The western Democrat. [volume] (Charlotte, N.C.) 1852-1870, 1860-11-06
SOUTH CARoLINA,s PETITION to CON.
GRESs AGAINST WHITE SLAVERY.

SOUTH cARoLINA's PETITION to CON-
GREss AGAINST WHITE SLAVERY.
CHARLESTON. October 8, 1850
TO the Editor Of the New York Herald:
We send you the copy of petition which win
be presented by the people of the Cotton States to
Congress, should Mr. Lincoln be elected. The orig
inal is in this city, and will be signed We believe,
by every right thinking man, without exception,
when the time comes. Its insertion in your excel
lent paper will no doubt secure for it many warm
friends at the North:
PETITION.
The undersigned, citizens of the Cotton States,
respectfully show to your honorable body that, at
the present tlme there exists in the States of Mas
sachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York, but more
especially in the city of New York, great and
growing evil, which, as citizens of this vast CONSOLE
dated government, they fear that they, too, must
be held responsible to God as well as to man, and
for the eradication of which, at every hazard, they
are bound, good christians, to strive. Your pc
tioners mean the institution of "white slavery in
its most shocking and repulsive form.
Your petitioners have been credibly informed
that in the above named places there are now hun
dreds of thousands of the outpourings of the work
shops, lazarettoes and prisons of Europe, besides
their own native paupers many of whom work
a part of each night, for from eighteen to thirty
cents, while Others unwilling to work for so little
or to work at all, support themselves by begging
and stealing, miserably perish, some for want of
bread sufficient clothing, in the public streets,
even in the presence of the luxurious and wealthy;
others, in the prisons the scafold; that most
of these unhappy people are profoundedly ignor-
ant of their civil and political rights, and are even
encouraged from infancy to the grave to repudiate
fho nd n ,s,hk~
God. OF this condition of things your petitioners
cannot very well conceive; for though they die
shareholders themselves, and have always lived
among slaves, yet their slaves are of an inferi-
of men, for whose lives, health careful and
religious instruction it is and has ever been your
petitioners interest it is your petitioners duty,
to care to the utmost besides which they can never
become citizens of this great Democratic nation as
well account of their color as their inferiority;
and they never perish for want of food, clothing,
shelter protection, but the "white slaves" of the
North are not only not of an inferior CASTE but
many of them were born citizens, and all OF them
may become citizens of this great nation, and in
every respect the equal of their masters. Your
petitioners firmly persuaded that people who will
permit much wrong and injustice to continue can
expect the favor of God and that in this consoli-
dated government, your people well as among
the people whom it exists, must answer for this
crying sin, have resolved most respectfully to sug-
gest to your honorable body the propriety of eras
ing this dark page from the history of our nation.
Your petitioners further show that one VIM H.
Seward, lately Senator from the said State of
New York, has been holding forth to the aforesaid
"white slaves, and sometimes their masters, that
there is, and must always be, "irrepressbe
conflict between African slave labor and white
labor, until the former shall be, as it ought to be,
extinguished in Blood" but ne has falsely assumed
that all white labor is free labor---though he well
knows that in no form is African labor as abject
and degraded as the pauper labor of his own State;
and he has artfully concealed from the aforesaid
masters while he has made it plain to their "whitc
slaves, that his irrepressble conflict is truth the
conflict between poverty the one side and wealth
on the other, and that to this conflict the Red Re-
publicans of France and the Black Republicans of
America owe their existence; but your petitioners
are willing that he who planted the seed of this
agrarian doctrine in our soil, and the people who
have watched the tree in its growth, should be the
first to taste of its fruits. They, therefore, hum
bly, pray your honorable body to cause fair and
equal dividend of all the property, real aud person
al, gold and silver, goods and chattes of all kinds
held and owned by the people of the above named
States, to be made among them ALL so that here
after there may be no poor man, woman child to
be found among them, and the reproach of white
slavery be removed forever from the skirts of yonr
petitioners. About your right to illustrate by
this equal distribution Of property, the exceency
and beauty of Mr. Stewards doctrine, there can be
doubt, now that we live under, a consolidated
government, wherein the will of the majority in
Congress is the Constitution. Until with your aid
we shall have removed this dark and damning sin
from the consciences, well of ourselves as of our
distant brethren of the North, it will not be either
meet or proper, perhaps hardly decent, for US to
begin to think of our own offences Cif any we have
eommitted) against morals and religion.
Grant US our prayer which is designed to pro-
mote the very best interest of Northern society,"
and we will in duty bound, ever pray, &c.
Signed already by tens of thousands in anticipa-
ton.