Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1859-02-24

t the injury of agriculture, must also injure
all other pursuits. Thus it is seen that our
| interests as State are so blended and ram
| flied that they cannot be separated, and the
Convention at Cambridge acted wisely in re-
/ cognizing that unity of interests, by calling
a Convention of the whole State to meet in
, the city of Baltimore next June.
i Inow propose to show that the great ag-
ricultural interests of the State of Maryland
, suffer for the want of labor, and that our
free negroes cannot be relied upon as labor
ers under their present loose government
| hence, their present relations to the white
and slave population, must be altered, so as
, to make them profitable and subservient to
the common good.
AS before limited, the people of Maryland, /,
. years past, imbibed in a great degree, the
false doctrines of English writer's on the
subject of negro emancipation but we now
see radical change in public opinion on
that subject, and the prevalent sentiment Of
our people throughout the State is that free
negroism is curse to both whites and the
free negro himself Those writer's, who
had spent their lives on the Island Of Great
, Britain, knew about as much of the temper
f aments and characteristics of an African
slave, as blind horse does Of the color of
the moon Our Yankee philanthropists,
who have seen only few struggling runa-
way slaves, are quite as ignorant of the ne
gro as their English brothers. Indeed, the
negro is an object Of as much amazcment to
them as the elephant is to our little folks :;
} and the rarity of the sight stirs up a devo-
w. +hop, ito oil 70 hot
/ which Othello excited in the foolish heart of
Desdemona But such is not the case with
the Southerner, who has been raised with
his slaves, drew suck from the same breast,
shared his early sports with them, and has
hung for hours around old aunty and old
uncle, as they told him long yarns Of real or
imaginary events long passed away.
This want of knowledge Of the real ne
gro, on the part of Old England and New
England aboltionsts, makes them contemp-
tible in the eyes of the Southerner, and
serves only to irritate. Their distractions
years ago on the sulse.. Of pa
ton, ensnared many superficial minds: and
it was seldom they met with any rebuff from
the South. It was under this torpid state
of Indifference on the part ofSouthern men,
that the abolition virus infused itself through
many channels into the bosom of our own
State Cur laws at one time favored eman-
cipation but in 1892 we had too many free
negroes upon our hands, aud the Coloniza-
ton enterprise (another great humbug) was
started to get rid Of them. BY direct taxa
ton, voluntary contribution and profit in
trade to the coast Of Africa, we have con-
, I'd b,tc IF 1ol1 10
fruitlcss enterprise within the last twenty
seven years. We bought strip of country
on the African coast surrounding Cape Pal
mas, which we called Maryland. There we
proposed to found colony of free negroes
, from our own State. We have labored zeal
ously and long enough to prove its fallacy.
We never succeeded in getting more than 3
Or 400 free negroes to go. Slaves have
been sent in larger numbers, but both put
ogether in the whole time of q years, have
not exceeded 1900. The natives rose On
the coonists in 1857, burnt their houses and
murdered numbers of them, and this State
of Maryland in Africa is nothing more than
a County in Liberia now Liberia itself,
with the efforts of all the States in the Union
since 1917 to the present time, contains on
ly 10000 free negroes who are surrounded
BY 200, 000 hostile native Africans. The
free negro cannot be induced to go to Afri-
ca, and he much prefers slave-holding Ma
5 ryland to any of the free States We have
passed laws forbidding emancipation, except
t upon condition Of removal from the State
and at the last session law was passed to
sell them into slavery for certain crimes
Thus we have labored by every possible
, means, but in vain, to get rid of them.-
Some Of them are Industrious, but the ma
, jority are SO much dead weight upon the
) State and her resources. They will not la
Dor for an honest living, but are vicious and
+ depraved and impose heavy burdens upon
taxable white population. That large class
, of our farmers who rent land, and all others
| who do not own slaves, know how hard it
is to hire a free negro by the year-the
, shortest term Of labor that will do for the
, farmer. On the first day of January past,
attended at our town Of Berlin, where con-
tracts for labor by the year were made for
some four or five hundred white men and
: slaves. 1t is the product Of that labor that
7 freights our grain schooners. employs our
: sailors, and fills our stores with merchandise
from the cities indeed that labor furnishes
: the basis for all monetary contracts Of what
ever kind for the current year. and without
r it business of all kinds would cease; for
there would be no basis upon which to make
contracts. At the same time and place I
suppose there were three hundred free ne.
, groes also, but [ did not hear of a single one
!, acho hired htnas!f By the gear; if however,
, there should be one to do so at all, he gen
) orally selects home where he can do as he
} pleases and get large additional bounty in