The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1865-08-19
Fallacies in the South.

We must not Judge the South too severely
for more than thirty years it has been subjected,
as perhaps no other modern people has been, to
process of education on public questions,
which has been singularly uniform, persistent,
and inexorable. The public. men-polticlansi
clergy, and editors-have directed vigilantly is
thinking, and directed it sternly TO one end
the maintenance of slavery as an almost sacred
responsibility of the Southern people. The doc
trine of State sovereignty, and the consequent
right of secession, have naturally followed ana
the common people, at least, seem to be perfectly
honest in their convictions on these subjects
They acknowledge themselves defeated, and they
accept this fact with, we doubt not, an undls-
sembled disposition to be loyal henceforth-sla-
very and secession being extinguished and their
doctrinal basis equally annihilated. All this
they hesitate not TO avow, but at the same time
they evidently and very generally admit It mere
ly as political or military fact, not at all as
morally or logically affecting their late position.
The momentary, incidental embarraSsments OF
emancipation the sudden joy of the negro, and
his disposition to have rather prolonged holt
day as he enters upon his new condition--the eff
feet of slavery upon his nature, disabling him
from adjusting himself instantly to the new con-
ditons of his labor-these facts, instead. of being
considered by his late master as temporary vex-
ations which must certainly give way speedily
before suitable incentives, in the form of COM
pensation, kind treatment, and social advance
ment, appal the planters, and render necessary
in many places the intervention of the military
power to keep back planter and freedman from
| collision if not destruction.
| Now, all this distrust and hesitancy, we again
admit, is very natural in their circumstances of
profound miseducation but at the same time
it is utterly fallacous and foolish. 1t is in
contradiction to all priori views of human ma
ture, 10 the opinions of all the rest OF the civil
! lied world to all the testimonies of history on
| the question. The planter who will most prompt
| ~ concede to the new conditions of labor in the
South, and will do so with the most liberal con-
cessions that capital can make to labor, will be
the most successful in his business Every healthy
black laborer is an intrinsic item of value to the
South and the nation--in6nitely more SO than a
good black beast of labor. They may be too
numerous for convenience in some localities !;
but the natural laws of free labor will soon set
tie this difficulty, if left to operate unobstructed.
Let our Southern citizens begin forthwith to
plough and plant, employing laborers without
reference to color, ignoring that superficial dis
tnction at once, but paying the best possible
wages in order to secure the best possible indus
l.try and skill, showing sincere ambition to en-
lscourage and improve their laborers as the best
means of improving their own interests. Lei
them do this, and it will not he long before Their
chief embarrassments will vanish like mist, and
wealth and happiness again crown their desolate
estates.
The African is vigorous for labor; he is nota-
bly, docile and sensitive to the influence of kind
ness. He is ignorant, to be sure, and proper
tionably unfit for the kinds Of labor which re.
quire ingenuity or skill but the labor which
demands his service in the South is mostly such
as needs only physical force and docility. The
South could not import foreign substitutes fol
him. who could better perform this labor under
Tits intense climate. Let it treat him as it would
have to treat foreign or immigrant laborers, and
it may rest assured it will have no more difficult
f ty with him than with them. The experiment
of West India emancipation justi6es fully what
we now affirm. In the inception of that expert
ment it seemed probable that the result would be
quite different it was so reported for some time
and our own planters seized on these early re-
ports as arguments against emancipation /; they
seem not to have thought it expedient to revise
them by later information. That information
proves that the alleged ill success of the British
emancipation act was but temporary, except in
Jamaica that it was owing in all cases, and
most especially in Jamaica, to the wretched poll,
cy and obstinacy Of the white landowners, an6
that the further results have concusively vindi
Gated emancipation.-N. Y. Methodist. -