Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 66

[266] It need hardly be remarked, that the command to obey magistrates, as given in Rom. xiii: 1-3, is subject to the limitation stated above.

They are to be obeyed as magistrates; precisely as parents are to be obeyed as parents, husbands as husbands. The command of obedience is expressed as generally, in the last two cases, as in the first. A magistrate beyond the limits of his lawful authority (whatever that may be), has, in virtue of this text, no more claim to obedience, than a parent who, on the strength of the pa.s.sage "Children, obey your parents in all things," should command his son to obey him as a monarch or a pope.

[267] Quoted by Pres. Young, p. 45, of the Address, etc.

[268] On the manner in which slaves were acquired, compare Deut. xx: 14.

xxi: 10, 11. Ex. xxii: 3. Neh. v: 4, 5. Gen. xiv: 14. xv: 3. xvii: 23.

Num. x.x.xi: 18, 35. Deut. xxv: 44, 46.

As to the manner in which they were to be treated, see Lev. xxv: 39-53.

Ex. xx: 10. xxii: 2-8. Deut. xxv: 4-6, etc. etc.

[269] "The word of Christ, (Matt. xix; 9), may be construed by an easy implication to prohibit polygamy: for if 'whoever putteth away his wife, and _marrieth_ another committeth adultery' he who marrieth another _without_ putting away the first, is no less guilty of adultery: because the adultery does not consist in the repudiation of the first wife, (for, however unjust and cruel that may be, it is not adultery), but in entering into a second marriage during the legal existence and obligation of the first. The several pa.s.sages in St. Paul's writings, which speak of marriage, always suppose it to signify the union of one man with one woman."--PALEY'S Moral Phil., book iii, chap. 6.

[270] Elements of Moral Science, p. 221.

[271] Clarkson and Wilberforce were anxious, to have the slave trade speedily abolished, lest the force of their arguments should be weakened by its amelioration.--ED.

[272] If the negro is susceptible of this degree of improvement, he ought _then_ to be free.--ED.

[273] Abolition has impeded this improvement.--ED.

[274] We heard the late Dr. Wisner, after his long visit to the South, say, that the usual task of a slave in South Carolina and Georgia, was about the third of a day's work for a Northern laborer.

THE

EDUCATION, LABOR, AND WEALTH OF THE SOUTH.

BY SAMUEL A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.,

OF LOUISIANA.

NOTE.--This article of Dr. Cartwright's was designed by the Editor to follow "Cotton is King,"

but the copy was not received until the stereotyping had progressed nearly to completion.--PUBLISHER.

It has long been a favorite argument of the abolitionists to a.s.sert that slave labor is unproductive, that the prevalence of slavery tends to diminish not only the productions of a country, but also the value of the lands. On this ground, appeals are constantly made to the non-slaveholders of the South, to induce them to abolish slavery; a.s.signing as a reason, that their lands would rise in value so as to more than compensate the loss of the slaves.

That we may be able to ascertain how much truth there is in this a.s.sertion, let us refer to _figures_ and _facts_. The following deductions from the Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Louisiana, speak in a language too plain to be misunderstood by any one, and prove conclusively, that, so far at least as the slave States are concerned, a dense slave population gives the highest value and greatest productiveness to every species of property.

Similar deductions might he drawn from the Auditors' Reports of every slave State in the Union EDITOR.

1. _Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Louisiana._ Baton Rouge, 1859.

2. _Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Education._ Baton Rouge, 1859.

3. _Les Lois concernant, les Ecoles Publique dons l'Etat de la Louisiane_, 1849.

4. _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana._ By Edward J. Forstal, New Orleans, 1845.

5. _Address of the Commissioners for the Raising the Endowment of the University of the South._ New Orleans, 1859.

IT is much easier to acquire knowledge from things cognizable to the senses than from books. American civilization is founded upon the laws of nature and upon moral virue. "Honesty is the best policy," says Washington, its founder. The laws of nature are discovered by observation and experience. A practical direction is given to them by that species of knowedge, which is derived from handling the objects of sense and working upon the materials the earth produces. Moral virtue puts a bridle on the evil pa.s.sions of the heart, and, at the same time, infuses into it an invincible courage in demanding what is right. A knowledge of nature enables its possessor to bridle the natural forces of air, earth, fire, and water--to hold the reins and drive ahead. With its rail-roads and telegraphs, American civilization is waging war with time and s.p.a.ce, and, by its moral power and Christian example, with sin and evil. With its labor-saving machiney, its thirty millions do more work for G.o.d and man than three hundred millions of such people as inhabit Asia, Africa, Central, and South America, and Mexico. Its thirty millions are equal to any hundred millions of most of the governments of Europe. It is far ahead of the most enlightened nations of Europe, because its people are in the possession of all the blessings and comforts that heaven, through nature's laws, accord to earth's inhabitants, while three-fourths of the two hundred and fifty millions of Europe are writhing in an artificially created purgatory--deprived of all the good things of earth. Whoever would catch up with the annals of American progress, fall into line with American policy, and get within the influence of the guiding spirit of American policy, must not depend upon libraries for information, or he will be left far behind the age in which he lives; must look to the statistics of the churches, to the reports of legislative and commercial bodies, and to the monthly reviews recording the princ.i.p.al transactions of the busy world around him. If he wants to keep pace with the exploits of mankind under European civilization, in cutting one another's throats, sacking cities, destroying commerce, and laying waste the smiling fields of agriculture, the daily press will give the required information; but he can not rely upon it for these statistical details and stubborn facts which tell what the Caucasian in America, aided by his black man, Friday, is doing for Christianity, for liberty, for civilization, and for the good of the world. Some of these details are regarded as too dry and uninteresting, and others too long for admission in the daily press. Much is written and said about the benefits of education. The rudiments are alike important in both kinds of civilization, American and European. But after acquiring the rudimentary knowledge, the paths of education in the two hemispheres diverge from each other at right angles. The further the American travels in the labyrinths of that system of education, so fashionable in Europe, purposely designed to bury active minds in the rubbish of past ages, or tangle them in metaphysical abstractions and hide from them the beauty of truth and the matter-of-fact world around them, the less he is qualified to appreciate the blessings and benefits of republican inst.i.tutions, and the more apt he is to be found in opposition to American policy. By hard studies on subjects of no practical importance, physical or moral, the European system of education drives independence out of the mind, and virtue out of the heart, as a pre-requisite qualification for obedience to governments resting upon diplomacy, falsehood, artificial and unnatural distinctions among men. But in the United States, the various State governments being founded on moral truths and nature's laws, and not on the opinions of a privileged order, our system of education should be in harmony with our system of government; our youth should be taught to love virtue for virtue's sake; to study nature, bow to her truths, and to give all the homage that the crowned heads receive in Europe, to nature and to truth.

Our government sets up no religious creed or standard of morals, but leaves every one perfectly free in religion and morals, to be governed by the Bible as _he understands it_, provided he does not trespa.s.s upon the rights of others. The princ.i.p.al books in our libraries give little or no aid in qualifying our youth for public office or to direct the legislation or policy of a government resting upon natural laws. The practical operation of our system is scarcely anywhere else recorded than in church history, gospel triumph, legislative reports, reviews, and pamphlets. There the facts may be found, but they are isolated and disconnected, teaching nothing; but could be made a most potent means, not only of instruction in the practical operation of our system of government, but of developing the human faculties, if introduced into our schools. They are full of objects for comparison. By comparison the mind is taught the difference between things; comparisons are at the bottom of all useful and practical knowledge. "They are suggestive,"

says Prof. Aga.s.siz, "of further comparisons. When the objects of nature are the subjects of comparison, the mind is insensibly led to make new inquiries, is filled with delight at every step of progress it makes in nature's ever young and blooming fields, and study becomes a pleasure.

No American knows what a good country he has got until he visits Europe and draws comparisons between the condition of the laboring cla.s.ses there and those at home. Even in London, about half the people have neither church-room nor school-room."

The _Annual Report of the Auditor of Public accounts of the State of Louisiana_ abounds with objects which have only to be compared in their various relations to one another to give the mind a clear perception of the operation and practical working of some of the most important natural laws and moral truths lying at the bottom of American civilization and progress. Without comparisons they are like hieroglyphical characters telling nothing. Comparisons will decipher them and make them speak a language full of instruction, which every one can understand.

The more thorough the education in European colleges, or in American schools on a similar model, the more there will be to _unlearn_ before American inst.i.tutions can be understood or their value appreciated, and the less will the American citizen be qualified to vote understandingly at the polls. The reason is, that the system of education which directs the policy of goverments founded upon artificial distinctions, is from necessity inimical to a government founded upon natural distinctions and moral truth. Education on the British model has set the North against the South, and has waylaid every step of American progress, from the acquisition of Louisiana to the last foot of land acquired from Mexico or the Indians, and it now stands across the path of the all-conquering march of American civilization into Cuba, Central America, and Mexico.

The vicious system of education founded upon the European model has almost reconquered Ma.s.sachusetts and several other Northern States, converting them, in many essential particulars, into British provinces.

The people of the North are virtuous and democratic at heart; but they have been turned against their own country and the sentiments which experience teaches to be truths, the obvious benefits of negro slavery, for instance, by an education essentially monarchical. To sustain itself, American policy should have its own schools, to guide and direct it. Heretofore it has been guided and directed almost entirely by the light and knowledge derived from the great school of experience, in which the democratic ma.s.ses are taught without the aid of other books than the Bible and hymn book. In that school they learned that the negro was not a white man with a black skin, but a different being, intended by nature to occupy a subordinate place in society; that school made known that the only place which nature has qualified him to fill was the place of a servant. That place was accordingly a.s.signed him in the new order of civilization called American civilization, founded upon moral virtue and natural distinctions, and not upon artifice and fraud; upon nature's laws and G.o.d's truths, and not upon the fallacies of human reason, as that of Europe. They had not even the a.s.sistance of book education to tell them that the white man bore the name of j.a.pheth in the Bible, and the negro that of Canaan; and that the negro's servile nature was expressed in his Hebrew name. American theologians had not paid sufficient attention to the Hebrew, and could not inform the American reader that both the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translation, called the Septuagint, plainly, and in direct terms, recognize two cla.s.ses or races of mankind, one having a black skin, and the other being fair or white; and that, besides these two races, it recognizes a third race under the term Shem, a name which has no reference to color; but as the other two were plainly designated as _whites_ and _blacks_, the inference is, that the third cla.s.s was red or yellow, or of an intermediate color. In the Septuagint (the Bible which our Saviour quotes), _aethiop_ is the term used to designate the sons of Ham, a term synonymous with the Latin word _niger_, from which the Spanish word _negro_ is derived. The Bible tells in unmistakable terms that j.a.pheth, or the white race, was to be _enlarged_. The discovery of the western hemisphere opened a wide field for the _enlargement_ of the white race, pent up for thousands of years in a little corner of the eastern hemisphere. The new hemisphere was found to be inhabited by nomads of the race of Shem, neither white nor black. The historical fact is, that the white race is every year _enlarging_ itself by dispossessing the nomadic sons of Shem, found on the American continent, of their tents, and dwelling in them; and that the black race are its servants. Thus literally, in accordance with the prophecy, "_j.a.pheth will be enlarged, he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan_ (the negro) _shall be his servant_." The prophecy is not fulfilled, but only in process of fulfillment. It clearly points to a new order of civilization, in a wider world for enlargement than the old, in which the black race was to serve the white. The will of G.o.d that such a new order of civilization should be established, in which the negro and white man should mutually aid each other, and supply each other's deficiencies, is not only revealed in Hebrew words, written thousands of years ago, but revealed also in the laws of nature, and revealed by _Ethiop nowhere else but in our slaveholding States, stretching forth her arms to G.o.d_. American civilization, founded upon revealed truth and nature's laws, puts the negro in his natural position, that of subordination to the white man.

The observation and experience of those who founded a government resting on the basis of moral truth and natural, instead of artificial distinctions, revealed to them the necessity of consigning to the negro an inferior position, in order to carry out that democratic principle which demands a place for every thing, and every thing in its place.

What are called the free States have provided no place for the poor negro. He is an outcast and a wanderer, hurtful instead of helpful to society. Mexico, Central and South America, in catching at the shadow, lost the substance of republicanism. Republican government has utterly failed with them, because they fell into the error of supposing that all men of all races are naturally equal to one another. The white race in those countries, acting upon that error, emanc.i.p.ated the inferior negro race, and amalgamated with that and with the Indian race. This disregard of the distinctions made by nature, between the white, black, and Indian races, was fatal to American civilization in those countries.

Mr. Jefferson never meant to say that negroes were equal to white men; but that white men, whether born in England or America were equal to one another. Our fathers contended for their own equality among Englishmen, which not being granted to them, they declared their independence. But scarcely had their swords won that independence, when the governing cla.s.ses of Great Britain began to teach the rising generation, through the medium of books, schools, and colleges, that the democratic doctrine, which declared all white men equal to one another, _included negroes_. Thus making the learned world believe that democracy and negro slavery are incompatible--that there can be no such thing as a democracy, or a government where the people rule, so long as black people are held in slavery. The schools not only taught the doctrine that negro slavery is anti-republican, but that it is a moral, social and political evil, and soon it was denounced from the pulpit as _sin against G.o.d_!

Under the influence of such an education, imported from Europe, the American people, even in the South, began to regard negro slavery as an evil--not from any thing they saw, but from what they had been taught.

Thence all manner of experiments were made with the negro to make his condition better out of slavery than in it. All of which proving a failure, the South took issue with Old and New England on the question of negro slavery being an evil, social, political, or moral, and called for the proof. No proof could be given except that drawn from England, from hearsay evidence, and from theoretical teaching of that system of education designed to support European despotisms, and to destroy American republicanism. This has opened the eyes of the South to the necessity of establishing schools and colleges of its own to uphold American civilization. The address of the commissioners for the raising of the endowment of the University of the South commends it to the attention of the American people, not as a sectional or Southern university, but as an American university, to be the house and home of the spirit of American civilization--a dwelling-place not lighted with fox-fire tapers or artificial lights to disguise nature, as the inst.i.tutions of learning in Europe are, but with the light inherent in nature's truths and in the revealed word of G.o.d, honestly translated and interpreted. Some schools to aid American civilization have already been established, but there is a sad outcry for the proper kind of school books; those of Old and New England being rotten to the core with abolitionism and with that false democracy which would make the rising generation believe that the heroes of the American Revolution fought for ruining the negro by giving him liberty, fought to annul G.o.d's decrees, which made him a servant of servants, instead of fighting for the principle a.s.serting their own equality with the lords of England and the crowned heads of Europe. Fortunately the work before us, the _Report of the Auditor of the Public Accounts of Louisiana_, will answer very well to supply the want of a proper kind of school book to indoctrinate beginners in the mysteries of the political inst.i.tutions of their own country, and at the same time to discipline and expand their minds. It is only one of the numerous books of its cla.s.s, which might be advantageously pressed into the service of the schools for a similar purpose. The statistics of the United States Census, and De Bow's _Industrial Resources_, and the _Minutes of the Progress of the American Churches_, would prove a very good beginning of a high school and college library. Comparisons being the basis of all useful and practical knowledge, in the works just referred to, and in the auditor's report and others of its cla.s.s, will be found ample materials for comparison. Comparison will infuse a soul into the dry bones of the facts and figures of our religious and political inst.i.tutions, and make them declare the hidden truths of nature which lie at the bottom of American republicanism, Christianity, prosperity, and progress. The task of comparing will be highly instructive to the youthful mind, and at the same time agreeable and interesting. As an example, here is the way a beginning is recommended, for a comparison in secular affairs.

LESSON NO. 1.--Let Lesson No. 1 consist in comparing the counties (or parishes, as they are called in Louisiana) having the largest white population and the fewest negroes, with those counties having the heaviest negro population and the fewest white people.

There are five parishes, or counties, found in the report of the auditor of public accounts, in which the white population exceeds the negro slaves three to one. Let these parishes be compared with five others in which the slave population exceeds the white seven to one.

Table I, represents the first cla.s.s of parishes, and Table II, the second. Thus:

TABLE I.

Total acres of /-------------Population--------------- land owned. Whites. Slaves. Free Negroes.

Calcasieu, 35,486 2,367 947 280 Livingston, 60,885 3,998 1,297 7 Sabine, 85,446[275] 3,585 1,409 --- Vermillion, 73,654 3,260 1,378 19 Winn, 43,406 4,314 1,007 38 ------- ------ ------ --- 298,877 17,524 6,038 343 17,524 ------ Total whites and slaves, 23,562 343 ------ Aggregate population, 23,905

TABLE II.

Total acres of /-------------Population--------------- land owned. Whites. Slaves. Free Negroes.

Carroll, 246,582 2,409 9,529 --- Concordia, 318,395 1,384 11,908 11 Madison, 304,494 1,293 9,863 --- Tensas, 323,797 1,255 13,285 328 W. Feliciana, 230,966 1,985 10,450 68 --------- ------ ------ --- 1,224,234 8,326 55,035 407 8,326 ------ Total whites and slaves, 63,361 407 ------ Aggregate population, 63,768

It will be seen from the above, that the white population of the parishes in table I exceeds the slaves nearly three to one; while, in the parishes in table II, the slaves exceed the whites nearly seven to one.

If the land were divided equally among the aggregate population, each inhabitant of the parishes in table I would have 12 acres, and each inhabitant of the parishes in table II would have 22 acres. Here lesson 1 ends, by proving that there is not as great a demand for land, by nearly one half, where the population consists of one white man and seven negroes. By referring to a map of Louisiana, it will be seen that the territorial extent of the parishes in table I is much greater than those in table II. Hence it is not for the want of territory, that a population consisting of three whites to one negro, owns less land by nearly one half, than a population consisting of seven negroes to one white man.

LESSON NO. 2.--Lesson No. I requires the value of the land per acre, in tables I and II, to be ascertained and compared, with a view of solving the important problem: "_Which gives the most value to land, a dense white population with a few negroes, or a dense slave population with a few white people?_"