The Lancaster ledger. [volume] (Lancaster, S.C.) 1852-1905, 1853-01-05
Slavery, North and South.


slavery in any Of its multifarious forms,
we cannot restrain our contempt for those
northern fanatics who overlook the pow
erty, wretchedness and apparent injustice
which lie so heavily at the door of our
northern civilization and Christianity, and
export all their pity, sympathy and pray
ers to the South, to be expended upon he
groes. We of the North export so much
negro philanthropy that we have no
charity left for the toiling, starving mil
lions Of white craftsmen, mothers and
children; who almost vainly beg the mis-
cradle pittance which keeps life in their
bodies from hour to hour. The northern
abolitionist pays the poor widow ten cents
a piece fornaking shirts for his store, and
out Of such profits for her toll he knows
that she must support her helpless ch,l-
dren. She is probably a menber Of the
same church where he wonhips God, and
calls him brother on the Lords day, and
all the time he sees her life wearing awa~
inch by inch, her heart breaking day by
day, while he is filling the whole land with
uproar and noise, and stunning the very ear
ofHeaven withhis prayers about thewrongs
Of foreign negroes. The foreign negroes
are sleek, and fat, and hearty, and as
merry as marriage bell," while this
poor northern "sister" of his is pale, and
wan, and so wretched that she would fly
to the arms Of death as blessing, but
for those halfstarved orphans of hers, for
whose poor lives she is compelled, by her
"brother," to make shirts at ten cents a
piece. There is no such poverty and
wretchedness as this to be found among
the slaves Of the South. And with in.
finitely less impudence, and far greater
"he" ~f oL.i"ti"" ,h"rity may the south
ern planter, overlooking the social evils
that congregate in his own home, trans
port his philanthropy to. the North, and
repay the northern fanatics in their own
coin. He might say to him:
"If you have eyes to look upon the
sight, you may behold vision of three
millions of northern crafsmen-whose
sweat and blood you are daily coming
into gold-huddled together with their
wives and children in comfortlees souallid
abodes, rewarded only with crust and
straw for all their toll. They have wastad
their strength to build your mansions,
and to supply your feasts, and there they
are down in their dumb agony, and you
look upon them and pittilessly snarl that
they are as well off as they can be-
Three millions! 1t is not many years, as
you are going on, before you will have
ten millions Of such wretched beings.
And their fate hardens every year-lower
and still lower do they sink through
generation after generation of poverty,
ignorance and suffering, towards that
dead life where the soul is consumed, and
the brain eaten out; until nothing is left |
but the voiceless anguish of the mere
animal that smarts and groans beneath
its load. This is what the workers are
coming to there in your North.
"Our workers of the South know no
such poverty and wretchedness as smites
millions Of your poorer class. The rags
and beggary which a southern planter |
meets at every coner in New York, dis
gusts and pains him; and it fires him
with Indignation, when, at the same time,
he thinks Of the amount Of impudence and |
philanthropy which is transported to the
negroes, while such horrid an-
guish retires and deepens through every
street and alley Of the northern cities"
We say the Southern planter may trans
port his philanthropy and interference
North, with as much propriety as the
Northerner may send his South. What
ever may be said Of slavery, the negro
has the best Of it. Nor do we hesitate to
say that the free negroes Of the North, az
abody, are far more wretched, poor and
vicious, than the slaves Of the South. We
do not here propose TO inquire into the
causes Of the inequality Of the circumstan-
ces Of mankind; but we do wish to aaffirm
that the inequalities, and all the miseries
attending them, are as great in the North
as in the South. Philanthropy trans
ported from the South 70 the North Is a.
legitimate business as that transported
from the North to the South. Il is no.
any more on the score Of philanthropy
hat We preferJrss labor to slave labor.
u there 10 no higher element than that of
philanthropy to be served, then we should Z