for associative enterprises. A young man starting in business in the South has a large capital to invest in Slaves. At the North he obtains an equal number of servants, paying them wages by small amounts monthly or yearly out of the profits of his business. He can invest any capital not immediately needed in his stock in trade, in railroads or other public improvements likely to add to his business; and this more especially applies to agriculturists or others requiring a large force of laborers, as servants in limited number can generally be hired at the South, but always only at much higher wages than at the North.

Among the chances of the future I have always looked with confident expectation to a considerable competition with slave labor to arise out of the Chinese emigration to California. I have just observed a newspaper report that the Cumberland Iron Company, on [the] Tennessee River, are about to try an experiment by employing twenty Chinese Coolies in mining and foundry labor. I was at the works of this Company a short time since and heard nothing of it, but I presume the report is true, as the extreme difficulty of procuring laborers and their great cost at present, would be likely to stimulate inquiry and experiment. This Company, as I was informed, own seven hundred negroes, the possession of which doubtless absorbs more than seven hundred thousand dollars of their capital stock, besides which they employ many hired laborers—some free men and some slaves. A million laborers could probably be recruited in China under a contract for a series of years, to be paid one-quarter the wages now paid for the slaves. No such arrangement, however, will be needed to draw a great Chinese emigration after the revolution in China is concluded, the California railroad completed, and lines of packets between San Francisco and Shanghai established.

But every sensible man in the Northern Slave States knows that there would be an immediate profit in abolishing Slavery in those States, even to the owners, if it were not for the profit of breeding slaves. The great question is whether it will ever be possible to substitute any other labor, or bring any other labor in competition with slave labor in the cotton-growing States—whether any other laborers can stand the climate. This is no question to me, for I have myself seen Coolies working steadily and briskly, without a driver, in paddy fields (rice marshes) all day long in a worse climate and in hotter weather than is ever known in cotton-growing districts.

I have not space to enumerate the immense natural privileges and advantages possessed by the South. If the general enterprise and close application, the industry and skill which is used at the North could be applied to their development (as they never can where the mass of the laboring class are hopeless slaves) I have no question that wealth would be accumulated far more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, and in no other land could a dense population exist with more comfort.

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A proper appreciation of these natural advantages for the accumulation of wealth, the immigration a knowledge of them will induce, the obstacles in the way of making a profitable use of them (which the destructive system of slave labor, when brought in competition with similar enterprises under free labor, will be more distinctly ascertained to occasion), it is to be hoped, will eventually force the South itself to earnestly search for a solution to the difficulties in the way of the abolition of Slavery. Notwithstanding the apparently overwhelming nature of these difficulties, I have very little doubt that when the South sincerely desires to effect this revolution, and is willing to make the necessary temporary sacrifice to obtain the permanent advantages of it, it will very soon be able to find proper and adequate means to accomplish it.

What the nature of these measures will be, it would be premature and useless at present to hazard a conjecture. In the progress of discovery and invention, in the political changes of the world, and in the changes in the distribution of wealth that may be expected to occur in the future, there will doubtless arise elements affecting the subject of which it would now be idle to endeavor to form an idea. All the ordinary machinery of progress is unfavorable to the customs of Slavery. As it was based on injustice it can hardly come to an end without injustice, and the advantage of the mass will have to be secured by the suffering of individuals. These seem to be reasonable anticipations to be formed from the nature of the Institution, and I can think of no other clues offered in the present to unravel its future.

That, in the words of the central organ of the Anti-Slavery party, “the only hope of the peaceful redemption and improvement of the slave population of the South (meaning the abolition of Slavery) is in the South itself,” I need hardly declare my conviction—a conviction I believe to be shared by all men who have given the subject any calm consideration.

It has not come within my especial duty as correspondent of the Daily Times on the condition of the South, to consider the moral and political bearings of the institution of Slavery, yet it will be proper for me in this concluding letter to indicate the views I have been led to form on these relations of my subject.

I cannot see how it can be doubted that the beings called negroes are endowed with a faculty, which distinguishes them from brutes, of perceiving the moral distinction of good and evil; of loving the good and regretting the evil which is in themselves. They are, beyond a question, I think, also possessed of independent reasoning faculties. This being the case, it seems to me evident that it was not designed that the mental labor necessary to provide the means of subsistence of themselves and their offspring should be performed mainly by others, or that the responsibility of making such provisions should be taken from them and assumed by others. When it is so, as great a wrong—a much greater wrong—is done than there would be if they were blindfolded and guided through life by another, and as the eye would suffer and be rendered nearly unfit to perform its natural functions by such usurpation, so I believe the soul [260] and mind suffer in Slavery. And as the tyrant who was guilty of such cruelty would not be justified by showing that the man when freed from his tyranny was but poorly able to make his way over a mountain, so I think the condition of the negroes at the North is no justification of permanent Slavery at the South.

Such a condition of things seems to me to be unnatural and unhealthy, and I do not believe that it can ever be made favorable to the objects which Christians believe to be the end for which such beings were created, except by changes which shall be preliminary to and preparatory for its abolition. However, therefore, the exercise of kindness and of uncommon abilities by the master, may, and does temporarily, modify the evils of Slavery, I believe, from the unfitness of the nature of man to live rightly in either of its important relations, it not only is, but always must be, a fearful cause of degradation of manhood, immorality, superstition and all the evils which in this world attend a disobedience of the laws of Nature and of God.

This theoretic view of the institution of Slavery is confirmed, in my judgment, by the condition of the negroes and of the great mass of the whites at the South. Let any right minded and closely-observant man pass through the South and ask himself what he would sacrifice to save his son or his daughter or his sister from being placed under the moral influence of Slavery, either as a slave or as a self-dependent white, and however charitably or even gratefully disposed he may be, he will hardly think the expression of Wesley, after his visit to Georgia, in the last century, too strong: “Slavery is the sum of all villainies.”

But I do not consider slaveholding—the simple exercise of the authority of a master over the negroes who have so wickedly been enslaved—in itself, necessarily wrong, any more than all forcible constraint of a child or lunatic is wrong. And I think the constant assumption of many in speaking on this topic, that it is so, greatly hinders the progress of right and natural sentiment, by arousing prejudice and diverting discussion from the essential and practical wickedness which exists under Slavery.

As a vague charge against all the Southerners, frequently made or implied in Northern publications, it has a bad effect by obscuring the important practical question, whether the South, in its legislation with regard to the negroes which past generations have left in a state of slavery, is doing its duty, and whether individuals who have obtained, or been entrusted with, the control and mastership of these slaves, are governing and using them on principles of justice and Christianity.

Few of those who think it a sin to enjoy the wealth obtained by the labor of purchased or inherited slaves, are very careful to search the channels through which have come to themselves what they term their property, to see whether perchance there be not some taint of dishonesty or cruelty that shall destroy their title.

If we tell the Southerner he steals the labor of his negro, may he not point to our cotton shirts and tell us we wear stolen goods with equal truth; may [261] he not regard the titles under which we hold our own landed property, originally obtained surreptitiously of the Indians, as hardly less sufficient than those under which he enjoys the labor of his negro property?

The term property does not ordinarily convey any other idea than stewardship over certain things which God has chosen to place, under the law of the State, in our hands. Leaving the inquiry as to the limits within which the State can, in the nature of things, construct property, I am willing for the present, to look upon the relation of the master to the negro as that of a stewardship, and am willing that the law should allow the master a reasonable use of the labor of the negro, as the wages of his stewardship. Then comes, I think, the question which the South should ask itself, the true point of the charge which humanity makes against the South, and to which Southerners seldom reply, being wholly taken up in showing the impracticability and unnecessary cruelty of the immediate abolition of all mastership of the weak, ignorant and childish race which Slavery has connected with their property and their homes.

So far as my testimony goes, it cannot be stated too strongly that the government of the negroes of the South, in the present, and independent of all necessities imposed by the past—independent of all necessities arising from the character and capacities of the negro—Slavery as it is, in the vast majority of cases, is shamefully cruel, selfish and wicked. It is incredible that the tyrannical laws and customs to which the slave is everywhere, and under every master, subject, are necessary for any but the most meanly selfish and wholly ungenerous purposes; though individual masters are not always themselves in the least to blame for this. That these laws and everywhere prevalent customs are even favorable to the meanest and most temporarily selfish ends of the cowardly legislators and men of influence in Society who make and sustain them, I have not the least degree of faith. On the contrary, I point to the condition of South Carolina, where their unmanly and shameful character is most distinct and notorious, as evidence of the miserable shortsightedness of their policy. Rather it is no policy but the policy of the man, insane with imbecile pride and anger, who inflicts wounds upon his own body. These wicked laws, these accursed privileges given to beings that disgrace the name of man, are wholly inexcusable and can never be justified by outcries at the folly and wickedness of fanatics and demagogues. That the condition of the slaves, as a body, might be immensely ameliorated without the least loss, but with great gain, in a merely heathenish view, to the whites as a body, I have not the slightest doubt.

Why, then, are not these ameliorations accomplished? No one will ask why common, vulgar, narrow-minded, low-lived, proud, selfish and self-willed men oppose them as they are known to, by the characteristic manner of the opposition to them, which is so painfully notorious to the world; but why they are not at least boldly and earnestly advocated, by all the truly sensible, thinking men of the South, if my views are correct, it may be thought hard to answer. The explanation, however, is simple, and to anyone familiar with the [262] thoughts of capitalists and members of the privileged classes throughout the world, will be sufficient. They fear to tamper with the “Rights” of Property.

What is Property? What may be its rights? And what then are its duties? It is not in the South alone that men are found reluctant to have these questions discussed.

But the evil of Slavery to its immediate subjects, is transient and comparatively unimportant. It would be a small thing to prove, were that possible (which I by no means believe), that all this evil to the individual were compensated for by the elevation of the mass. When we trace the influence which Slavery is indirectly exerting, not alone upon the public morals and mind of the South, but upon the moral, intellectual, and material advance of the whole country; when we further watch the reaction of this influence upon the mind of other peoples, and the fate of other nations the world over, we feel that we cannot too much deplore its existence, or struggle too hard to palliate its evils and resist its demoralization.

In my judgment of its ultimate influence, there is no institution in the world, no form of tyranny or custom of society, that is so great an injury, so great a curse upon the whole family of man; nothing that so darkens the evangelical light of Christ, that so obstructs the path of civilization, that so hideously distorts the fair features and manacles the noble form of just, manly, and beneficent Democracy.

Is free discussion of our duty with regard to this system, existing in the States with which our own are incorporated as a nation, with which we are connected by bonds that give our patriotism the same ends, as it has the same memories, to be feared or to be neglected? I cannot believe it. It is our duty, as it is every man’s in the world, to oppose Slavery, to weaken it, to destroy it. How and by what means we can rightly do this, it becomes us to study—not in the spirit of cowards, but as sensible and trustworthy men.

Can we abolish Slavery by the direct action of the Federal Government? No more than we can the State Church of England. No more than Great Britain can abolish our Revenue laws, or Austria our Naturalization system. It would not be the right, merely, but the duty, of any Southern State to withdraw from the confederacy if we should attempt it. The act would in itself be revolutionary, and institute a state of war, as would the act of Austria, were she to land a squad of gens d’armes on the Battery, to apprehend Koszta . It may at any time be our duty, and no doubt we shall perform it with alacrity and energy, to defend the independent sovereignty of the Southern States against all outside force. It is equally our duty to allow and maintain their clear constitutional right to continue their peculiar institution of Slavery, as it is, and where it is, till they shall themselves see fit to change or abolish it. These are the constitutional duties of the North; duties consistent with our nationality.

There is also a moral duty, one that may at any time involve a political duty, imposed upon the North, with regard to Slavery, by the nature of our Government; and that is to guard against the danger of the power and prestige [263] of our Union with the Slave States being used to extend and perpetuate their unfortunate local system. No one can, I think, honestly believe that such was in the least degree a purpose had in view in the formation of the instrument which defines our mutual political duties. And I for one would rather the Union should be dissolved by the reckless men of the South than that its power should again be perverted to prolong and invigorate this blight upon industry, this disgrace of our country, this curse upon the world. So far as I have been able to judge, the thoughtful and patriotic people of the South are not disposed to allow the attempt to be made. It can never be made except by the most unrighteous abuse of the discipline and organized power of parties. The first duty of every man, therefore, who does not wish to destroy the Union, or to increase the evil of Slavery, is to war against the unfortunate tyranny of parties—not of old parties, only, but of new parties—of parties that are to be.

I think a large majority of the people of the North are opposed to Slavery; not that they are ready in any untimely and unconstitutional manner to destroy this description of property; but that they are altogether unwilling to have the power of the National Government used to improve its value. If such is the case, I think it is not fanatical, treasonable, or impolitic, but exceedingly proper and desirable, both with regard to the designs of Southern politicians and to their own position before mankind, that they should in every appropriate and courteous manner distinctly make it known. Why should we not rather desire to appear before the world as a nation ready, if proper occasion offers, to combat in aid of Liberty, than for the extension of Slavery? In which position have we seemed most desirous to place ourselves during the last ten years?

But is there no active duty in which we can engage at the North, beyond this of forbearance and watchfulness merely? I have declared myself not to be an Abolitionist. The abolition of Slavery must, I judge, be gradual, and must be accomplished by the free determination of the people of the South. Yet the North has a duty to perform and that directly tending to the abolition of Slavery—a duty which every consideration of honor, self-respect, justice and humanity demands of it to perform, and yet to which it is shamefully recreant—a duty in which there is field and scope enough not only for political and social action, but for the most enthusiastic, devoted and self-sacrificing individual labor.

It is the duty which lies nearest to us.

It is to deal justly and mercifully with the colored people in our midst, the victims of Slavery, past and present, Southern that is, Northern that was. Everywhere at the South it is asked: “How is it Northern people think us cruel to the negroes? They are only fitted for servitude and are plainly better off in Slavery, where they are taken care of by competent persons, than in the miserable freedom, in the name of which they are persecuted at the North. Look at their condition in the Free States; surely these people are joking when they talk of their being cruelly treated here, or else they are despicable hypocrites. Negroes are not excluded from public conveyances at the South, as we often see [264] them, with violence, at the North. We do not taboo ourselves from them as unclean things with whom contact is pollution. We do not set a second table for them at our Sacramental suppers. We respect their religious organizations, without hesitation, as true churches. We make them our companions and friends; they are our playmates in childhood, the sharers of our joys and our sorrows in age. Our prosperity is to them as their prosperity, and they suffer in our adversity. In the North, although they allow them a certain liberty, as they do wild beasts, they hate them and despise them and loathe them—they neglect them, and cast them out. We look upon them as an ignorant, feeble and incapable people, not to be hated and thrown from us as filthy things, but to be pitied and protected and taken care of as children and idiots. The task is not a pleasant one, and we put them to work to recompense us for doing it, as well as to force them to earn their own living.”

In this way of talking, so common with Southerners, there is a great deal of cant, as regards themselves, but the rebuke to us is appropriate and most deserved. South Carolina might with less than her usual absurdity determine to withdraw from the Union, rather than have her name associated before the world with that of such unchristian States as the “Black-laws” of some of those of the North prove them to be. On the Statute book of no Southern State are there to be found laws so disgraceful, so inhuman, so barbarous, so heathenish, under the circumstances, as those of Indiana with reference to negroes—Indiana, which has formerly been reckoned a Free State and a Democratic State!

The hopefullest thing that I have seen for the negroes of the United States, slave and free (quasi), was the Rochester Convention last Summer. While we are questioning the possible development of the negro race to an intellectual equality with our own, there meets voluntarily, and at the suggestion of themselves, without any aid or publicly expressed countenance or encouragement of a white man, a large Congress of men of this race, and they remain in session many days, debating and taking grand measures to promote the elevation and improvement of themselves and their brethren, and to obtain their rights as men. It may be doubted if there has ever met a Convention of white men in our country in which more common sense, more talent, more power of eloquence, a higher civilization, more manliness, or more of the virtues and graces of the Christian and the gentleman, were evidenced than in that Convention of the despised Northern negroes. Thank God, at last it proved the negro to be better off in “freedom” at the North than either in “freedom” or slavery at the South; for who thinks that such a Convention could or would be held at the South? Nay, who thinks that a Convention like that, every word of the proceedings of which was a bitter and cutting yet good tempered and appropriate sarcasm, and treasonable defiance of the laws and the customs by which they were oppressed, could be publicly and peaceably held in any country in Europe?

And if it could have been done, would we not respect and love the men who had the will and the courage to prove it?

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The supposed inherent inability of the negro to take care of himself, is one of the theoretic legs upon which Slavery stands. There is another almost equally important. It is the same as that on which the social and political degradation of the great mass of the people of Europe is maintained. This is the conviction, very general at the South, that there is something in manual labor, in itself, demoralizing and enervating to the mind, and that there must be, in every country, a large class that is unfitted, by the necessity that is imposed upon them to labor, for the forethought and reflection necessary for the comfortable support of their families, much more for taking any part in the control of their commonwealth. These think that the laboring class is better off in slavery, where it is furnished with masters who have a mercenary as well as a humane interest in providing the necessities of a vigorous physical existence to their instruments of labor, than it is in Europe, or than it will be in the North, when the peculiar advantages to the laboring class which exist in a new country are lost by the increased density of population. These theorists, identical with the aristocratic party of the Old World, point with animation to every instance occurring in our cities or older communities, in which there is evidence either of crime and suffering among the laboring class of people, or of the prevalence among them of ideas, purposes and plans which they conceive to be absurd, radical, dangerous, and likely to interfere with morality or money making.

These people are, at least as often as otherwise, professedly Democrats, and have a consistent democratic theory, in which alone they differ from the aristocratic party of Europe. They do not wish to see any superior classes in our country to their own. A perfect equality of rank of all above the laboring class is what they mean by Democracy, and they will not believe that any gentleman seriously approves and desires to uphold anything more than this.

It is not true, then, that the North has no power to hasten the end of Slavery at the South? It can and will (for Hunkerism cannot live) do everything to remove the main hindrances to the liberation of the slave. It can do this by making the best possible use of free labor, by demonstrating that the condition of the laborer is not necessarily a servile one; that the occupation of the laborer does not necessarily prevent a high intellectual and moral development, does not necessarily separate a man from great material comfort, and that all those blessings to the laborer are attended with no real disadvantages to other classes, but consist with the greatest material prosperity, and the highest good of the whole community.

Yet, mainly, the North must demolish the bulwark of this stronghold of evil by demonstrating that the negro is endowed with the natural capacities to make a good use of the blessing of freedom; by letting the negro have a fair chance to prove his own case, to prove himself a man, entitled to the inalienable rights of a man. Let all who do not think Slavery right, or who do not desire to assist in perpetuating it, whether right or wrong, demand first of their own minds, and then of their neighbors, FAIR PLAY FOR THE NEGRO.

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The object of these letters has been to report facts without regard to the opinions of the writer, or of the Editor of the paper in which they have appeared, or of the readers of the paper.

I cannot conclude without expressing my obligations to the Editor of the Times, for the perfect freedom with which I have been permitted to give my observations to the public, on a subject which occasions so much bitter and opposing feeling. I allude to this the rather because certain editors at the South were moved soon after the publication of my letters was commenced, to refer to them in a manner which indicated that they were themselves entirely unworthy of the most honorable and responsible calling in which they had engaged themselves.

The Press in our country is so free, and consequently so immeasurably powerful, that it is of the greatest consequence to elevate and sustain the standard of its moral character. I deem this to be greatly injured by insinuations of venality and want of faithfulness of editors of newspapers to the trust which they have assumed, especially of their first duty, to furnish the public according to the best means in their power with true, reliable and accurate information on subjects of public interest. I may be excused, therefore, for stating how very different, how entirely honorable to the Editor of the Times, and consistent with the highest view of his duty to his subscribers, was the engagement made with me for the business in which I have been employed.

The Editor of the Times had for some time, as I have understood, contemplated sending a Correspondent to the South to perform the duties which have fallen to me. A friend suggested his applying to me for this purpose; at his request I called upon him. The most liberal terms were offered me to go to the South and write a series of letters for the Times, under a caption similar to that which has been employed. The Editor did not ask my sentiments on Slavery or any other subject; and the only intimation I received of his expectations as to the matter that I should write, was a request that it should be confined to personal observations, and the expression of a wish that I would not feel myself at all restricted or constrained, by regard to consistency with the general position of the paper or anything else. Full confidence was expressed in my honesty of observation and faithfulness of communication, and no desire or hope or expectation of anything else than this was in any way expressed or intimated. I had never seen the Editor before, but the simplicity of his proposal was so gratifying and flattering to me that I accepted it, without occupying in our whole conversation more than five minutes of his time. I had no other interview or communication with him until after my return, and after the greater number of the letters had been completed. The prominence given to my letters was unexpected.

I do not believe the Editor had any knowledge of my private sentiments on the subject of Slavery, beyond the assurance that they were not such as would prevent my candid observation. He knew me as an agriculturist, as an [267] employer of laborers at the North, as a traveler, and as an occasional writer for the public, mainly on matters of agricultural interest.

It has been my constant purpose to observe as fairly and accurately, and to report as freely and honestly, as the Editor of the Times honored me by supposing that I would.