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)
Besides this annual consumption of provisions, most of which is the
product of free labor, the people of the United States use a vast amount
of groceries, which are mainly of slave labor origin. Boundless as is
the influence of cotton, in stimulating slavery extension, that of the
cultivation of groceries falls but little short of it; the chief
difference being, that they do not receive such an increased value under
the hand of manufacturers. The cultivation of coffee, in Brazil, employs
as great a number of slaves as that of cotton in the United States.
But, to comprehend fully our indebtedness to slave labor for groceries,
we must descend to particulars. Our imports of coffee, tobacco, sugar,
and molasses, for 1853, amounted in value to $38,479,000; of which the
hand of the slave, in Brazil and Cuba, mainly, supplied to the value of
$34,451,000.[29] This shows the extent to which we are sustaining
foreign slavery, by the consumption of these four products. But this is
not our whole indebtedness to slavery for groceries. Of the domestic
grown tobacco, valued at $19,975,000, of which we retain nearly
one-half, the Slave States produce to the value of $16,787,000; of
domestic rice, the product of the South, we consume to the value of
$7,092,000; of domestic slave grown sugar and molasses, we take, for
home consumption, to the value of $34,779,000; making our grocery
account, with domestic slavery, foot up to the sum of $50,449,000. Our
whole indebtedness, then, to slavery, foreign and domestic, for these
four commodities, after deducting two millions of re-exports amounts to
$82,607,000.
The exports of tobacco are on the increase, as appears from Table VIII
of Appendix, showing an extension of its cultivation; but the exports of
rice are not on the increase, from which it would appear that its
production remains stationary.
By adding the value of the foreign and domestic cotton fabrics,
consumed annually in the United States, to the yearly cost of the
groceries which the country uses, our total indebtedness, for articles
of slave labor origin, will be found swelling up to the enormous sum of
$162,185,240.[30]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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