Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject — John Shaqi
Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
History
Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
Scott, Dred, 1809-1858; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; United States -- Fugitive slave law (1850)
ANOTHER question, "How shall the slave trade be suppressed?" began to be
agitated near the close of the last century. The moral desolation
existing in Africa, was without a parallel among the nations of the
earth. When the last of our Northern States had freed its slaves, not a
single Christian Church had been successfully established in Africa, and
the slave trade was still legalized to the citizens of every Christian
nation. Even its subsequent prohibition, by the United States and
England, had no tendency to check the traffic, nor ameliorate the
condition of the African. The other Europeon powers, having now the
monopoly of the trade, continued to prosecute it with a vigor it never
felt before. The institution of slavery, while lessened in the United
States, where it had not yet been made profitable, was rapidly acquiring
an unprecedented enlargement in Cuba and Brazil, where its profitable
character had been more fully realized. How shall the slave trade be
annihilated, slavery extension prevented, and Africa receive a Christian
civilization? were questions that agitated the bosom of many a
philanthropist, long after Wilberforce had achieved his triumphs. It was
found, that the passage of laws prohibiting the slave trade, and the
extermination of that traffic, were two distinct things--the one not
necessarily following the other. The success of Wilberforce with the
British Parliament, only increased the necessity for additional
philanthropic efforts; and a quarter of a century afterwards found the
evil vastly increased which he imagined was wholly destroyed.
It was at the period in the history of Africa, and of public sentiment
on slavery, which we have been considering, that the American
Colonization Society was organized. It began its labors when the eye of
the statesman, the philanthropist, and the Christian, could discover no
other plan of overcoming the moral desolation, the universal oppression
of the colored race, than by restoring the most enlightened of their
number to Africa itself. Emancipation, by States, had been at an end for
a dozen of years. The improvement of the free colored people, in the
presence of the slave, was considered impracticable. Slave labor had
become so profitable, as to leave little ground to expect general
emancipation, even though all other objections had been removed. The
slave trade had increased twenty-five per cent. during the preceding ten
years. Slavery was rapidly extending itself in the tropics, and could
not be arrested but by the suppression of the slave trade. The foothold
of the Christian missionary was yet so precarious in Africa, as to leave
it doubtful whether he could sustain his position.
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