possession of the exhausted land which has been vacated by the large planters, because they, with all their superior skill and advantages of capital, could not cultivate it longer with profit.[1]
The population of the district, then, will consist of the large landowners and slaveowners, who are now so few in number as to be unnoticeable either as producers or consumers; of their slaves, who are producers but not consumers (to any important extent), and of this forlorn hope of poor whites, who are, in the eyes of the commercial world, neither producers nor consumers. The contemplation from a distance of their condition, is a part of the price which is paid by those who hold slavery to be justifiable on the ground that it maintains a race of gentlemen. Some occasionally flinch for a moment, in observing it, and vainly urge that something should be done to render it less appalling. Touching their ignorance, for instance, said Governor Seabrooke of South Carolina, addressing the Legislature of that State, years ago:—
"Education has been provided by the Legislature, but for one class of
the citizens of the State, which is the wealthy class. For the middle and
poorer classes of society it has done nothing, since no organized system
has been adopted for that purpose. You have appropriated seventy-five
thousand dollars annually to free schools; but, under the present mode of
applying it, that liberality is really the profusion of the prodigal, rather
than the judicious generosity which confers real benefit. The few who
are educated at public expense in those excellent and truly useful institu-*
- ↑ The business committee of the South Carolina State Agricultural Society reported, Aug. 9, 1855:— "Our old fields are enlarging, our homesteads have been decreasing fearfully in number. * * * We are not only losing some of our most energetic and useful citizens to supply the bone and sinew of other States, but we are losing our slave population, which is the true wealth of the State, our stocks of hogs, horses, mules, and cattle are diminishing in size and decreasing in number, and our purses are strained for the last cent to supply their places from the North-western States."
