The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Not so, however, with the stranger phenomenon to be discerned
inextricably connected with this anomaly, but not, apparently,
naturally and inevitably flowing from it. That the denial of his
natural and civil rights to the laborer who sows and reaps the
harvests of the Southern country should be avenged upon his enslaver
in the scanty yielding of the earth, and in the unthrift, the vices,
and the wretchedness which are the only crops that spring
spontaneously from soil blasted by slavery, is nothing strange. It is
only the statement of the truism in moral and in political economy,
that true prosperity can never grow up from wrong and wickedness. That
pauperism, and ignorance, and vice, that reckless habits, and debasing
customs, and barbarous manners should come of an organized degradation
of labor, and of cruelty and injustice crystallized into an
institution, is an inevitable necessity, and strictly according to the
nature of things. But that the stronger half of the nation should
suffer the weaker to rule over it in virtue of its weakness, that the
richer region should submit to the political tyranny of its
impoverished moiety because of that very poverty, is indeed a marvel
and a mystery. That the intelligent, educated, and civilized portion
of a race should consent to the sway of their ignorant, illiterate,
and barbarian companions in the commonwealth, and this by reason of
that uncouth barbarism, is an astonishment, and should be a hissing to
all beholders everywhere. It would be so to ourselves, were we not so
used to the fact, had it not so grown into our essence and ingrained
itself with our nature as to seem a vital organism of our being. Of
all the anomalies in morals and in politics which the history of
civilized man affords, this is surely the most abnormous and the most
unreasonable.
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