Chapter III: Industry and Enterprise

In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor. Hence multitudes will be without regular and profitable employment, and be condemned to poverty and numberless privations. The very advertisements in your newspapers show that, for a vast proportion of the comforts and conveniences of life, you are dependent on Northern manufacturers and mechanics. You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged. The great staple of the South is cotton; and we have no desire to undervalue its importance. It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing. Cotton is the product of slave labor, and its profits at home are confined almost exclusively to the slaveholders. Yet on account of this article, we hear frequent vaunts of the agricultural riches of the South. With the exception of cotton, it is difficult to distinguish your agricultural products arising from slaves, and from free labor. But admitting, what we know is not the fact, that _all_ the other productions of the soil are raised _exclusively_ by free labor, we learn from the census, that the agricultural products of the North exceed those of the South, cotton excepted, $226,219,714. Here then we have an appalling proof of the paralyzing influence of slavery on the industry of the whites.

In every community a large portion of the inhabitants are debarred from drawing their maintenance directly from the cultivation of the earth. Other and lucrative employments are reserved for them. If the slaveholders chiefly engross the soil, let us see how you are compensated by the encouragement afforded to mechanical skill and industry.

In 1839 the Secretary of the Treasury reported to Congress,

that the tonnage of vessels built in the United States was 120,988
Built in the slave States and Territories 23,600

Or less than one-fifth of the whole! But the difference is still more striking, when we take into consideration the comparative _value_ of the shipping built in the two regions:

In the free States the value is $6,311,805
In the slave do. 704,291[6]

[6] See American Almanac for 1843, page 153.

It would be tedious and unprofitable to compare the results of the different branches of manufacture carried on at the North and the South. It is sufficient to state that, according to the census, the value of the manufactures

In the free States are $334,139,690
In the slave States 83,935,742

Having already compared Ohio and Kentucky in reference to population and education, we will pursue the comparison as to agricultural and mechanical industry. On account of contiguity, and similarity of extent, soil and climate, no two States can perhaps be so aptly contrasted for the purpose of illustrating the influence of slavery. It should also be borne in mind that Kentucky can scarcely be called a cotton State, having in 1840 raised only 607,456 lbs. of that article. Hence the deficiency of agriculture and other products in Kentucky arises, not from a peculiar species of cultivation, but solely from the withering effects of slavery.

_Ohio._ _Kentucky._

Wool, 3,685,315 lbs. 1,786,842
Wheat, 16,571,661 bushels 4,803,152
Hay, 1,022,037 tons 88,306
Fulling mills, 205 5
Printing-offices, 159 34
Tanneries, 862 387
Commercial houses in foreign trade, 53 5
Value of machinery manufactured, $875,731 $46,074

In one species of manufacture the South apparently excels the North, but unfortunately it is in appearance only. Of 9657 distilleries in the United States, no less than 7665 were found in the slave States and Territories; but for want of skill and capital these yield 1992 gallons less than the other.

Where there is so much ignorance and idleness, we may well suppose that the inventive faculties will be but little exercised; and accordingly we find that of the 545 patents granted for new inventions in 1846, only 80 were received by the citizens of the slave States. We have thus, fellow-citizens, offered you the testimony of figures, as to the different state of society under freedom and slavery; suffer us now to present you pictures of the two regions, drawn not by abolitionists, but by Southern artists, in unguarded hours. Mr. Clowney, of South Carolina, thus portrayed his native State, in the ardor of debate on the floor of Congress:

"Look at South Carolina now, with her houses deserted and
falling to decay; her once fruitful fields worn out and
abandoned for want of timely improvement or skilful cultivation;
and her thousands of acres of inexhaustible lands, still
promising an abundant harvest to the _industrious_ husbandman,
lying idle and neglected. In the interior of the State where I
was born, and where I now live, although a country possessing
all the advantages of soil, climate and health, abounding in
arable land, unreclaimed from the first rude state of nature,
there can now be found many neighborhoods where the population
is too sparse to support a common elementary school for
children. Such is the deplorable condition of one of the oldest
members of this Union, that dates back its settlement more than
a century and a half, while other States, born as it were but
yesterday, already surpass what Carolina is or ever has been, in
the happiest and proudest day of her prosperity."

This gentleman chose to attribute the decline of South Carolina to the tariff; rather than to the obvious cause, that one-half of the PEOPLE of South Carolina are poor, ignorant, degraded SLAVES, and the other half suffering in all their faculties and energies, from a moral pestilence which they insanely regard as a blessing and not a curse. Surely it is not owing to the tariff, that this ancient member of the Union has 20,615 white citizens over twenty years of age who do not know their letters; while Maine, with double her population, has only 3,241.

Now look upon a very different picture. Mr. Preston, of South Carolina, not long since delivered a speech at Columbia in reference to a proposed rail-road. In this speech, in order to stimulate the efforts of the friends of the road, he indulged in the following strain:

"No Southern man can journey (as he had lately done) through the
Northern States, and witness the prosperity, the industry, the
public spirit which they exhibit--the sedulous cultivation of
all those arts by which life is rendered comfortable and
respectable--without feelings of deep sadness and shame as he
remembers _his own neglected and desolate home_. There, no
dwelling is to be seen abandoned--not a farm uncultivated. Every
person and every thing performs a part towards the grand result;
and the whole land is covered with fertile fields, with
manufactories, and canals, and rail-roads, and edifices, and
towns, and cities. We of the South are mistaken in the character
of these people, when we think of them only as pedlars in horn
flints and bark nutmegs. Their energy and enterprise are
directed to all objects great and small within their reach. The
number of rail-roads and other modes of expeditious
intercommunication knit the whole country into a closely
compacted mass, through which the productions of commerce and of
the press, the comforts of life, and the means of knowledge, are
universally diffused; while the close intercourse of travel and
of business makes all neighbors, and promotes a common interest
and a common sympathy. How different the condition of these
things in the South! _Here_ the face of the country wears the
aspect of premature old age and decay. NO IMPROVEMENT IS SEEN
GOING ON, nothing is done for posterity. No man thinks of
anything beyond the present moment."

Yet this same Mr. Preston, thus sensitively alive to the superior happiness and prosperity of the free States, declared in the United States Senate, "Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, if we can catch him we will try him, and notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments of the earth, including the Federal Government, we will HANG him."[7] In other words, the slaveholders, rather than part with their slaves, are ready to murder, with all the formalities of law, the very men who are laboring to confer on them the envied blessings of the North.

[7] We are well aware that Mr. Preston has denied, what no one
asserted, that he had said an abolitionist, if he came into
South Carolina, would be executed by Lynch law. He used the
words we have quoted. (See "New York Journal of Commerce,"
Jan. 6th, 1838).