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Selections: The Slave Power

Selections: The Slave Power image
Parent Issue
Day
30
Month
October
Year
1843
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

rrom an address to the Voters of the Second Congressional District of Ohio. We have frequently declared before you that a single interest, represented by acomparatively small body of men, rules and has ruled for many years in the State and Federal Governments. This is the slaveholding interest, and its political influence we have usually termed the "Slave Power." We cannot insult your patriotism by an argument to show that a small body of men should not control a Government founded for and by the people; our object will be simply to demónstrate the fact. As we assert that slaveholdcrs govern us, let us first inquire into their numbers. It is a vulgar error to suppose that every white man in the Southern States is the owner of slavesT The number of owners is very small, compared with the free adult population of those States, and insignificant compared with that of the whole union. - No statistics give the number precisely; but as the census returns state the number of slaves, we may, aided by our knowledge of Southern Society and agriculture, obtain, with convenient certainty, the number of masters. The great staples of the South are cultivated on large plantations demanding, each of them, a large gang of negro laborers. Many of you have seen gangs of more than a thousand, on single plantations. Gen. Wade Hampton is said to have had this number, at least, on his estáte on the banks of the Mississippi. Mr. Pollock, of North Carolina, died recently, leaving, according to the newspapers, jifteen hundred. Dr. Mercer, of Adams county, Mississippi. has an immense number; and being religiously inclined, he has crected for their use, if we may rely on the Gospel Messenger of August, 1842, a "plantation church," costingover $30,000; and keepsan Episcopal Minister employee! among them, at a salary of $1,200. In the ':slave-raising" States, many of' the proprietors own large numbers. Mr. Carroll, of Baltimore, a late President of the Colonization Society, has been repeatedly referred to by the papers of that Society as the owner of a thousand. In the fertile farming Districts of theSouth, the slaves are gathered in large numbers, and each proprietor owns a large "gang;" while in the hilly or barren Districts, slave labor being unprofitable, there are very few. In the adjoining state of Kentucky, there are scarcely any slaves in the hilly county of Grant, while the fertile Fayette is crowded with them. In South Carolina, what are cal led '!the Sane hill counties," covering nearly half the State, are comparatively unproductive anc contain very few slaves; while the rich counties on the coast and in the interior, the ':Sea-island cotton" counties among them, contain but few whitcs in comparison with the slaves. In Georgetown District in that State, there are more than 30 slaves to one grown white male; so that, i f we take the proportion of masters to the wholc number of grown white males as one" to five, each master would own more than one hundred and fifty slaves. In hilly Western Virginia, and Eastern Tennessee, there are few negroes; they are owned in other parts of those States. In Brook county, Virginia, the proportion of whites to slaves is as eighly-jive to one; in Yancy, North Carolina, as twenly-two to one; in Union. Georgia, as thirty-five to one; in De Kalb, Alabama, as sixleen to one; in Fentress, Tennessee. asforty-thrce lo one; in Morgan, Kentucky. as scvenlyfour to one; in Taney, Missouri, as eighty to one; in Searcey, Arkansas, as thrce hundred and eleven to one; while in other counties of the same States, the proportion is reversed: the slaves are numeroüs and the whites iew. With these facts before us, we shoulc be sustained by most of you in founding our calculations on the basis of twenty slaves to cach owner; which, as the number of slaves is 2,487,113, would make the number of owners a little over one hundred and twenly-four ihousand. But as we wish to nvoid the charge, from any opponent however embittered, of exaggeration, we will reduco this average number of twenty to less than thirteen, so as to make in round numbers, two hundred ihousand slaveholders. These are not all voters, many of them are minors, ali&ns or women. The slaveholding voters, then, constitute but a small portion of the four millions and a half of free persons in the slave States, ' and are not as numeroüs by somo fifty thousand as tlje voters of our own State of Ohio.But the slaveholders control the policy of their own States. A glance at Southern Society and institutions will make the manner of effecting this perfectly )lain. Tliey liave all the influence which every where attaches itself to wealth; for the wealth of their States is concentrated in heir hands. They have, too, all the influence of superior intclligence. Eilucating their own children at the Colleges of the North, he High Schools and Academies of the South, or by private tutors at iheir own mansions, they establish no common schools for their poor neighbors, the lajoring whites. Chancellor Harper, of South Carolina, advocates slavery in the jiterary Messenger, of October, 1838, on he ground that it exempts slaveholders from bodily labor, and therefore he says they "have leisure for intellectual pursuits, and the means of obtaining a liberal education." But among the poor nonslaveholders there reigns the most deplorable ignorance. In 1837, Governor Clarke, in his message to the Kcntucky Legislature, says, "By the computation of those most familiar with the subject, onethird of the adult population of the State are unable to write their names." Governor Campbell mak es a confession equally extraordinary, in a report to the Virginia Legislature. He states that it appeared from the returns of 98 clerks, that of 4614 applications formarriage licenses in 1837, 1047 were made by men unable to write their names. By the last census, there are fewer scholars at the public charge in the thirteen slave States than in Ohto alone! They have 35,580; Ohio has 51,812. Kentucky, just across the river from us, has 429! The Richmonc Compiler contains an interesting summary from the census returns. From this, i appears that the persons who cannot rea and write are in Connecticut, one tojive hundred and sixty-cight; in Vermont, one to J vur hundred and sevenly-three; in New Hampshire, one to thre.e hundred and ten, while in Louisiana, the most intelligen slave State, it is one to thirty-eight and a half; and in North Carolina, it runs up to one to sevenl No wonder then that an united and educated aristocracy rule the masses of the South, who are kept in ig norance by its political and social influ ence. No wonder that, in the South, the politicians lead the people; not the people the politicians, as in the North. A third element of the political powe of slaveholders is the vast conslitutiona privileges they enjoy, procured by thei united action, wealth and intelligence. - In all the slave States with, as we believe but one exception, slave property is rep resented in the Legislatures. This rule may give a District composed of one hun dred voters with their slaves as many rep resentatives as another of five thousanc free voters. It enables Eastern Virgin ia, with a miserable numerical minoritv of voters, to control Western Virginia with her large free voting population. In addition to this, sorae of the States grant the privilege to a slaveholder of voting in every District in which he ma} own land. Some of the large proprie tors, therefore, may have a dozen votes. In all of them it is difïïcult for a non slaveholder to obtain ofRce, but in some he is made incompetent by the fundamen tal law. For instance, in South Carolina he is excluded from the Legislature bj the Constitution. The qualification of a Representative is made, the ownership o such a large Real Estáte as makes neces sary the ownership of slaves, or else, to use the language of that instrument, "of a settled freehold estáte of five hundrec acres of land and ten negroes." By this it is made impossible for any other inter est than that of the planters to be represented in the State Councils. The lab ric of South Carolina aristocracy is a. compact and as well protected by law as the English nobility.The onormous political privileges we have mentioned are rendered overwhelming engines against the non-slaveholding classes when backed by the modern "gerrymandering" which, though used in the North by Whigs against Democrats. and Democrats against Whigs, is used in the South to crush in the germ the spirit of Freedom, and is carried to the most oppressrve extreme. To besatisfiedofthis, let any one examine the apportionment laws of South Carolina, which giye the Representative majority to a small minority the planting counties. These laws are aided by others requiring property qualifications. and by the tone of Southern Society which has no tendency to inspire the laboriug whites with an interest in public affairs. They do not go to the polls as we of the North do. Examine the returns of the votos at the last Presidential election, if you doubt this, and compare tliem with the census returns. You will find the number of white males in the slave States andtorios over 20 years of age, was 1,017, 07, while the vote for President, at that xciting election, was only 682,583 - Vith these 682,583 votes, the South clecod 126 Presidential electors; that is, one lector to 5,935 voters. The Free States gave 1,726,737 votes, and" chose 168 electors; that is one decor to 10,278 voters. Two Northern voers had a very little more politieel powr therefore, than one Southern. About 00,000 Southern whites should have oted, who did not. To what cause can ou attribute this, if not to those we as-ign? The natural consequence of the excluion of the laboring whites of the South rom opportunities of education and from iolitical privileges, is their social degraation. They are little esteemed by their ordly neighbors, and are known among aves by the name of ':poor white folks." hose of them whose manliness of spirit s broken down by years of endurance of contempt and insult, speak and act more ike the serfs of Russian nobles than free om sons of America. To aid this class of our fellow citizens to recover their lost ights, is one object we stand pledged to accomplish. The non-slaveholders of the South will be, in a few years, the strongest wing of the Liberty party. They have wrongs To stir a fever ín the blood of age, And makean infant's sinews strong as stee!.' Southern newspapers teem with abuse of white men who labor for their subsistence. Robert "Wickliffe, a prominent Kentucky politician, and a member oi a large and influential family, says in a speech published in the Louisville Advertiser, "Gentlemen want to drive out the black population that they may obtain white negroes in their place. White Negroes have this advantage over black negroes, they can be converted into voters; and the men who live upon the sweat of their brow, and pay them but a dependent and scanty subsistence, can, i: able to keep ten thousand of them in em ployment, come up to the polls and change the destiny of the country. - "How improved will be our condition when we have such wMte negroes as per form the servile labors of Europe, of olc England, and he would add now, of New England, when our body servants, anc our cart drivers, and our street sweepers are ichite negroes instead of black. - Where will be the independence, the prouc spirit, the chivalry of Kentucky then?" For these vaporing, Bobadil speeches the "white negroes" about Lexington re fused to vote for Mr. Wickliffpat the en suing election, and he was left at home to nurse the "chivalrous" spirit. Benjamin WatkinsLeigh, long a prom inent Whig, said in the Virginia Conven tion of 1829. "Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily subsistence can never enter into political affairs, they never do, nëver will, never can." Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, in a Congressional speech of January 21 1836, said, in support of the proposition that the capitalists of a country should always own the laborers, "If laborers ever obtain thgapolitical power of a country, it is in fact in a state of revolution."Gov. McDuffie, in his celebrated antifreelabor message of 1836, said "where these offices [i. e. hard work,] are performed by memhers of the politica! commwiily, a dangerous element is obviously introduced into the body politie." Chacellor Harper, in the wcfrk before quoted, opposes the eduention of laborers, and asks triumphantly, "Would you do a benefit to the horse or ox by giving him a cultivated understanding, a fine feeling? Tlns, then. is the spirit of the "Slave Power;" - arrogant, overbearing and cruel, the deadliest foe to our free institutions, and the genius of Republicanism. Heaven protect them from its inroads!

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Subjects
Signal of Liberty
Old News