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
freedom is guarantied to them, and that is all. To all intents and
purposes they are disfranchised, and outlawed, and the only privilege
extended to them, is a shallow and circumscribed participation in the
political movements that usher slaveholders into office.
We have not breathed away seven and twenty years in the South, without
becoming acquainted with the demagogical manoeuverings of the oligarchy.
Their intrigues and tricks of legerdemain are as familiar to us as
household words; in vain might the world be ransacked for a more precious
junto of flatterers and cajolers. It is amusing to ignorance, amazing to
credulity, and insulting to intelligence, to hear them in their blattering
efforts to mystify and pervert the sacred principles of liberty, and turn
the curse of slavery into a blessing. To the illiterate poor whites--made
poor and ignorant by the system of slavery--they hold out the idea that
slavery is the very bulwark of our liberties, and the foundation of
American independence! For hours at a time, day after day, will they
expatiate upon the inexpressible beauties and excellencies of this great,
_free_ and _independent_ nation; and finally, with the most extravagant
gesticulations and rhetorical flourishes, conclude their nonsensical
ravings, by attributing all the glory and prosperity of the country, from
Maine to Texas, and from Georgia to California, to the "invaluable
institutions of the South!" With what patience we could command, we have
frequently listened to the incoherent and truth-murdering declamations of
these champions of slavery, and, in the absence of a more politic method
of giving vent to our disgust and indignation, have involuntarily bit our
lips into blisters.
The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters of the blacks, who are
bought and sold, and driven about like so many cattle, but they are also
the oracles and arbiters of all non-slaveholding whites, whose freedom is
merely nominal, and whose unparalleled illiteracy and degradation is
purposely and fiendishly perpetuated. How little the "poor white trash,"
the great majority of the Southern people, know of the real condition of
the country is, indeed, sadly astonishing. The truth is, they know nothing
of public measures, and little of private affairs, except what their
imperious masters, the slave-drivers, condescend to tell, and that is but
precious little, and even that little, always garbled and one-sided, is
never told except in public harangues; for the haughty cavaliers of
shackles and handcuffs will not degrade themselves by holding private
converse with those who have neither dimes nor hereditary rights in human
flesh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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