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VOL. I. JANUARY, 1849. No. VII.
THE SLAVE QUESTION.
[We invite the attention of our readers to the following letter of Mr. Carey, of this
city, to an eminent citizen of the North; the more especially as it makes apparent the
grounds of the harmony it would earnestly inculcate between the North and the South,
on the most exciting topic of the day.]
DEAR SIR :-The great question of the day is that of Slavery, its exten-
sion or its limitation, its perpetuation or its extinction. It seems likely to
swallow up almost all others. Whigs abandon the party with which for
years they have acted, and vote for free soil candidates to whom, as
Democrats, they have always been opposed; while Democrats vote for Whig
candidates, in the hope to find in them the men least likely to sanction inter-
ference with their rights of property ; and yet, of all who talk so loudly and
sometimes act so strangely, scarcely a single one seems disposed calmly to
examine the subject with a view to ascertain what are the effects likely to
be produced by the measures they advocate, upon the condition, physical,
moral, intellectual, and political, of the objects of their solicitude.
How shall we free ourselves from the curse of slavery ? Such is the question
that now stands foremost for consideration throughout a majority of the
States south of Mason and Dixon's line. ThrQughout the Union, all desire to
see by what means the nation shall be freed therefrom, and the question has
been repeated times without number in every State, without having ever as
yet, to my knowledge, produced a satisfactory reply. The abolitionist
answers by a refusal to eat the sugar of Louisiana, or to wear the cottoii of
Georgia, preferring to feed and clothe himself by aid of the labor of the
Hindoo, who, nominally free, labors a whole month for two rupees-about
one dollar-and dies of the pestilence that follows a famine resulting from
the excessive poverty produced by taxation; and to that he is subjected for
the support of armies that are kept on foot for the purpose of compelling him
to give to the collector of rents half or two-thirds of all the miserable product
of labor employed in the cultivation of high and poor lands, while surrounded
by low and rich ones that have relapsed into jungle, because of his inability to
continue the system of drainage established before India had become the prey
of European conquerors. If, happily, he survives the famine and the pesti-
lence, he sells himself for a term of years, to be transported to Demerara or
Jamaica, there to perform the labor of a slave, and to endure treatment
similar to that to which was due the disgraceful fact, that the slaves libe-
rated at the period of emancipation were fewer in number than had been
imported, whereas, from the superior treatment of American slaves, the three
or four hundred thousand barbarians that were imported are now represented
by three or four millions of comparatively civilized men.
The abolitionist refuses to consume slave-grown cotton, because he thinks
that while his labor is so valuable the slave can never become free, and
that by diminishing the market for the product of his labor, he himself will
become less valuable to his owner, and that thereby will be produced in the
latter a disposition to set his bondman free. In this opinion he does not
stand alone. It may be found in every English journal. The people of Eng-
VOL. I.-51 2 L 2 401](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/slvqu0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)