Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1862-04-10
[From the New York PostJ
A Word to Southern WOrkInEmen.

1t appears thEt the on-slaVeholders of
the South do not love sIavery-tbey only
dislike the negro. They want WAmerica
for the white man." If they are right in
demanding that the southern states shall
not have u mixed population, then it is
easy TO show that the stockholders are con.
stRntly and necessarily arrayed iu opposi-
tion to the non-slavehOlding whites oi the
South, because it is TO their interest to
populate the South with negroes.
Mr.. l.. NJ. Spratt, of South Carolina, in
his essay on Slave and Free Population,
says that slaveholding country, to be in
safe condition, should have "at least as
many slaves as white free men," Accord
ingly he viewed with alarm the condition
of some of the slave states, in which the
free population greatly outuumbers the
slaves and urged upon the Montgomery
Convention, in March, 1861, to reopen the
African slave trade, which that body ac-
tually proceeded TO do, in left-handed
way, but Mr.. Davis, who had a little more
sober sense than his fellow rebels, vetoed
the measure, and out of respect for the pre-
judices of England it was temporarily
dropped.
Where the number of slaves is less than
the number of free men, said Mr.. Spratt,
the free labOrer comes in competition with
the slave, and gradually Gusts him, to the
manifest injury of the master; aud he COM
platned ihat this was already taking place
in South Carolina, where, said he, with a
comical kind of horror at the thought of
possible injury to the 'masters," Gwhite
men already drive drays and stages, work
on the ships nndWharves as stevedores, are
walters in hotels, and perform, for pay,
many of the services which rightfuliy
should be left to the slaVe.n Mr.. Spratt's
idea is, that of the white population only
tue slaTe-Owncrs have rights which de-
serve to. be protected or which anybody is
bound to respect, while every man who has
to support his family by his own labor is u
nuisance, "cOmiDg in competition with the
slaye,' and to be driven out.
There are in the South, or werc in $50.
about four thousand Shareholders, and it is
to the interest of this small minority to
people the southern States with negroes
They no longer contine their slaves TO
plantation and hOusework, but make of
them carpenters, blacksmiths, machinists,
wheelwrigLts. We have frequently heard
Southern planters declare that they would
not employ white mechanic, their own
slaves doing the work as well, while "n
white workman is always troublesome
among the negroes" The motto of the
shareholders is, "America for the blacks
and their masters" The non.slaveLolding
whites %ish to expel the blacks; the slave
holders buy and breed them, increase them
as fast as they eau; would import more
from Africa if the whole civilized world
did not turn its face against this forcible
Africauization of tue Southern States
The nOn-slayeholdiug whites grudge the
blacks the room they occupy; the slave
holders buy out every non-slaveholder
near them, to get him out of the way, aud
spend all their surplus means, and often
more, to buy the land of white men, for
the blacks to occupy and cultivate; and
thus the "poor whites" as they are called
by their aristocratic neighbors, are ever on
the move further west-always showed out
by the slaves and their masters.