The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-04-29
lcoxrrSUEp FROM TIE FIRST PAGE

box or our hnanciere - 10 our nnanclefs owe
you for your crop? Did not your crop come
at the " crisis' to pay, in part, your own debts
SIR, ihstead of putting millions into the char /
i:y-box of our INGREDIENTS and manufacturers,
j tell the Senator that thousands of mer- !
chants, manufacturers, and mechanics, OF the /
North, are this day, and have been for month";, /
pressed with the burden of bearing the unpaid |
debts owsd them by the slave States. Your /
cotton hss been paid for, at the market value,
in cash the balance Of your crop, not yet de-
livered, has been paid for send it promptly |
forward, and thus keep that faith of which you
boast so much. Does not the Senator know
that millions of merchandise purchased one
year ago on long credits-for you sell for cash,
and buy on long credits-have been renewed, I
and remain yet unpaid while the bills for tens |
OF millions of last falls purchases have not yet |
matured while your merchants are now in the |
market, purchasing on credit-thus, in many |
cases, making three bills for unpaid goods7 1
remember that, during the terrible pressure of
last year, while our business men were stagger. |
ing under the pressure, thirteen out of fourteen
Wholesale merchants in one department of bust |
ness In one Southern city imposed upon their |
Eastern creditors the burden of renewing their |
matured notes.
Sir, tell the Wanting Senator from South
Carolina that we of the North buy the cotton,
sugar, rice, and tobacco, of the South, for gold,
and sell you goods on six, eight twelve, and IF
teen months credit; and that these long cred
ats are often renewed, and frequently never paid
81 all The merchants and manufacturers of
the North have lost hundreds of millions of
dollars during the last thirty years in the slave
States. / have personally lost, in the Senator's
own State, in. Louisiana, Virginia, and Ken
lucky, thousands of dollars more than l am
nov able to command.
Bot the Senator, filled with magnificent Wis
iona of Southern power, crowns Cotton, "King,"
and tells us that if they should stop supplying
cotton for three years, England would topple
headlong, and carry the whole civilized world
with her, save the South |" What presump-
toni The South-which owns lands and slaves,
the price huctuating with the production, use,
and price of cotton, having no other resource
or means of .support-would go harmless
while the great commercial centres of the world,
with the vast sccumulations Of capital, the |
products of ages Of accumulation, with varied |
pursuits and skilled industry, would "topple
10 their fall Sir, suppose the coffee planters |
OF Brazil, the teagrowers of the Celestial EN- |
pre- and the wheat-growers on the shores of the |
Black Sea and on the banks of the Don and |
the Volgs, indulge in the same magnificent il. |
lusions. L would remind the Senator that the |
commercial world ia not governed by the cot
ton-planters of the South, the cofee-planters of
producers of Eastern Europe. tell the Sena- |
TOR that England, France, Germany, Western |
Europe, and the Northern States of the Union, |
are the commercial, manufacturing, business,
and monetary centres of the world; that their
merchants, manufacturers, and capitalists
grasp the globe that cotton and sugar and tea
and coffee and wheat and the spices of the isles
OF the Oriental seas are grown for them. Sir,
the cotton-plsnters of the South are simply
their agents, and they perform their tasks under
a necessity quite IS great as their own slaves
perform theirs under the tsskmaster's eye. l
would remind the Senator that the free States,
an 1856, produced $3.50, 900 900 of manufsc-
lures, and that only $4,000, 900 of that vast
production, about one-seventeenth part of it,
was made up of cotton. Our manufactures
and mechanic arts now must exceed twelve
hundred million dollars, and cotton does not
make up more than seventy million dollars.
Does the Senator think the free States would
topple down, if they should lose one seven
teenth part of their productive industry?
The productive industry of Massachusetts, @
State that manufactures more than one-third of
all the cotton manufactured in the country,
was, in 1855, $3.50, 100000; only $26, 600, 0O0
one-thirteenth part of it, was cotton. Does the
Senator believe that State which has a pro-
ductive industry of S350000,00 about $3.50 |
per head for each person, would perish, If she |
should lose S26,000000 of that vast produc. |
ton?
1t is no matter of surprise that gentlemen |
who live away off on crossroads, where the
cotton blooms should come to believe that cot |
ton rules the world but few months associ- /
alton with the great world would eure that Dc
lusion. " You are our factorsi" exclaims the |
Senator. You bring and carry for us Suppose
we were to discharge you? Suppose we were to |
take our business out of your hands, we should /
consign you to anarchy and poverty |" Sir |
suppose, when the Senator returns from this
Chamber TO his cotton-feds, his slaves should, |
in their simplicity, say to him "Massa, you /
only sells de cotton we plants; we hoes we
picks de cotton ! 'Spose we discharge you
massa " The unsophisticated "mud.siils
would be quite as reasonable as ia the Senator.
The Senator seems to think that the cotton.
planters hold us in the hollow of their hands !;
If they shake them, We tremble; if they close
them, we perish.
But the Senator from South Carolina. after
crow1Ing Cotton as King, with power to bring |
England and all the civilized world "toppling" |
down into the yawning CULTS of bankruptcy and |
rum, complacently tells the Senate and the |
trembling subjects of his Cotton King, that |
the greatest strength of the South arises from |
the harmony of her political and social nstitu |
tons; that " her forms of society are the best |
IN the world" that she has an extent of DO
inlcai freedom, combined with entire security, |
seen nowhere on earth" The South. he tells
rs, +" Is satisfied, harmonious, ard prosperous" |
and he asks us if we "have heard that the /
ghosts of Mendoza and Torquemada are stalk
ing IN the streets of our great cities that the
Inqulsition Is al hand, and that there are fear
iul rnmors OF consultations for vigilance com
miitees2" Sir, this self complacency is sub
lime No son of the Celestial Empire can ap |
preach the Senator in self-complacency That |
society the bsst in the world" where more
than three millions of beings, created in the |
image OF God, are held as chsttels-sunk from |
the lofty level of humanity, down to the abiect |
condition of unreasoning beasts of burden
That society the best In the world" where
are manaces, chains, aud whips, auction
blocks, prisons, bloodhounds, scourgings. lynch
ings, and burnings, laws to torture the BODY,
shriVel the mind, and debase the soul: where
labor is dishonored. and laborers despised
3" Political freedom" in land where woman
Is imprisoned for teaching little children to
read Code Holy Word where professors are
deposed and bsnished for opposing the extern
sion Of Slavery; where public men are exiled
for quoting in National Convention the words
of Jefferson where voters are mobbed for an
pearing to vote for free territory; and where
booksellers are driven from the country for
selling that mastery work of genius, (" Uncle
Iom's Cabin"
A land of "certain security" where patrols
costing, as in old Virginia, more than is ex
pended 10 educate her poor children. stalk the
country, to catch the faintest murmur of discop
tent; where the bay of the bloodhound never
ceases; where but little more than a wear AGO
rose the startling cries of instruction; and