Chapter IV: Feelings of the Slaveholders Towards the Laboring Classes

Whenever the great mass of the laboring population of a country are reduced to beasts of burden, and toil under the lash, "bodily labor," as Chancellor Harper expresses it, must be disreputable, from the mere influence of association. Hence you know _white_ laborers at the South are styled "mean whites." At the North, on the contrary, labor is regarded as the proper and commendable means of acquiring wealth; and our most influential men would in no degree suffer in public estimation, for holding the plough, or even repairing the highways. Hence no poor man is deterred from seeking a livelihood by honest labor from a dread of personal degradation. The different light in which labor is viewed at the North and the South is one cause of the depression of industry in the latter.

Another cause is the ever-wakeful jealousy of your aristocracy. They fear the PEOPLE; they are alarmed at the very idea of power and influence being possessed by any portion of the community not directly interested in slave property. Visions of emancipation, of agrarianism, and of popular resistance to their authority, are ever floating in their distempered and excited imaginations. They know their own weakness, and are afraid you should know it also. Hence it is their policy to keep down the "mean whites." Hence their philippics against the lower classes. Hence their constant comparison of the laborers of the North, with their own slaves; and hence, in no small degree, the absence among you of those institutions which confer upon the poor that knowledge which is _power_. Do you deem these assertions uncharitable? Listen to their own declarations:

"We believe the servitude which prevails in the South far
preferable to that of the _North_, or in Europe. Slavery will
exist in all communities. There is a class which may be
nominally free, but they will be virtually
_Slaves_."--_Mississippian, July 6th, 1838._

"Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily
subsistence can never enter into political affairs: they never
do, never will, never can."--_B. W. Leigh in Virginia
Convention, 1829._

"All society settles down into a classification of capitalists
and laborers. The former will _own_ the latter, either
collectively through the government, or individually in a state
of domestic servitude, as exists in the Southern States of this
confederacy. If LABORERS ever obtain the political power of a
country, it is in fact in a state of REVOLUTION. The capitalists
north of Mason and Dixon's line, have precisely the same
interest in the labor of the country, that the capitalists of
England have in their labor. Hence it is that they must have a
strong federal government (!) _to control_ the labor of the
nation. But it is precisely the reverse with us. We have already
not only a right to the proceeds of our laborers, but we OWN a
_class of laborers_ themselves. But let me say to gentlemen who
represent the great class of capitalists in the North--beware
that you do not drive us into a separate system; for if you do,
as certain as the decrees of heaven, you will be compelled to
_appeal to the sword to maintain yourselves at home_. It may not
come in your day; but your children's children will be covered
with the blood of domestic factions, and will see _a plundering
mob contending for power and conquest_."--_Mr. Pickens, of South
Carolina, in Congress, 21st Jan., 1836._

So the way to prevent _plundering_ mobs, is to enslave the poor! We shall see presently, how far this expedient has been successful in preventing _murdering_ mobs.

"In the very nature of things there must be classes of persons
to discharge all the different offices of society, from the
highest to the lowest. Some of these offices are regarded as
_degrading_, although they must and will be performed. Hence
those manifest forms of dependent servitude which produce a
sense of superiority in the masters or employers, and of
inferiority on the part of the servants. Where these offices are
performed by _members of the political community_, a DANGEROUS
ELEMENT is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence the
alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian
legislation, which is beginning to be manifest in the older
States, where UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE _prevails without_ DOMESTIC
SLAVERY.

"In a word, the institution of domestic slavery supersedes the
_necessity_ of AN ORDER OF NOBILITY, AND ALL THE OTHER
APPENDAGES OF A HEREDITARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT."--_Governor
M'Duffie's Message to the South Carolina Legislature, 1836._

"We regard SLAVERY _as the most safe and stable basis for free
institutions in the world_. It is impossible with us, that the
conflict can take place between labor and capital, which makes
it so difficult to establish and maintain free institutions in
all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions
do not exist. Every plantation is a little community with the
master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united
interests of capital and labor, _of which he is the common
representative_."--(Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, in the U. S.
Senate, Jan. 10th, 1840.)

"We of the South have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to
congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among
us, which excludes the POPULACE which in effect rules some of
our Northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever
slavery does not exist--a populace made up of the dregs of
Europe, and the most worthless portion of the native
population."--(_Richmond Whig_, 1837.)

"Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a
cultivated understanding, a fine feeling? So far as the MERE
LABORER has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspiration of a
freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid,
servile, _laborious_ offices to be performed, is it not better
that there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to
perform them?

"Odium has been cast upon our legislation, on account of its
forbidding the elements of education being communicated to
slaves. But in truth what injury is done them by this? _He who
works during the day with his hands_, does not read in the
intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement of
his mind, or the exception is so very rare as scarcely to need
the being provided for."--(Chancellor Harper of South
Carolina.--_Southern Literary Messenger_.)

This same gentleman delivered an oration on the 4th of July, 1840, reviewing the principles of the two great political parties, and although he supported Mr. Van Buren's administration, in consideration of its devotion to the slave interest, he frankly inquires:--

"Is there anything in the principles and opinions of the great
DEMOCRATIC RABBLE, as it has been justly called, which should
induce _us_ to identify ourselves with that? Here you may find
every possible grade and hue of opinion which has ever existed
in the country. Here you may find loafer, and loco foco, and
agrarian, and all the rabble of the city of New York, the most
corrupt and depraved of rabbles, and which controls, in a great
degree, the city itself, and through that, as being the
commercial metropolis, exercises much influence over the State
at large.

"What are the essential principles of democracy as distinguished
from republicanism? The first consists in the dogma, so
portentous to us, of the natural equality and unalienable right
to liberty of every human being. Our allies (!) no doubt, are
willing at _present_ to modify the doctrine in _our favor_. But
the spirit of democracy at large makes no such exceptions, nor
will these (our allies, the Northern democrats) continue to make
it, longer than necessity or _interest_ may require. The second
consists in the doctrine of the divine right of majorities; a
doctrine not less false, and slavish, and absurd, than the
ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings."

Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Kentucky, in a speech published in the _Louisville Advertiser_, in opposition to those who were adverse to the importation of slaves from the States, thus discourseth:

"Gentlemen wanted 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, if able to keep ten
thousand of them in employment, come up to the polls and change
the destiny of the country.

"How improved will be our condition when we have such white
negroes as perform the servile labors of Europe, of Old England,
and he would add now of _New England_; when our body servants
and our cart drivers and our street sweepers are _white negroes_
instead of black. Where will be the independence, the proud
spirit, and the chivalry of Kentuckians then?"

Had the gentleman looked across the river, he might have found an answer to his question, in the wealth, power, intelligence and happiness of Ohio.

In reading the foregoing extracts, it is amusing to observe how adroitly the slaveholders avoid all recognition of any other classes among them than masters and slaves. Who would suspect from their language, that they were themselves a small minority of the white inhabitants, and that their own "white negroes" could, if united and so disposed, outvote them at the polls? It is worthy of remark that in their denunciations of the _populace_, the _rabble_, _those who work with their hands_, they refer not to complexion, but to condition; not to slaves, but to the poor and laborious of their own color. It is these haughty aristocrats who find in Northern democrats "allies," who in Congress and out of it are zealous in obeying their mandates, and who may justly be termed their "white negroes."

Slavery, although considered by Mr. Calhoun "the most stable basis of free institutions in the world," has, as we shall presently show you, in fact, led to grosser outrages in the social compact, to more alarming violations of constitutional liberty, to more bold and reckless assaults upon "free institutions," than have ever been even attempted by the much-dreaded agrarianism of the North.