The Impending Crisis of the South

valuable matter, the product of other pens than our own, but which, having collected at considerable expense, we had hoped

we will give an expl

AS NOT PUBLISHE

whole of it would have been written and published there, but for the f

dbill or other paper of an inflammatory character, and having a tendency to excite discontent or stir up insurrection amongst the people of color of this State, or of either of the other States or Territories of the United States, or knowingly to carry or send, or to aid in the carrying or sending the same for circulation amongst the inhabitants of either of

n that to which the negroes themselves are accustomed. What wonder is it that there is no native literature in the South? The South can never have a literature of her own until after slavery shall have been abolished. Slaveholders are too lazy an

ACTS AGAIN

s, Mr. DeBow has compiled the followin

bolition of the traffic in 1808. On the 2nd of March, 1807, Congress passed an act against importations of Africans into the United States after January 1st, 1808. An act in Great Britain in 1807 also made the slave trade unlawful. Denmark forbid the int

r Constitution, (1780). In 1784 and 1797, Connecticut provided for a gradual extinction of slavery. In Rhode Island, after 1784, no person could be born a slave. The Constitutions of Vermont and New Hampshire, respectively, abolished slavery. In New York it was pro

nd with good results everywhere, except two or three West India islands, where the negro population was greatly in excess of the whites; and even

anter to the relative advantages of Free over Slave Labor. Listen to Charles Petty

tion Act of August 1st, 1838, when they all became free. I now hire a portion of those slaves, the best and cheapest of course, as you hire men in the United States. The average number which I employ is 100, with which I cult

s, be regarded as an ill-advised effort; but, seeing that its abolition has worked well in at least fourteen-fifteenths of all the cases on record, the fact becomes obvious that it

RIENDS OF

ry men are working for the Union and for the good of the whole world; proslavery men are working for the disunion of the States, and for the good of nothing

ere introduce an extract from one of his editorial articles in a late number of the New York Tribune-a faithful advocate of freedom, whose circulat

conviction of the South of its injustice and mischief. Its extension into new Territories we determinedly resist, not by any means from ill will to the South, but under the impulse of good will to all mankind. We believe the establishment of slavery in Kansas or any other Western Territory would prolong its existence in Virginia and Maryland, by widening the market and increasing the price of slaves, and thereby increasing the profits of slave-breeding, and the consequent incitement thereto. Those who urge that slavery would not go into Kansas if permitted, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that it has gone into Missouri, lying in exactly the same latitude, an

ial ascendancy of the North, with the profits and facilities thence accruing, accounts for the striking preponderance of the North. In vain we insist that slavery is the cause of this very commercial ascen

ousins "do not hate the South, war on the South, nor seek to ruin the South;" on the contrary, they love our particular part of the nation, a

HTFUL-SIGNS O

aphically described in the following dolef

whole country, it might have been supposed that we could have influence upon the councils of foreign States; but we are never taken into contemplation. It might have been supposed that England, bound to us by the cords upon which depend the existence of four millions of her subjects, would be considerate of our feelings; but receiving her cotton from the No

calling up the merchants of the country to a distribution of the cargo, the merchants of the South are hurried off to make a distribution elsewhere. In virtue of our relations to a greater system, we have little development of internal interests; receiving supplies from the great centre, we have made little effort to supply ourselves. We support the makers o

ained; the books which expose the evils of our institution are even read with avidity beyond our limits, but the ideas that are turned to the condition of the South are intensely provincial. If, as things now are, a man should rise with all the genius of Shakspeare, or Dickens, or Fielding, or of all the three combined, and speak from the South, he would not receiv

cey's Confessions of an opium eater are nothing to it. A distinguished writer on medical jurisprudence informs us that "the knowledge of the disease is h

FREEDOM IN

ul, the work go

f Universal Emancipation has been proclaimed to the world, and nothing, save Deity himself, can possibly reverse it. To connive at the perpetuation of slavery is to disobey the com

portentous clouds of slavery. The Wellsburg (Va.) Herald, an independent paper, referring to the vote of thirteen Democrats from that sectio

we are thereby encouraged and built up in the confidence that there are oth

ourse of a communication in a more re

for no other purpose than to be ready to quell insurrection among the slaves; this is paid for out of the public treasury annually. This standing army is called the public guard, but it is no less a standing army always kept up. We will quote from the acts of 1856 the expense of these two items to the State, on the 23d and 24th pages of the acts:-'To pay for slaves executed and trans

e publishes the following as his

e following platform as our platform on this question, from which we nev

the General Gover

f the fugiti

the Nebraska

slave te

the District of Columbia, or the removal o

Baltimore

o not think that either side would consent to dissolve the Union about the negro population-a population whi

papers in the country, published

ssary to the constitutional majority. When the subject again came up, in 1787, Mr. Jefferson was Minister to France, and the famous ordinance of that year was adopted, prohibiting slavery North and West of the Ohio river. Between 1784 and 1787, the strides of slavery westward, into Tennessee and Kentucky, had become too considerable to admit of the policy of exclusion; and besides those regions were then integral parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and of course they could not be touched without the consent of those States. In 1820, another effort was made to arrest the progress of slavery, which threatened t

itself into new regions, than belongs to freedom, for the reason that it has no internal vitality. It cannot live if cir

. Brown, of St. Louis, proved himself a hero, a p

ntry for a few slaveholders, to the exclusion of thousands upon thousands of the sinewy sons of toil. The time will come, and perhaps very soon, when the people will rule for their own benefit and not for that of a class which, numerically speaking, is insignificant. I stand here in the midst of the assembled Legislature of Missouri to avow myself

, entitled itself to the favorable regard of every true lover of liberty, by ta

ithout any violation of vested rights, Missouri, in a few years subsequent to its consummation, would be the foremost State on the American continent. Population would flow in from all sides were the barrier of

at its bidding as the sea will give up its dead; and the soil would bloom more luxuriantly than if it drank the dews of Hermon nightly; ten thousand keels would vex our rivers, towns along their banks would grow into cities, and St. Louis would soon unite in itself the attribut

time, if danger there be, and avert it, than wait until it becomes formidable. One thing is certain, or history is no guide: that is, that slavery cannot be perpetuated anywhere. An agitation now would be the effort of the social system to throw off a disease which had not touched its vitals; hereafter it would be the struggle for life with a m

laves, and England and France theirs suddenly; and we have ye

ion held for Mayor of St. Louis, in April, 1857, the Abolition candidate, himself a native of Virginia, was triumphant

uis, in which the Emancipation party triump

itted into the confederacy. And why are they so determined? Because they believe, and not only believe, but see and know, that slavery is an unmitigated curse to the soil that sustains it. They know this, because they see every free State outstripping every slave State in all the elements that

ests. Chief amongst those papers are the St. Louis (Mo.) Democrat, the National Era, published in Washing

ING IN THE R

hem to do. God has scattered the seeds of knowledge throughout every portion of the South, and they are, as might have been expected, beginning to take root in her fertile soil. The following extracts

awhile previous to the last

know that our boasted liberty of speech is a myth, an abstraction. To see a poor professor crushed under the feet of the tyrannical magnates of slavery, for daring to speak the honest sentiments of his heart. Where is fanaticism

, 1856, a friend who resides in the

the present governors of three neighboring States-three treasonable disturbers of the public peace, who, under the circumstances, should, in my opinion, have been shot dead upon the spot! I have each of their names noted down in my memorandum, and I shall certainly die unsatisfied, if I do not live to hea

in western North Carolina, under date of

her people's 'property'-niggers. Why should I thus be deprived of sleep that the slaveholder may slumber? I frankly acknowledge my indebtedness to you for opening my eyes upon this subject. The more I think and see of slavery the more I detest it. * * * I am becoming restless, and have been debating within my own mind whether I had not better emigrate to a free State. * * * If I live,

te of April 7,

. I would indeed be rejoiced to have an opportunity to do something to relieve the South of the awful curse. Fear not that you will meet with no sympathizers in the South.

w that the millennium of freedom is rapidly dawning throughout the benighted regions of slavery. Covet

E POOR WHITES

stem of African slavery which entails unutterable miseries on the superior race. It is quite impossible, however, to describe accurately the deplorable ignorance and squalid poverty of the class to which we refer. The serfs of Russia have reason to congratulate them

ess delivered before the South

ple are wholly neglected, and are suffered to while away an existence in a state but one step in advance of the Indian of the forest. It is an evil of vast magnitude, and nothing but a change in public sentiment will effect its cure. These people must be brought into daily contact with the rich and intelligent-they must be stimulated to mental action, and taught to appreciate education and the comforts of civilized life; and this, we believe, may be effected only by the introduction of ma

he State, to have crowds of these people around you, seeking employment at half the compensation given to o

he a

nth in which he has not, some part of the time, been stinted for meat. Many a mother is there who will tell you that her children are but scantily provided with bread, and much more scantily with meat; and, if they be clad with comfortable raiment, it is at t

ina," published some time ago in DeBow's Revi

ould grow out of the introduction of such establishments among us. * * * The poor man has a vote as well as the rich man, and in our State the number of the former will largely overbalance the latter. So long as these poor but industrious people

tures, the Hon. J. H. Lumpki

-clothed, and ignorant population-without Sabbath Schools, or any other kind of instruction, mental or moral, or without any just appreciation of character-will be inj

ton and Wool Factories at the South

2 a week for women, beside board, while in Tennessee the average compensation fo

ered in Congress several years ago, Mr.

se one hundred per cent. cheaper. In the upper parts of the State, the labor of either a free man or a slave, including board, clothing, &c., can be obtained for fr

d (Va.) Dis

factured in Richmond. What a great addition it would be to the means of employment! How many boys and females wo

leans, writing in D

s to produce demoralization. The superior grades of female labor may be considered such as imply a necessity for education on the part of the employee, while the menial class is generally regarded as of the

to "have negroes around," and there are, we are grieved to say, many non-slaveholding-whites, (lickspittles,) who, in order to retain on their premises a hired slave whom

average of about $115 per annum, including board, clothing, and medical attendance. Free white men and slaves were in the employ of the North Carolina Railroad Company; the former, whose services, in our opinion, were at least twice as valuable as the services of the latter, received only $12 per month each; the masters of the latter received $16 per month for every slave so employed. Industrious, tidy white girls, from sixteen to twenty years of age, had much difficulty in hiring thems

an average, about one hundred per cent. higher there than it is in the slave States. This is anot

any one time. Thousands of them die at an advanced age, as ignorant of the common alphabet as if it had never been invented. All are more or less impressed with a belief in witches, ghosts, and supernatural signs. Few are exempt from h

ly a publication of any kind devoted to their interests. They are now completely under the domination of the oligarchy, and it is madness t