Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
This fact would be no excuse for delaying payment of what is justly
due, but it shows the great importance of time in this connection--the
great advantage of a policy by which we shall not have to pay until we
number 100,000,000 what by a different policy we would have to pay now,
when we number but 31,000,000. In a word, it shows that a dollar will
be much harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar for
emancipation on the proposed plan. And then the latter will cost no
blood, no precious life. It will be a saving of both.
As to the second article, I think it would be impracticable to return
to bondage the class of persons therein contemplated. Some of them,
doubtless, in the property sense belong to loyal owners, and hence
provision is made in this article for compensating such. The third
article relates to the future of the freed people. It does not oblige,
but merely authorizes Congress to aid in colonizing such as may
consent. This ought not to be regarded as objectionable on the one hand
or on the other, insomuch as it comes to nothing unless by the mutual
consent of the people to be deported and the American voters, through
their representatives in Congress.
I can not make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor
colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against
free colored persons remaining in the country which is largely
imaginary, if not sometimes malicious.
It is insisted that their presence would injure and displace white
labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere
catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present
men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be
responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that
colored people can displace any more white labor by being free than by
remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle no
white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them open to
white laborers. Logically, there is neither more nor less of it.
Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the
wages of white labor, and very surely would not reduce them. Thus the
customary amount of labor would still have to be performed--the freed
people would surely not do more than their old proportion of it, and
very probably for a time would do less, leaving an increased part to
white laborers, bringing their labor into greater demand, and
consequently enhancing the wages of it. With deportation, even to a
limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematically
certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the market--increase the
demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of
black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by
precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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