The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862

We have but to increase the annual product of the country six and one-half per cent, and we shall meet the tax for expenses, interest, and sinking-fund, and be as well off as we now are, provided the tax be equitably assessed.

This increase can be made without any increase in the number of laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive soil of the North.

Slavery is the one obstacle to be removed in order to render this war a paying operation.

Under the false pretence that the climate of the South is too hot for white men to labor in the fields, the degradation involved in field-labor in a Slave State excludes intelligent cultivators from the cotton-fields, a very large portion of which have a climate less hot and less unsuitable for white men than that of Philadelphia, while there is not a river-bottom in the whole South in which the extremes of heat during the summer are so great as in St. Louis. Slave-labor cultivates, in a miserable, shiftless manner, less than two per cent, of the area of the Cotton States; and upon this insignificant portion a crop of cotton has been raised in one year worth over $200,000,000.

There is ample and conclusive evidence to be found in the statistics of the few well-managed and well-cultivated cotton-plantations, that skilful, educated farmers can get more than double the product to the hand or to the acre that is usually obtained as the result of slave-labor.

Again, it will be admitted that $350 per annum is more than an average return for the work of a common laborer on an average New England farm, including his own support.

It is capable of demonstration from, actual facts that an average laborer, well directed, can produce a gross value of $1,000 per annum, upon the uplands of Georgia and South Carolina, in the cultivation of cotton and grain. Negro slaves under a negro driver, with no white man on the premises, have produced this result in Hancock County, Georgia, upon lands previously considered worthless, with a system of cultivation singular and exceptional in that region, but common in all well-cultivated sections, namely, a simple rotation of crops and a moderate amount of manure.

Elevate the negro from a state of slavery to the dignity of a free laborer, and his consumption of manufactured goods increases enormously. In proof of this may be cited the trade with Hayti, and the immense increase in the import of manufactured goods into the British West Indies since emancipation. Slaves are furnished with two suits of clothes in a year, made from the coarsest and cheapest materials: it is safe to estimate, that, if the fair proportion of their earnings were paid them, their demand upon the North for staple articles would be doubled, while the importations of silks, velvets, and other foreign luxuries, upon which their earnings have been heretofore lavished by their masters, would decrease.

The commonly received view of the position of the cotton-planter is that he is in a chronic state of debt. Such is the fact; not, however, because he does not make a large amount of profit,—for cotton-planting is the most profitable branch of agriculture in the United States,—but because his standard of value is a negro, and not a dollar, and, in the words of a Southern writer, "He is constantly buying more land to make more cotton to buy more negroes to cultivate more land to raise more cotton to buy more negroes," and for every negro he buys he gets trusted for another. Both himself and his hands are of the least possible value to the community. By maintaining his system he excludes cheap labor from the cultivation of cotton,—slave-labor being the most wasteful and the most expensive of any. He purchases for his laborers the least possible amount of manufactured articles, and he wastes his own expenditure in the purchase of foreign luxuries.

Reference has been made to the increase to be expected in the product of wool, after the removal or destruction of Slavery.

We import annually 30,000,000 pounds of wool, and make little or no use of the best region for growing wool in the whole country,—the western slope of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains and of the Blue Ridge. Free laborers will not go there, although few slaves are there to be found; for they well know that there is no respect or standing for the free laborer in any Slave State.

Again, throughout the uplands of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Alabama, it has been proved that sheep can be raised upon the English system with the greatest success. Upon their light lands, (selling at less than $1 per acre,) turnips can be raised in great abundance and fed to sheep in the field, and by the process the fields brought to a point of fertility, for cotton or grain, equal to the best bottom-lands of Mississippi or Louisiana. This fact has been sufficiently proved by the experience of the very few good farmers in Georgia.

The climate of these sections is wonderfully healthy, and is far better adapted to the production of wool than that of England, the extremes of heat and cold being far greater, and yet the cold not being sufficient to prevent the raising of turnips or feeding from the field in winter. To produce fine fleece-wool, a warm summer and a cool winter are requisite.

Let any one examine Southern writings upon agriculture, and note the experience of the few working, sensible cultivators, who, by a system of rewards and premiums partially equivalent to the payment of wages to their slaves, have obtained the best results of which Slavery is capable, and he will realize the immense increase to be expected when free and intelligent labor shall be applied to Southern agriculture.

We hold, therefore, that by the destruction of Slavery, and by that only, this war can be made to pay, and taxation become no burden.

By free labor upon Southern soil we shall add to the annual product of the country a sum more than equal to the whole tax which will be required to pay interest and expenses, and to accumulate a sinking-fund which will pay the debt in less than twenty years; while to the North will come the immensely increased demand for manufactured articles required by a thrifty and prosperous middle class, instead of the small demand for coarse, cheap articles required by slaves, and the demand for foreign luxuries called for by the masters.

The addition of $250,000,000 to the product of the country would be a gain to every branch of industry; and if the equable system of taxation by a stamp-tax on all sales were adopted, the burden would not be felt. The additional product being mostly from an improved system of agriculture at the South, a much larger demand would exist for the manufactures of the North, and a much larger body of distributors would be required.

Let us glance for a moment at the alternative,—the restoration of the Union without the removal of Slavery.

The system of slave-labor has been shaken to its foundation, and for years to come its aggregate product will be far less than it has been, thus throwing upon the North the whole burden of the taxes with no compensating gain in resources.

Only the refuse of our army could remain in the Slave States, to become to us in the future an element of danger and not of security,—the industrious and respectable portion would come back to the North, to find their places filled and a return to the pursuits of peace difficult to accomplish.

With Slavery removed, the best part of our army will remain upon the fertile soil and in the genial climate of the South, forming communities, retaining their arms, keeping peace and good order with no need of a standing army, and constituting the nuclei around which the poor-white trash of the South would gather to be educated in the labor-system of the North, and thus, and thus only, to become loyal citizens.

The mass of the white population of the South are ignorant and deluded; they need leaders, and will have them.

We have allowed them to be led by slaveholders, and are reaping our reward. Remove Slavery, and their present leaders are crushed out forever.

Give them new leaders from among the earnest and industrious portion of our army, and we increase our resources and render taxation no burden, and we restore the Union in fact and not simply in name.

Leave Slavery in existence, and we decrease our resources, throw the whole tax upon the North, reinforce the Secession element with the refuse of our army, and bequeath to our children the shadow of a Union, a mockery and a derision to all honest men.

THE POET TO HIS READERS

Nay, blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse,
Yet these my earlier welcome shared,
So let the better shield the worse.

And some might say,—"Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost:
To spring the opening leaf belongs,
The chestnut-burrs await the frost."

When those I wrote, my locks were brown;
When these I write—ah, well-a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May!

Go, little book, whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?

O sexton of the alcoved tomb,
Where souls in leathern cerements lie,
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?

It matters little, soon or late,
A day, a month, a year, an age,—
I read oblivion in its date,
And Finis on its title-page.

Before we sighed, our griefs were told;
Before we smiled, our joys were sung;
And all our passions shaped of old
In accents lost to mortal tongue.

In vain a fresher mould we seek:
Can all the varied phrases tell,
That Babel's wandering children speak,
How thrushes sing or lilacs smell?

Caged in the poet's lonely heart,
Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone;
The soul that sings must dwell apart,
Its inward melodies unknown.

Deal gently with us, ye who read!
Our largest hope is unfulfilled,—