Cannibals all! or, Slaves without mastersFitzhugh, George
General
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Fitzhugh, George
Slave labor; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Working class
The Edinburgh Review well knows that the white laborers of England
receive more blows than are inflicted on Southern slaves. In the Navy,
the Army, and the Merchant service of England, there is more of cruelty,
more physical discomfort, than on all the farms of the South. This
Review, for twenty years, has been a grand repository of the ignorance,
the crimes, and sufferings of the workers in mines and factories, of the
agricultural laborers, of the apprentices, and, in fine, of the whole
laboring class of England. We might appeal to its pages almost _passim_
to establish these facts. Half the time of Parliament is consumed in
vain efforts to alleviate the condition of the cruelly-treated, and
starving poor; and much of this Review is taken up in chronicling the
humane, but fruitless action of Parliament. No man in the South, we are
sure, ever bred slaves for sale. They are always sold reluctantly, and
generally from necessity, or as a punishment for misconduct. The
South-West has been settled in great part by farmers from the older
slave States, removing to them with their negroes. The breaking up of
families of whites and of blacks keeps equal pace. But we have no law
of impressment in the South to sever the family ties of either blacks or
whites. Nor have we any slavery half so cruel as that to which the
impressed English seaman is subjected. The soldiers torn from their
wives and children, to suffer and to perish in every clime and on every
sea, excite not the sympathies of the Reviewer; they are all reserved
for imaginary cases of distress, occasioned by the breaking up of
families of Southern negroes. The so-called slave trade of the South is
no evil, because the instances of the improper severing of family ties
are rare. Will some Yankee or Englishman, ere the charge is repeated
that slaves are bred to be sold like horses, when they are old enough
for market, point out a single instance in the present, or the past, of
a Southerner's pursuing such a business? Yankees and Englishmen kill
their wives annually, yet it has not occurred to Englishmen at all, and
not to the Yankee till very lately, to abolish the marriage relation.
When Englishmen correct the thousand real and pressing evils in their
society, it will be time enough to call on us to do away with the
imaginary abuses of slavery. These remarks have been elicited from us by
an article on Southern slavery, in the April number of the Edinburgh
Review, which is equally distinguished for the falsity of its charges
and the ill nature of its comments. As a full justification for the
indefinite continuance of negro slavery, we give below an extract from
an able article from the same Review, in its January number, 1846,
entitled "Legislation for the working classes." In showing the many
evils arising from emancipating the whites, the Reviewer demonstrates,
though not intending it, the absurdity of emancipating negroes. If
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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