Early History of Slave Trade In New England
Southerners
reacted to abolitionist tirades with arguments of the civilizing
aspects of African slavery, as well as reminding them that their own
fathers had shipped the Africans in chains to the West Indies and North
America. The invention of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney along with
the hungry cotton mills of that State, perpetuated slavery, and new
plantation expansion into the Louisiana territory was fueled by
Manhattan lenders – all of whom could have helped end African slavery in
North America. The following is excerpted from the introduction of
“Cotton is King,” E.N. Elliott, editor (1860), and from “Liberty and
Slavery,” Albert Taylor Bledsoe.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Hurrying Down to Swift Destruction
“Geographical
partisan government and legislation . . . had its origin in the
Missouri [Compromise] contest, and is now beginning to produce its
legitimate fruits: witness the growing distrust with which the people of
the North and South begin to regard each other; the diminution of
Southern travel, either for business or pleasure, in the Northern
States; the efforts of each section to develop its own resources, so as
to render it independent of the other; the enactment of “unfriendly
legislation,” in several of the States, toward other States of the
Union, or their citizens; the contest for the exclusive possession of
the territories, the common property of the States; the anarchy and
bloodshed in Kansas; the exasperation of parties throughout the Union;
the attempt to nullify, by popular clamor, the decision of the supreme
tribunal of our country; the existence of . . . a party in the North
organized for the express purpose of robbing the citizens of the
Southern States of their property; . . .
...the flooding of the whole
country with the most false and malicious misrepresentations of the
state of society in the [Southern] States; the attempt to produce
division among us, and to array one portion of our citizens in deadly
array to the other; and finally, the recent attempt to incite, at
Harper’s Ferry, and throughout the South, an insurrection, and a civil
and servile war, with all its attendant horrors.
All
these facts go to prove that there is a great wrong somewhere, and that
a part, or the whole, of the American people are demented, and hurrying
down to swift destruction.
The
present slave States had little or no agency in the first introduction
of Africans into this country; this was achieved by the Northern
commercial States and by Great Britain. Wherever the climate suited the
Negro constitution, slavery was profitable and flourished; where the
climate was unsuitable, slavery was unprofitable, and died out. Most of
the slaves in the Northern States were sent southward to a more
congenial clime.
Upon
the introduction into Congress of the first abolition discussions, by
John Quincy Adams, and Joshua Giddings, Southern men altogether refused
to engage in debate, or even to receive petitions on the subject. They
averred that no good could grow out of it, but only unmitigated evil.”
(The South: A Documentary History, Ina Woestemeyer Van Noppen, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1958, pp. 265-266)
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