The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy — John Shaqi
The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Man, elevated by knowledge in the scale of being, controls the forces of
nature with greater power and grander results, and accumulates wealth
more rapidly. The educated free labor of Massachusetts, we have seen,
triples the products of toil, _per capita_, as compared with Maryland,
and quintuples them (as the census shows) compared with South Carolina.
One day's labor of a man in Massachusetts is equal to three in Maryland,
and five in South Carolina. So, if we take our savage tribes, with their
huts and tents, their rude agriculture, their furs, their few and simple
household manufactures, their hunting and fishing, the average product
of their annual labor, at four cents a day each, would be $14.60 a year,
or more than a fourth of that of South Carolina (56.91). So that
Massachusetts, in material progress, is farther in advance of South
Carolina than that State is of the savage Indians. Thus, we have the
successive steps and gradations of man: Massachusetts, with free labor
and free schools, having reached the highest point of civilization;
South Carolina, with slavery and ignorance (except the few), in a
semi-barbarous stage; and the lowest savage condition, called barbarous,
but nearer to South Carolina than that State to Massachusetts.
Slavery, then, the census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth
and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools,
colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and
religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the
poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it
to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products;
hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental
condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal
soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or
write. And shall labor and education, literature and science, religion
and the press, sustain an institution which is their deadly foe?
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