Facts for the People of the Free StatesAmerican and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
History
Facts for the People of the Free States
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
Enslaved persons -- United States -- Social conditions; Slavery -- United States -- History
The greatest opposition to cheap postage is from the South. The
reason is obvious. As multitudes of their Post-routes do not
pay for themselves, they must be paid for, through a system of
high postage, by the North, or be given up. Thus in 1842, the
deficit in the Post Office department from the slave States
was $571,000, while the excess over the expenditures in the
free States was $600,000. This went of course to make up the
deficiency of the South. So that in 1842 alone the North paid
all its own postage, and $571,000 of postage for the South. Nor
was this all. The whole number of miles of mail transportation
for 1842, was 34,835,991, at an expense of $3,087,796. Of
these miles, the mail was carried 20,331,461, at a cost of
$1,508,413, in the free States; and 14,504,530 miles, at a cost
of $1,579,383 in the slave States; that is, it cost $70,970
more to carry the mail in the slave States than in the free,
while it ran 5,826,931 miles less. Under the new system, from
official returns, presenting a comparative view of the postage
received at forty-two offices, North and South, during the
third quarter of 1844 and 1845, it appears that while the
falling off at the offices in the free States has not been one
third, that at the offices in the slave States has been more
than one half.
Civil, Diplomatic and Consular Agencies.
That most of the "spoils" of office, in these departments go to
the slaveholders is well known. The following is the Diplomatic
Agency of 1846.
FULL MINISTERS. To _Great Britain_, Louis McLane; _France_,
William R. King; _Spain_, Romulus M. Saunders; _Turkey_,
Dabney S. Carr; _Mexico_, John Slidell; _Brazil_, Henry A.
Wise;--all from slave States; and _Russia_, R. I. Ingersoll
from Connecticut.
CHARGES. _Austria_, William A. Stiles; _Holland_, Auguste
Davezac; _Belgium_, Thomas G. Glenson; _The two Sicilies_,
William H. Polk; _Sardinia_, Robert Wickliffe; _Portugal_,
Abraham Rencher; _Venezuela_, Benjamin G. Shields; _Buenos
Ayres_, George Harris; _Chili_, William Crump, all from the
slave states, and from the free States only _Denmark_, William
W. Irwin; _Sweden_, H. W. Ellsworth; _Central America_, B. W.
Bidlack; and _Peru_, A. G. Jewett.
Thus, of the seven full ministers six are from the slave
States; and of the thirteen Charges, _nine_ are from the
same; and the four given to Northern men are among the most
insignificant governments in the world. And this favoritism of
the South has been the policy for years. The civil and consular
agencies are dispensed with a like injustice to the free
States. The following, prepared by Prof. Cleveland, gives the
number of persons employed in 1845, in these several agencies,
from a few States, with their salaries, and the number of free
white inhabitants in the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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