The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1856-09-13
From the Richmond Enquirer.
Slave and Free Labor = The Issue at the South
How the Union can be saved


We had the pleasure of listening to an ad-
dress at Caroline August Court, from Profess
or VIM. A. Smith, President of Randolph
Macon College, on the subject of Slavery and
its connection with education in general, and
especially with those centres of Southern
thought, feeling and sentiment, our colleges
and university. The quiet composed, unpre-
tending manner of the Professor, and his fine
personal appearance, predisposed the listener
to expect something great from him. One is
quite at loss, in looking, at his face, to say,
whether courage, beneYolence or intellcetuali-
ty, is its predominant expression. He might
well set for the impersonation of either He
took, early IN the address, the ground that all
common labor is compulsory labor The free
men is compelled to labor to sustain his life
and that of his family. The slave is compelI-.
ed to do so by command Of his master Il
there be difference, the conlpulsio is more ar
gent and pressing Nth the free man than the szSue
for the latter may feign sickness and still be
supported lie demonstrated theoretically.
that competition to get employment, among
free laborers in old and densly settled socie-
ties, would reduce the wages of the free laborer
to the miniumn that would support the lives
of himself and family; and that minimum
liable every day to be taken away by fall of
prices, excess of production, bankruptcy of
employers, and a thousand other causes He
proved by rigid theoretical demonstration. that
in the ordinary and normal state of society,
the common laborer, when employed, must
work in the general longer hours, for less pay
or allowance than the slave; and that at night,
when the labors of the day were ended. the
freeman was burdened with the cares and anx-
iety of providing for his family, whilst the
slave was free as air. All the cares Of house
hold and family devolved on his master. In
fine, he first showed from theory that the ESQ
ealled) free labor was less free than the slave
and much worse provided for, (even when em-
ployed)
And then he triumphantly appealed to the
history and statistics of free society in France
England, all Western Europe, and our North
to show that the facts and the experience ofI
mankind more than sustained his theory.-l
Having satisfied every one that the normal conda-
tion Of slGUe is far better than that of the free |
zab0re'i he took up the case Of the North In |
fifty years or less, immigration will (said he)
fill up the West. Then laborers will compete /
for employment and reduce wages as low as
in Europe. Their condition wilfbe desperate
except for their right of suffrage, and they
will make use of that privilege to destroy pri-
vate right to property and to revolutionizel
government. No GoUsr1appent can be stable nth
2m Slavery. In Europe, violent revolutionary
almost annually upset governments;
here the ballot-box would do the same thing.
He insisted that free society is failure in
Western Europe and that SYMPTOMS of approx
mate failure abound at our North as evil
fenced by its pauperism, its crimes, its mobs,
rades' unions, supeIstitions, infdelities, and
thousand heretical and licentious isms.
We can do nothing like justice to his over
yhelming argument and proofs and illustra-
ions. His rapt and attentive audience will .
Ill unite with US in saying, that his address
vas unansWerable. We only wish he could
discuss the subject for week with the ablest
champion of Abolition, before the most intel
ectual audience in the Union.
He showed that Northern teachers, North !
rn school hooks and Northern education,
we're the bane of the South. The fountains of
hought were all wholly impure. and until ,
his was reetifed we were not safe, because
We lacked self-confdence, selfesteem, and {
high conscientiousness, without which no peo- 9
lie would do battle, as they ought for their g
ights u
# this pure, this good, this deuotea man, gould
e heard North and South, ace believe Szabe7y
you'd everya0here vindicated and the Uaioq saued;
,ut we knolo the truth would be elected, for
he Professor will follow truth with equal
and earnestness, whether she lead
o the palace or the stake.