Benevolent enemies.
If ever there has been a fixed and universal opinion in the
North on any one subject, it is that slave labor is unprofitable, or, in their choice vernacular, that it "doesn't pay." However they may have differed at one time upon the abolition question, there never was any difference about the greater cheapness of free labor.
The same economical ideas that led to the extinguishment of serfdom in
Europe were applied with an air of greater plausibility to the slave labor of the
Southern States.
It was alone because negro slavery was unprofitable that it was abolished in the
Northern States, and no one there was able to see why it should not be equally valueless in the
Southern States, especially those not engaged in cotton growing.
They maintained that one white man could do the work of three negroes; that "the black pigs of the
Virginia litter were draining her dry," that but for slavery
Virginia would be one of the wealthiest and greatest of communities.
The slaves were described as wasteful, improvident, filthy, an incubus upon the resources and growth of the white population.
Keeping in mind this universal Northern conviction, we must of course recognise their wholesale plunder of slaves in this war as a benevolent effort to relieve us of a great nuisance ! We wonder they have not put it themselves upon that ground, and claimed to be our greatest benefactors ! Finding that we could not be induced by persuasion and reasoning to do justice to our own interests, they are foreing us to our own good by sword and plunder ! Earnest and energetic philanthropists, they will permit no community to go to destruction its own way ! They take away our negroes in order to relieve the
State from a heavy drag upon its energies and prosperity.
Is it not wonderful that we are ungrateful to such benefactors ? We cling to our "incubus" as closely as ever; we are determined not to give it up; but we have a passion still stronger than our predilection for slavery.--It is, strange to say, our detestation of the philanthropical pedlars who are endeavoring to swindle us out of our property.
If every negro in the
State were stolen, we should only detest the idea of Yankee domination the more.
We would rather lose all our slaves than be slaves to them.
It may suit the purposes of the
North to represent the
Southern defence to the world as a war for slavery.
It is no such thing.
It is a war for our own liberties and independence.
