Untitled - African American History

CCXV1 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SLAVERY.
to lie. Of course we speak of classes, not of individuals.
The result is the withdrawal of all investments from the
improvement of the lands, another deleterious
slavery to the State.
effect of
It has been asserted that slave labor is exhausting to
lands. So far as the cause already alluded to withdraws
the planter from the improvement of his land, it is true.
But the more satisfactory explanation of the exhausting
cultivation of Southern lands, is the nature of the crops
planted. Being "clean" crops, the exposure of the
naked ploughed lands to the long-continued heat of the
summer sun, would be followed by sterility, partial or
complete, whether free
cultivation.
or slave labor was used in their
It has often been asserted that free labor is cheaper
than slave, and evidence has been industriously sought
in the British colonies to show that the labor of the
emancipated negro there, is cheaper
than that of the
slave. 1 In dense populations, where the question is labor
or hunger, the assertion is generally true ; for the amount
invested, either in the purchase or rearing of the laborer,
is necessarily that much more than the cost of food and
raiment, which both free and bond must have, and which
is all that, under such circumstances, competition and
necessity leave to the free laborer. If either one of two
facts existed, the assertion might be true of the Southern
slaveholding States, viz., the successful introduction of a
dense white population to take the place of the slaves;
or, the introduction into the negro nature of some principle
to counteract that sloth which abhors work, and
that absence of pride and principle which prefers theft
and beggary to industry and thrift. To the possibility
of the former two great obstacles arise, in the first place,
climate and disease, which bring death to the Saxon,
and health and immunity to the African ;
in the second,
1 See Gurnej's West Indies.