The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet ItHelper, Hinton Rowan
History
The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It
Helper, Hinton Rowan
Slavery -- United States
"According to the best calculation, which, in the absence of
statistic facts, can be made, it is believed, that of the three
hundred thousand white inhabitants of South Carolina, there are not
less than fifty thousand whose industry, such as it is, and
compensated as it is, is not, in the present condition of things, and
does not promise to be hereafter, adequate to procure them, honestly,
such a support as every white person is, and feels himself entitled
to. And this, next to emigration, is, perhaps, the heaviest of the
weights that press upon the springs of our prosperity. Most of these
now follow agricultural pursuits, in feeble, yet injurious
competition with slave labor. Some, perhaps, not more from
inclination, than from the want of due encouragement, can scarcely be
said to work at all. They obtain a precarious subsistence, by
occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, sometimes by plundering
fields or folds, and too often by what is, in its effects, far
worse--trading with slaves, and seducing them to plunder for their
benefit."
Conjoined with the sundry plain straightforward facts which have issued
from our own pen, these extracts show conclusively that immediate and
independent political action on the part of the non-slaveholding whites
of the South, is, with them, a matter, not only of positive duty, but also
of the utmost importance. As yet, it is in their power to rescue the South
from the gulf of shame and guilt, into which slavery has plunged her; but
if they do not soon arouse themselves from their apathy, this power will
be wrenched from them, and then, unable to resist the strong arm of the
oppressor, they will be completely degraded to a social and political
level with the negroes, whose condition of servitude will, in the
meantime, become far more abject and forlorn than it is now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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