A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are
dependent upon their labor for subsistence. The forced, unnatural system
of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers
less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the
means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and
as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.
There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In
the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has
electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty,
talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
degradation to "look well to her household."
But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of
the slave, they can hardly rise above his level.
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