Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Southern Wealth and Northern Profits: As Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Figures; Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the RepublicThe Emperor of the French has said, that "France is the only nation that goes to war for an idea." With more truth may it be said, that "the United States is the only nation that goes to destruction for an idea." This appears, however, to be the settled policy of a party at the North. The United States, at the age of seventy years, have exhibited a degree of success in working out the "experiment" of self-government, that has baffled the sagacity, while it has excited the admiration, of the most far-seeing statesmen of the Old World. This great success manifests itself in the international peace that the country enjoys, its rapid increase in numbers, the general wealth of the people, and the vast aggregate which that wealth presents.At the close of the War of Independence, the country was composed of exhausted Colonies, having a population of 3,172,464 whites. The government was heavily in debt and without credit, the channels of trade flooded with irredeemable and depreciated paper that had driven away specie, national bankruptcy and individual insolvency were the rule. The people were destitute of capital and manufactures; the employment of the shipping apparently destroyed, and the future presenting but little hope. There were 751,868 black slaves, who were without employment that would earn their own support, and their fate and that of their masters gave ample cause of uneasiness, as well to statesmen as to owners. To abandon the blacks to their fate, under the plea of philanthropy, suggested itself to many. The employment of Northern ships was mostly the slave-trade, while the South, having daily less employment for the blacks, was determined to stop their arrival, - a measure which the North regarded as depriving it of its legitimate business. Thus growing jealous...