The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 3, March, 1862Various
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 3, March, 1862
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It is constantly asserted that white men can not labor in the tropics,
which we may freely admit; but the inference that the climate of the
Southern States is tropical we have the best authority for denying:
firstly, from the testimony of all Southern writers when describing
their own section of country, and _not_ arguing upon the slavery
question; and, secondly, from Humboldt's isothermal lines, by which we
find that the temperature of the cotton States is the same as that of
Portugal, the south of Spain, Italy, and Australia. Do we find
Australian emigrants writing home to their friends not to come out
because they will not be able to work? We know they do not; and yet the
mean annual temperature of Australia is 70°--greater by five to six
degrees than that of Texas; and, from the best accounts we can get, the
extreme of heat is very much greater.
Examine De Bow's analysis of the census of 1850, and we find him
compelled to admit that one-ninth of the force then cultivating cotton
were white men. If one-ninth were white men in 1850, when the price of
cotton was much less and the crop much smaller than of late years, how
many are there now?
One of the most reliable witnesses to the cultivation of cotton by free
labor is a Quaker gentleman in Philadelphia, who conducts a cotton
factory supplied entirely with free-grown cotton, the goods being sold
to the Quakers, who will not use the product of slave labor of any kind.
This gentleman writes:--
I learned by correspondence with several intelligent Germans in
Texas, that their experiment of raising cotton by their own labor,
without the help of slaves, was a complete success. One planter
offered to supply me at once with one hundred and forty bales
raised in this way. The ground taken by thee that cotton can be
raised by white men, as well as by colored men, is entirely
correct. A very large portion is every year so raised. I have had
particular information of its being thus raised in Texas,
Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North
Carolina. In some neighborhoods thousands of bales are thus raised
within the limits of two or three adjacent counties.
It may be urged that this is upon uplands almost exclusively, and that
upon bottom lands it is not possible, on account of their being
unhealthy.
Two statements will be made to disprove this latter assertion, and we
will then admit it to be true, and prove it to be of no consequence.
The cotton planters, deserting the rolling land, are fast pouring
in upon the 'swamp.' Indeed, the impression of the sickliness of
the South generally has been rapidly losing ground (i.e. among the
whites of the South), and that blessing, health, is now sought
with as much confidence on the swamp lands of the Yazoo and the
Mississippi, as among the hills and plains of Carolina and
Virginia.--_De Bow's Resources of the South and West_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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