The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 8

Rotation of crops cannot take place at a distance from market The exhaustive character of the system is well shown in the following extract:--

"In the State of New York there are some twelve million acres of improved land, which includes all meadows and enclosed pastures. This area employs about five hundred thousand labourers, being an average of twenty-four acres to the hand. At this ratio, the number of acres of improved land in the United States is one hundred, and twenty millions. But New York is an old and more densely populated State than an average in the Union; and probably twenty-five acres per head is a juster estimate for the whole country. At this rate, the aggregate is one hundred and twenty-five millions. Of these improved lands, it is confidently believed that at least four-fifths are now suffering deterioration in a greater or less degree.

"The fertility of some, particularly in the planting States, is pa.s.sing rapidly away; in others, the progress of exhaustion is so slow as hardly to be observed by the cultivators themselves. To keep within the truth, the annual income from the soil may be said to be diminished ten cents an acre on one hundred million acres, or four-fifths of the whole.

"This loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking a capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six per cent. annual interest. That improved farming lands may justly be regarded as capital, and a fair investment when paying six per cent. interest, and perfectly safe, no one will deny. This deterioration is not unavoidable, for thousands of skilful farmers have taken fields, poor in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over and above all expenses. If this wise and improving system of rotation tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one hundred million acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six millions six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it in permanent real estate, where it would pay six per cent. annual interest. For all practical purposes, the difference between the two systems is three hundred, and thirty-three millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars a year to the country.

"Eight million acres [in the State of New York] are in the hands of three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin, poor pasture for a term of years. Some of these impoverished farms, which seventy-five years ago produced from twenty to thirty bushels of wheat, on an average, per acre, now yield only from five to eight bushels. In an exceedingly interesting work ent.i.tled 'American Husbandry,' published in London in 1775, and written by an American, the following remarks may be found on page 98, vol. i.:--'Wheat, in many parts of the province, (New York,) yields a larger produce than is common in England. Upon good lands about Albany, where the climate is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon an acre, and reap from _twenty_ to _forty_; the latter quant.i.ty, however, is not often had, but from twenty to _thirty_ are common; and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in England, and much less in Scotland. This is owing to the _richness_ and _freshness_ of the land.'

"According to the State census of 1845, Albany county now produces only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers are on tide water and near the capital of the State, with a good home market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable fertilizers. Dutchess county, also on the Hudson River, produces an average of only five bushels per acre; Columbia, six bushels; Rensselaer, eight; Westchester, seven; which is higher than the average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands of England even with 'bad husbandry.'

"Fully to renovate the eight million acres of partially exhausted lands in the State of New York, will cost at least an average of twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred millions of dollars. It is not an easy task to replace all the bone-earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, and organized nitrogen in mould consumed in a field which has been unwisely cultivated fifty or seventy-five years. Phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere, and his _sub-soil_ is about the only resource of the husbandman after his surface-soil has lost most of its phosphates. The three hundred thousand persons that cultivate these eight million acres of impoverished soils annually produce less by twenty-five dollars each than they would if the land had not been injured.

"The aggregate of this loss to the State and the world is seven million five hundred thousand dollars per annum, or more than seven per cent. interest on what it would cost to renovate the deteriorated soils. There is no possible escape from this oppressive tax on labour of seven million five hundred thousand dollars, but to improve the land, or run off and leave it."--_Patent Office Report_, 1849

It is not slavery that produces exhaustion of the soil, but exhaustion of the soil that causes slavery to continue. The people of England rose from slavery to freedom as the land was improved and rendered productive, and as larger numbers of men were enabled to obtain subsistence from the same surface; and it was precisely as the land thus acquired value that they became free. Such, too, has been the case with every people that has been enabled to return to the land the manure yielded by its products, because of their having a market at home. On the contrary, there is no country in the world, in which men have been deprived, of the power to improve their land, in which slavery has not been maintained, to be aggravated in intensity as the land became more and more exhausted, as we see to have been the case in the West Indies. It is to this perpetual separation from each other that is due the poverty and weakness of the South. At the close of the Revolution, the now slave States contained probably 1,600,000 people, and those States contained about 120,000,000 of acres, giving an average of about eighty acres to each. In 1850, the population had grown to 8,500,000, scattered over more than 300,000,000 of acres, giving about forty acres to each. The consequence of this dispersion is that the productive power is very small, as is here seen in an estimate for 1850, taken from a Southern journal of high reputation:--[47]

Cotton............................. 105,600,000 Tobacco............................ 15,000,000 Rice............................... 3,000,000 Naval stores....................... 2,000,000 Sugar.............................. 12,396,150 Hemp............................... 695,840 138,691,990 -----------

If we now add for food an equal amount, and this is certainly much in excess of the truth...... 138,691,990 And for all other products..................... 22,616,020 ------------ We obtain................................... $300,000,000

as the total production of eight millions and a half of people, or about $35 per head. The total production of the Union in 1850 cannot have been short of 2500 millions; and if we deduct from that sum the above quant.i.ty, we shall have remaining 2150 millions as the product of fourteen millions and a half of Northern people, or more than four times as much per head. The difference is caused by the fact that at the North artisans have placed themselves near to the farmer, and towns and cities have grown up, and exchanges are made more readily, and the farmer is not to the same extent obliged to exhaust his land, and dispersion therefore goes on more slowly; and there is, in many of the States, an extensive demand for those commodities of which the earth yields largely, such as potatoes, cabbages, turnips, &c. &c.

With each step in the process of coming together at the North, men tend to become more free; whereas the dispersion of the South produces everywhere the trade in slaves of which the world complains, and which would soon cease to exist if the artisan could be brought to take his place by the side of the producer of food and cotton. Why he cannot do so may he found in the words of a recent speech of Mr. Cardwell, member of Parliament from Liverpool, congratulating the people of England on the fact that free trade had so greatly damaged the cotton manufacture of this country, that the domestic consumption was declining from year to year. In this is to be found the secret of the domestic slave trade of the South, and its weakness, now so manifest.

The artisan has been everywhere the ally of the farmer, and the South has been unable to form that alliance, the consequences of which are seen in the fact that it is always exporting men and raw materials, and exhausting its soil and itself: and the greater the tendency to exhaustion, the greater is the pro-slavery feeling. That such should be the case is most natural. The man who exhausts his land attaches to it but little value, and he abandons it, but he attaches much value to the slave whom he can carry away with him. The pro-slavery feeling made its appearance first in the period between 1830 and 1840. Up to 1832, there had existed a great tendency in Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky toward freedom, but that disappeared; and the reason why it did so may be seen in the greatly increased tendency to the abandonment of the older tobacco and cotton growing States, as here shown:--

1820. 1830. 1840. 1850.

----- ----- ----- ----- Total population: Virginia......... 1,065,379 1,211,405 1,239,797 1,424,863 South Carolina..... 502,741 581,185 594,398 668,247

Ratio of increase: Virginia..................... 13.6 2.3 15.2 South Carolina............... 15.6 2.3 12.4

With the increase in the export of slaves to the South, the negro population declined in its ratio of increase, whereas it has grown with the growth of the power of the slave to remain at home, as is here shown:--

1820. 1830. 1840. 1850.

----- ----- ----- ----- Total black population: 1,779,885 2,328,642 2,873,703 3,591,000 Ratio of increase........... 30 30.8 24 25

We see thus that the more the black population can remain at home, the more rapidly they increase; and the reason why such is the case is, that at home they are among their own people, by whom they have been known from infancy, and are of course better fed and clothed, more tenderly treated, and more lightly worked, with far greater tendency toward freedom. It would thence appear that if we desire to bring about the freedom of the negro, we must endeavour to arrest the domestic slave trade, and enable the slave and his master to remain at home; and to do this we must look to the causes of the difference in the extent of the trade in the periods above referred to. Doing this, we shall find that from 1820 to 1830 there was a decided tendency toward bringing the artisan to the side of the ploughman; whereas from 1833 to 1840 the tendency was very strong in the opposite direction, and so continued until 1842, at which time a change took place, and continued until near the close of the decennial period, when our present revenue system came fully into operation. The artisan has now ceased to come to the side of the planter. Throughout the country cotton and woollen mills and furnaces and foundries have been closed, and women and children who were engaged in performing the lighter labour of converting cotton into cloth are now being sold for the heavier labour of the cotton-field, as is shown by the following advertis.e.m.e.nt, now but a few weeks old:--

SALE OF NEGROES.--The negroes belonging to the Saluda Manufacturing Company were sold yesterday for one-fourth cash, the balance in one and two years, with interest, and averaged $599. Boys from 16 to 25 brought $900 to $1000.--_Columbia, (S. C.) Banner_, Dec. 31, 1852.

As a necessary consequence of this, the domestic slave trade is now largely increasing, as is shown by the following extract from a recent journal:--

"The emigration to the southern portion of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, during the past fall, has been unusually large, and the tide which flows daily through our streets indicates that the volume abates but little, if any. On the opposite bank of the river are encamped nearly fifty wagons, with probably not less than two hundred and fifty souls. Each night, for a fortnight, there have been, on an average, not less than twenty-five wagons encamped there; and notwithstanding two hand ferry-boats have been constantly plying between the sh.o.r.es, the hourly accession to the number makes the diminution scarcely perceptible."--_Little Rock. (Ark.) Gazette_, Dec. 3, 1852.

Had the member for Liverpool been aware that a decline in the tendency toward bringing the cotton-mill to the cotton-field was accompanied by increased exhaustion of the land, increased impoverishment, and increased inability to bring into action the rich soils of the older States, and that with each such step there arose an increased _necessity_ for the expulsion of the people of those States, accompanied by an increased sacrifice of life resulting from the domestic slave trade, he would certainly have hesitated before congratulating Parliament on an occurrence so hostile to the progress of freedom.

That the export of negroes, with its accompanying violation of the rights of parents and children, and with its natural tendency toward a total forgetfulness of the sanct.i.ty of the marriage tie, has its origin in the exhaustion of the land, there can be no doubt--and that that, in its turn, has its origin in the necessity for a dependence on distant markets, is quite as free from doubt. The man who must go to a distance with his products cannot raise potatoes, turnips, or hay. He must raise the less bulky articles, wheat or cotton and he must take from his land all the elements of which wheat or cotton is composed, and then abandon it. In addition to this, he must stake all his chances of success in his year's cultivation on a single crop; and what are the effects of this is seen in the following paragraph in relation to the wheat cultivation of Virginia in the last season:--

"Never did I know in this State such a destruction of the wheat crop; I have just returned from Albemarle, one of the best counties. The joint-worm, a new enemy of three year's known existence there, has injured every crop, and destroyed many in that and other counties both sides and along the Blue Ridge. I saw many fields that would not yield more than seed, and not a few from which not one peck per acre could be calculated upon. I saw more than one field without a head.

The most fortunate calculate upon a half crop only. Corn is backward on the lower James River, embracing my own farm. I have heard to-day from my manager that the caterpillar has made its appearance, and must in the late wheat do serious damage."

That State is not permitted to do any thing but grow wheat and tobacco, both of which she must export, and the larger the export the smaller are the returns, under the system of "unlimited compet.i.tion"

for the sale of raw products, and limited compet.i.tion for the purchase of manufactured ones, which it is the object of British policy to establish. Not only is Virginia limited in the application of her labour, but she is also greatly limited in the extent of her market, because of the unequal distribution of the proceeds of the sales of her products. The pound of tobacco for which the consumer pays 6s.

($1.44,) yields him less than six cents, the whole difference being absorbed by the people who stand between him and the consumer, and who contribute nothing toward the production of his commodity.[48]

Now, it is quite clear that if the consumer and he stood face to face with each other, he would receive all that was paid, and that while the one bought at lower prices, the other would sell at higher ones, and both would grow rich. The difficulty with him is that not only is his land exhausted, but he receives but a very small portion of the price paid for its products, and thus is he, like the labourer of Jamaica, exhausted by reason of the heavy taxation to which he is subjected for the support of foreign merchants and foreign governments. As a consequence of all this his land has little value, and he finds himself becoming poorer from year to year, and each year he has to sell a negro for the payment of the tax on his tobacco and his wheat to which he is thus subjected, until he has at length to go himself. If the reader desire to study the working of this system of taxation, he cannot do better than read the first chapter of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," containing the negotiation between Haley and Mr. Shelby for the transfer of Uncle Tom, resulting in the loss of his life in the wilds of Arkansas.

The more the necessity for exhausting land and for selling negroes, the cheaper, however, will be wheat and cotton. Uncle Tom might have remained at home had the powers of the land been maintained and had Virginia been enabled to avail herself of her vast resources in coal, iron ore, water-power, &c.; but as she could not do this, he had to go to Arkansas to raise cotton: and the larger the domestic slave trade, the greater must be the decline in the price of that great staple of the South. At no period was that trade so large as in that from 1830 to 1840, and the effects are seen in the following comparative prices of cotton:--

Crops, 1831 and 1832, average 10-1/2.

1841 and 1842, average 7.

The export of negroes declined between 1842 and 1850, and the consequence is that cotton has since maintained its price. With the closing of Southern mills the slave trade, is now again growing rapidly, and the consequences will be seen in a large decline in the price of that important product of Southern labour and land.

The reader will now observe that it was in the period from 1830 to 1840 that the tendency to emanc.i.p.ation disappeared--that it was in that period were pa.s.sed various laws adverse to the education of negroes--that it was in that period there was the greatest enlargement of the domestic slave trade--and the greatest decline in the price of cotton. Having remarked these things, and having satisfied himself that they, each and all, have their origin in the fact that the planter is compelled to depend on foreign markets and therefore to exhaust his land, he will be enabled to judge of the accuracy of the view contained in the following sentence :--

"The price of a negro on Red River varies with the price of cotton in Liverpool, and whatever tends to lower the value of the staple here, not only confers an inestimable advantage on our own manufacturing population, but renders slave labour less profitable, and therefore less permanent in Alabama."--_Prospective Review_, No. x.x.xii. 512.

It would be fortunate if philanthropy and pecuniary profit could thus be made to work together, but such unhappily is not the case. When men are enabled to come nearer to each other and combine their efforts, and towns arise, land acquires great value and gradually becomes divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his importance in the eye of his owner. When, however, men are forced to abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant owner. At death, the land cannot, under these circ.u.mstances, be divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such advertis.e.m.e.nts as the following are a necessary consequence of the system that looks to cheap wheat, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton.

HIGH PRICE OF NEGROES.--We extract the following from the Lancaster (S. C.) _Ledger_ of the 5th January last:--

We attended the sale of negroes belonging to the estate of the late S. Beekman, on the 22d of last month, and were somewhat astonished at the high price paid for negroes.

Negro men brought from $800 to $1000, the greater number at or near the latter price. One (a blacksmith) brought $1425.

We learn from the Winsboro _Register_, that on Monday, the 3d inst., a large sale of negroes was made by the Commissioner in Equity for Fairfleld district, princ.i.p.ally the property of James Gibson, deceased. The negroes were only tolerably likely, and averaged about $620 each. The sales were made on a credit of twelve months.--_Charleston (S. C.) Courier_.

The more the planter is forced to depend upon tobacco the lower will be its price abroad, and the more he must exhaust his land. The more rapid the exhaustion the more must be the tendency to emigrate. The more the necessity for depending exclusively on wheat, the greater the necessity for making a market for it by raising slaves for sale: and in several of the older Southern States the planter now makes nothing but what results from the increase of "stock."

Of all the exporters of food England is the largest, said a distinguished English merchant, in a speech delivered some years since. In some parts of that country it is manufactured into iron, and in others into cloth, in order that it may travel cheaply, and this is quite in accordance with the advice of Adam Smith. With a view, however, to prevent other nations from following in the course so strongly urged upon them by that great man, labour has been cheapened, and men and women, boys and girls, have been accustomed to work together in the same mine, and often in a state of _entire nudity_; while other, women and children have been compelled to work for fourteen or sixteen hours a day for six days in the week, and for small wages, in the mill or workshop--and this has been done in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson, who, from his place in Parliament, told his countrymen that in order "to give capital a fair remuneration, _labour must be kept down_"--that is, the labourer must be deprived of the power to determine for himself for whom he would work, or what should be his reward. It was needed, as was then declared by another of the most eminent statesmen of Britain, "that the manufactures of all other nations should be strangled in their infancy," and such has from that day to the present been the object of British policy. Hence it is that England is now so great an exporter of food manufactured into cloth and iron. The people of Ma.s.sachusetts manufacture their grain into fish, cloth, and various other commodities, with a view to enable it cheaply to travel to market.

Those of Illinois, unable to convert their corn into coal or iron, find themselves obliged to manufacture it into pork. The Virginian would manufacture his corn and his wheat into cloth, or into coal and iron, if he could; but this he cannot do, although close to the producer of cotton, and occupying a land abounding in all the raw materials of which machinery is composed; and having, too, abundant labour power that runs to waste. Why he cannot do it is that England follows the advice of Mr. Huskisson, and cheapens labour with a view to prevent other nations from following the advice of Adam Smith. The whole energies of the State are therefore given to the raising of tobacco and corn, both of which must go abroad, and as the latter cannot travel profitably in its rude state, it requires to be manufactured, and the only branch of manufacture permitted to the Virginian is that of negroes, and hence it is that their export is so large, and that cotton is so cheap.

Widely different would be the course of things could he be permitted to employ a reasonable portion of his people in the development of the vast resources of the State--opening mines, erecting furnaces, smelting iron, making machinery, and building mills. Fewer persons would then raise corn and more would be employed in consuming it, and the price at home would then rise to a level with that in the distant market, and thus would the land acquire value, while the cost of raising negroes would be increased. Towns would then grow up, and exchanges would be made on the spot, and thus would the planter be enabled to manure his land. Labour would become more productive, and there would be more commodities to be given in exchange for labour; and the more rapid the increase in the amount of production the greater would be the tendency toward enabling the labourer to determine for whom he would work and what should be his reward.

Population would then rapidly increase, and land would become divided, and the little black cultivator of cabbages and potatoes would be seen taking the place of the poor white owner of large bodies of exhausted land, and thus would the negro tend toward freedom as his master became enriched. Nothing of this kind is, however, likely to take place so long as the Virginian shall continue of the opinion that the way to wealth lies in the direction of taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it--nor, perhaps, so long as the people of England shall continue in the determination that there shall be but one workshop in the world, and carry that determination into effect by "keeping labour down," in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson.

The tendency to the abandonment of the older States is now probably greater than it has ever been, because their people have ceased to build mills or furnaces, and every thing looks to a yet more perfect exhaustion of the soil. The more they abandon the land the greater is the anxiety to make loans in England for the purpose of building roads; and the more numerous the loans the more rapid is the flight, and the greater the number of negroes brought to market.

A North Carolina paper informs its readers that--

"The trading spirit is fully up. A few days since Mr. D. W. Bullock sold to Messrs. Wm. Norfleet, Robert Norfleet, and John S. Dancy, plantation and 18 negroes for $30,000. Mr. R. R. Bridges to Wm. F.

Dancy, 6 acres near town for $600. At a sale in Wilson, we also understand, negro men with no extra qualifications sold as high as $1225."--_Tarborough Southerner_.

A South Carolina editor informs his readers that

"At public auction on Thursday, Thomas Ryan & Son sold fifteen likely negroes for $10,365, or an average of $691. Three boys, aged about seventeen, brought the following sums, viz. $1065, $1035, $1010, and two at $1000--making an average of $1022. Capers Heyward sold a gang of 109 negroes in families. Two or three families averaged from $1000 to $1100 for each individual; and the entire sale averaged $550. C.

G. Whitney sold two likely female house servants--one at $1000, the other at $1190."--_Charleston Courier_.

Limited, as the people of the old States are more and more becoming, to the raising of "stock" as the sole source of profit, need we be surprised to see the pro-slavery feeling gaining ground from day to day, as is here shown to be the case?