Letter of Hon. A.G. Brown.

TERRY HINDS CO., MISS., Sept. 27, 1860.

GENTLEMEN: You were so kind, on a recent occasion, as to ask of me a reply in writing to this inquiry: “What interest have non-slaveholders in the South in the question of slavery?”  The question implies a doubt as to whether the non-slaveholding portion of the Southern people fully comprehend the various interests involved, and their bearing on the monetary as well as the social relations of the community in which we live.  I am unwilling to admit that the great mass of the people do not fully comprehend these various and diversified interests.  A few there may be who do not, and to that few I will address the answer I am about to make to your inquiry.

When it has been asserted on the floor of Congress that the non- slaveholder had no interest in the question of slavery, and that he was in no wise bound to engage in the fearful struggle now going on, I have repelled it.

When it has been intimated that in the final issue the non-slaveholders would be found on the side of abolition, I have rejected the intimation as a foul aspersion on the fair fame, solid patriotism and sound sense of this large class of our people.

That the non-slaveholders of the South will fully sustain what I have said in their behalf does not, in my judgment, admit of a doubt.

“What interests have non-slaveholders in the South in the question of slavery?”

They have a two-fold interest—a moneyed interest, and a social interest.

It is a great mistake if the non-slaveholder supposes that, because he owns no slaves, he therefore has no pecuniary interest in slavery.

Does the non-slaveholder own land?  What will his land be worth when slavery is abolished?  Is he the owner of cattle, horses, houses and other property?  What will all these be worth in a free negro community?  Does he live by cultivating the soil?  Who creates markets and builds railroads, and provides otherwise, by his money and his brains, for the most profitable means of selling the productions of the soil?  The slaveholder.  Who gets the benefit of these markets, railroads and other profitable means, and with comparatively little cost?  The non-slaveholding farmer.  Then let him not say, “I have no interest in the question.”

Is he a mechanic?  Who is his best and most profitable employer?  The slaveholder.  Is he a merchant?  Who buys most of his goods?  The slaveholder.  Is he a lawyer or a doctor?  Who pays him the most fees?  The slaveholder.  Do he, in short, rely on his muscles or his brains for bread?  Who is his best customer?  The slaveholder.  Then let no man of any occupation, trade or profession, say, “I own no slaves, and therefore have not interest in the question.”

All are interested; all have an immediate, direct and positive pecuniary interest in the question, and all ought, as I have no doubt all will, stand up manfully in its support.

Non-slaveholders have been told, and no doubt will be told again, that slavery antagonizes with their labor.  In plain English, that if there were no slaves, they would get better wages for their labor.  On the contrary, I assert that slavery in the slave States is the assisting handmaid of free labor.  In all non-slaveholding communities, capital antagonizes directly with labor; and why?  Because in such communities capital hires its labor, and is, therefore, interested in getting it at the lowest possible price.  In slaveholding communities, on the other hand, capital, as a general rule, owns its labor, and is therefore interested in putting up the price of labor to the highest possible point.  The man who either hires or buys labor, is first interested in getting it at the lowest price, and next, in selling the products of labor at the highest price.  On these two points he rests all his prospects of gain.  Now, let us see how the two systems work in practice.

A, owns one hundred thousand dollars in Massachusetts, and chooses to employ it in manufacturing.  He hires his labor, for the simple reason that the laws of that State do not allow him to buy and hold slaves.  Now, what is the first great motive of A?  Manifestly, to hire his labor at the very lowest possible price.  B, on the other hand, a Mississippian, owns a hundred thousand dollars, and he employs it raising cotton.  Instead of hiring, he buys his labor, (slaves.) Of course his first great object is to buy at the lowest price; but this being done, his next and greatest object is to sell at the highest price.  To this end he directs all his talents, skill and capital.  He creates and keeps up markets for the sale of his productions or the productions of his slaves’ labor and into these markets the non-slaveholder enters and sells on equal and often on better terms.

The same is true of mechanics.  A owns his house-carpenters, blacksmiths, bricklayers, shoemakers, &c., &c.  Of course, his first great object is to raise the price of labor in all these branches of business; B, on the other hand, hires his mechanics.  It is just as clear that he is first interested in hiring at the lowest price possible.  When they come to sell, both A and B are interested in selling for the best price.  A makes his profit on a negro slave's labor which belongs to him, and in whose future he has a direct interest.  B makes his profit on the labor of a hired white man who, being no longer profitable, is turned out to shift for himself, or it may be to starve or beg or steal.

If A hired his slaves, instead of owning them, he would of course hire at the lowest prices, and then his case would be just like B’s.  But as he owns his slaves, his capital, instead of being employed to oppress and grind down the wages of labor, is engaged in sustaining and bearing up these wages.  If A sells the products of his slave labor at high prices, the free white laborer sells his at the same price.

Capital, whether invested in planting or in the mechanic arts, is ever on the alert for profitable markets.  If A owns slaves and makes cotton, plows, hoes, wagons, shoes, houses, or any thing else, he employs all his skill, ingenuity, tact, talents and money in creating and keeping up the best markets; and into these markets the planter or mechanic who owns no slaves enters and sells at the same or higher prices.  Have I not thus made good my propositions, that there is, first, no antagonism between slavery and free labor; and second, that slavery is the assisting handmaid of free labor in the slaveholding States.

It is the fashion at the North to say “slavery degrades labor at the South.”  I simply ask every southern man be he slaveholder or non-slaveholder, if this be true?  On the other hand, does not the master and the slave work continually in the same field, at the same bench or the same forge, and each maintain his own position in society?  In short, is it not a gross slander to say that any man loses caste at the South because he works in the same field or in the same shop with a slave?

But I anticipate, I was simply discussing the pecuniary interest which the non-slaveholders have in the question of slavery.

This interest, however, is as dross, when compared to that other, higher, loftier and holier interest, which the non-slaveholder has in the question of slavery, namely: THE SOCIAL INTEREST.

What is the social condition of the white race when abolition shall have carried out its scheme of setting the negroes free?  That is the question; and to the non-slaveholder it is a question of fearful import.

I know it will be said there is no danger that abolition, in the madness of its folly, can ever carry its schemes to this point.  So the people of San Domingo thought.  So they were assured.  Even the fanatics, who led the wild crusade against slavery, were lavish in these protestations, that the rights, interests and security of the whites were to be preserved and protected at all hazards and at every cost.  How faithfully those assurances were kept, and those protestations carried out, may be read in the bloody history of that unhappy island.

It shall be said again, that if Abolition attempts to strike this final blow we will then resist.  If resistance is not made now, it will not be made when the North shall have grown strong enough to abolish slavery and we too weak to defend it.

The design of the abolitionist is to overthrow slavery in these States.  Of this there can be no more question than that the sun shines at noon-day.  And everything is tending with frightful rapidity to the consummation of that design.  When the design is carried out, what is to be the relative condition of the two races (white and black) in the present slaveholding States?  This is a question which non-slaveholders must ponder; and ponder now.  To delay is to abandon themselves and their families to the terrible fate that awaits them.

Can the two races live together in peace when both are free?  No sane man will pretend for a moment that they can.  What then?  I have heard thoughtless people say we will take up arms and slaughter the blacks like dogs.  What for?  Will it be by any fault of theirs that they will cease to be what they now are—obedient, respectful, humble laborers?  Shall they, for the crimes of their worst enemies—the abolitionists—be hunted down like beasts, and thus the innocent and the guilty be made to suffer alike in the bloody drama that is proposed?  The calm response of every thinking man will be: this, at least is unjust.  But do we suppose that the vast millions of northern people who labor for the freedom of the negro, will abandon him the moment he is free, and allow him to be slaughtered like a brute?  This is irrational.  If you allow the abolitionists to set the negroes free, you will allow them to protect him after he is free.

It is easy to see the course things will take after we have passed the point of emancipation.  The large slaveholders, and thousands of smaller ones, will abandon the country.  The large slaveholders are now timid and shrink from the consequences of meeting this question as it ought to be met.  It has always been so.  Property is always timid.  It shrinks instinctively from danger.  Rich men are afraid of anything that unsettles titles.  They had always rather “bear the ills they have, than fly to those they know not of.”  I do not mean to say that rich men are not patriots; far from it.  But I do mean to say that in all cases where violent shocks, and political revolutions are likely to occur they are not so much to be relied on as poor men.  Allow, that both the rich and the poor are equally patriotic, and equally alive to any danger that threatens the domestic household.  The rich man still has his titles to look after; and then, he feels, if the worst comes to the worst, he can take himself and his family to some place of security.  The poor man’s judgment is not warped in looking after titles, and he sees just as clear that he can not take his family to a place of security as the rich man sees that he can.

I have said the rich will flee the country, and so they will.  They will see the danger afar off, and prepare to meet it.  With heads erect, they have nothing else to do but to watch the gathering storm and prepare to meet its coming.  But the poor who are doomed to toil—whose honest faces are bent to the earth in the pursuit of bread—they have no time to watch the storm or to mark its coming.  When it bursts upon us all, the rich will have put their houses in order.  The poor will have to bear its fury.  When its first shock is over it will be found that the rich have fled, and the poor alone will be left to await whatever fate betides them.  What will that fate be?  It will be found that millions of negroes, now held in subjection by masters, who restrain their licentiousness, have been set at liberty to maraud, and plunder and steal.  That their former masters have gone, and the poor non-slaveholder alone is left to bear their insolence and submit to their exactions, or else take up arms in the unequal contest which they and their northern friends will wage.  Then the non-slaveholder will begin to see what his real fate is.  The negro will intrude into his presence—insist on being treated as an equal—that he shall go to the white man's table, and the white man to his—that he shall share the white man’s bed, and the white man his—that his son shall marry the white man's daughter, and the white man's daughter his son.  In short, that they shall live on terms of perfect social equality.  The non-slaveholder will, of course, reject the terms.  Then will commence a war of races, such as has marked the history of San Domingo.  An unequal war, because it will be a war in which the negro and his northern friends will stand on one side, and the non-slaveholder, deserted by the slaveholders, will stand on the other.

But says the non-slaveholder, “I too will quit the country.”  My friend, think will before you speak.  How are you to get away, and whither will you go?  Who will buy your land, when everybody’s land is deserted?  Who will buy your stock when people are fleeing the country as they would fly from a house of pestilence?  If you go, where will you go to?  If you go to the free States you will find lands greatly increased in value on account of the hundreds of thousands who have gone before you.  If you go to the slave States, you will find the same bleak despair reigning there, that you left behind you.

Have you then, non-slaveholders, no interest in the question of slavery?  I have tried to show you that you have a moneyed interest; that the existence of slavery in the South keeps up and stimulates the price of all you own; and that it opens up and sustains markets into which you enter and sell the products of your labor, on equal terms with the slaveholder.  That slavery is in every way advantageous, in a moneyed sense, to the non-slaveholder and in no way injurious to him, I have tried to prove.

I have shown you some of the first fruits of abolition carried out, in a social point of view; but I have not exhausted that branch of the subject.

There are those who cling to the dreamy idea that the negro is to be returned to his native land.  That is the direst phantasy that ever crept into the human brain.  History gives no account of four millions of people being removed from any country against their will.  We know the negro is unwilling to go, and that his abolition friends oppose his going.  They oppose even the colonization of free negroes on the coast of Africa.  No sane man doubts, if the negro is set free that he is, by his own consent and the active agency of northern abolition, to remain here and curse the soil of the South by his idleness, his vagabondism and his general disposition to steal.

But for the sake of meeting those who take a different view, who indulge a sort of delusive hope that the negroes will yet be sent back to Africa and the South thus become the abode of white men alone, let us look to the subject for a moment in that light.

We will then suppose that every son and daughter of Africa has left our soil and is safely landed in fatherland.  Will the pecuniary or social condition of the present non-slaveholders be thereby improved?

If these lines shall ever fall under the eye of any citizen of a non-slaveholding State, I beg him to consider now that I address him as much as I do citizens of a slaveholding State.

I have already shown how the non-slaveholder is benefited pecuniarily by being in slaveholding communities, and shall not therefore return to that branch of the subject.  I am quite content to say, so far as the money involved in the question is concerned, most of it belongs to the slaveholders; and if they refuse to defend it, let it go—“let the dead bury the dead.”  If the slaveholders will not defend their rights as such, I am quite ready to admit that it is not the duty of non-slaveholders to do it for them.  I prefer dealing with the subject in its social aspects.

Suppose then there were no slaves and that all the free negroes were sent back to Africa.  What then?  Would the social condition of the white man be thereby elevated or depressed?

I make this broad proposition, and challenge the world: That nowhere on the face of the globe, in or out of christendom, are white people so near on a footing of equality as in the slave holding States of this Union!  And for proof of this I appeal to stubborn facts in the South, well known to the people of the South; and to facts in the North equally well known to the people of the North. In the South, I affirm, that white people—men and women—associate with each other on terms of perfect equality.  Lawyers, Doctors, Merchants, Mechanics, Farmers, all stand on a common platform; and their wives and daughters interchange social civilities without the slightest regard to the occupation of the husband or father.  I ask if this is not so?  I affirm, that the occupation of the white man in the South does not in any way affect his social standing—that his honesty, integrity and good conduct as a citizen, gives him his standing in society; is not this true?  Why is this?  It is simply because in the South we have no WHITE MENIALS.  In this country menial service is performed by black people.  Color, and not birth, fortune, family or occupation draws the line.  The rich will have servants in all countries.  If you do not allow them to have slave servants, they will have free ones—if they cannot get black slaves they will have white ones.

What would the poorest man in this State think, if his rich neighbor should propose to hire his son as a carriage driver for himself; or his daughter, as a waiting maid to his wife.  I fancy his Southern blood would boil like a seething cauldron.  And yet, this is no uncommon thing in the North; as every honest Northern man will testify.

Our sons and daughters work for wages, as do the sons and daughters of Northern parents.  In this there is no discredit on either side.  But there are certain servants termed MENIALS, who in this country are slaves, and whose service in all non-slaveholding communities must be performed by whites.  I may name among these, chamber-maids in public, and in private houses, boot-blacks, carriage drivers and the like.

How would a poor man like to see his daughter performing the same service for a lady of fortune, that he sees her slave girl performing here.  Yet I aver, and no honest man will deny it, that poor, but honest and virtuous white girls of American birth, perform this very service for the rich ladies of the North.

How would he like to see his daughter standing at the door of a grandee waiting to see if the mistress of the house would condescend to speak to her.  I have seen this very thing at the North, and it is of every day occurrence.

How would he like to see his sons and daughters become waiters and chambermaids in public hotels, to be ordered as we order our slaves?  Yet I appeal to men of all parties who have traveled in the North, if they have not seen these things there, and if they are not of common occurrence.  Are these service men and women treated as equals and companions of those they serve?  No more, my friends, than you treat your slave servants as your equals and companions.

Slavery equalizes white people, by assigning to slaves the performance of all labor that in its nature is degrading.  Wherever slavery does not exist, this kind of labor must be performed by whites, and those who perform it lose caste.

In slaveholding communities there are two classes of society.  One is white and the other black.  Color draws the line.  In all communities where slavery does not exist, there are various classes.  Wealthy, occupation, birth, family and other accidents of good or ill fortune draw the lines.

Look at these things, non-slaveholders of the South, and then answer me “have you no interest in the question of slavery?”

Slavery elevates and sustains white men on a platform of perfect social equality without regard to the accidents of fortune, birth, family or anything else.  If they lose their position, it is because of their own misconduct.  The absence of slavery, on the other hand, begets castes in society to be controlled, directed and regulated by the whims and caprices of fortune; and no good conduct on the part of those in the lower castes can ever reverse these degrees of fortune.

I have pursued the subject, perhaps too far and yet I am conscious it is not half exhausted.  The non-slaveholder should look to it, and to its social aspects.  True, as I have said, he has his pecuniary interests.  But of thirty hundreds of millions of dollars that are wrapped up in the question, not three hundred millions belong to the non-slaveholders.  If the slaveholders through their timidity, will not defend their property that is surely no reason why the non-slaveholder should fold his arms and see his wife, daughters and sons reduced to a condition of social equality with free negroes.  It is his duty to move, move vigorously, actively and energetically.  One active blow struck now is worth more than a life of service will be when the day is lost.

We are in the midst of a fearful conflict—The issue is fully made up.  The hosts are arrayed on either side.  Slavery must be defended or it will be abolished.  Those who are not for the South must be set down as against the South.  Paltering with the question is treason.  The South expects, and presently she will imperiously demand, an open undisguised defence of her rights, or absence from her soil.  The hour has come.  “He who dallies is in danger and he who doubts is damned.”