the North, would have made them objects of compassion to the majority of our day-labourers.
A gentleman coming up the Mississippi, just after a recent "Southern Commercial Convention" at Memphis, says:
"For three days I have been sitting at a table three times a day opposite
four of the fire-eaters. * * * It was evident that they were sincere:
for they declared to one another the belief that Providence was directing
the South to recommence the importation of Africans, that she might lead
the world to civilization and Christianity through its dependence upon her
soil for cotton. All their conversation was consistent with this. They
believed the South the centre of Christianity and the hope of the world,
while they had not the slightest doubt that the large majority of the
people of the North were much more to be pitied than their own negroes.
Exclusive of merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and politicians, they
evidently imagined the whole population of the North to be quite similar
to the poor white population of the South. Yet they had travelled in the
North, it appeared. I could only conclude that their observation of
northern working men had been confined to the Irish operatives of
some half-finished western railroad, living in temporary shanties along the
route"
I have even found that conservative men, who frankly
acknowledged the many bad effects of slavery, and confessed
the conviction that the Northern Slave States were ruined by
it; men who expressed admiration of Cassius Clay's course,
and acknowledged no little sympathy with his views, and who
spoke with more contempt of their own fanatics than of the
Abolitionists themselves; that such men were inclined to
apologize for slavery, and for their own course in acting
politically for its extension and perpetuation, by assuming
certain social advantages to exist where it prevailed. "There
is a higher tone in Southern society than at the North,"
they would say, "which is, no doubt, due to the greater
leisure which slavery secures to us. There is less anxiety for
wealth, consequently more honesty. This also leads to the
habit of more generous living and of hospitality, which is
so characteristic of the South."
