American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville (most popular ebook readers .txt) 📕

since entirely disappeared; and all of them learned to look forward to the time at which it would be necessary for every one to provide for his own wants. Wealthy individuals are still to be met with, but they no longer constitute a compact and hereditary body, nor have they been able to adopt a line of conduct in which they could persevere, and which they could infuse into all ranks of society. The prejudice which stigmatized labor was in the first place abandoned by common consent; the number of needy men was increased, and the needy were allowed to gain a laborious subsistence without blushing for their exertions. Thus one of the most immediate consequences of the partible quality of estates has been to create a class of free laborers. As soon as a competition was set on foot between the free laborer and the slave, the inferiority of the latter became manifest, and slavery was attacked in its fundamental principles, which is, the interest of the master.

As slavery recedes, the black population follows its retrograde course, and returns with it to those tropical regions from which it originally came. However singular this fact may at first appear to be, it may readily be explained. Although the Americans abolish the principle of slavery, they do not set their slaves free. To illustrate this remark I will quote the example of the state of New York. In 1788, the state of New York prohibited the sale of slaves within its limits; which was an indirect method of prohibiting the importation of blacks.

Thenceforward the number of negroes could only increase according to the ratio of the natural increase of population. But eight years later a more decisive measure was taken, and it was enacted that all children born of slave parents after the 4th of July, 1799, should be free. No increase could then take place, and although slaves still existed, slavery might be said to be abolished.

From the time at which a northern state prohibited the importation of slaves, no slaves were brought from the south to be sold in its markets. On the other hand, as the sale of slaves was forbidden in that state, an owner was no longer able to get rid of his slaves (who thus became a burdensome possession) otherwise than by transporting him to the south. But when a northern state declared that the son of the slave should be born free, the slave lost a large portion of his market value, since his posterity was no longer included in the bargain, and the owner had then a strong interest in transporting him to the south. Thus the same law prevents the slaves of the south from coming to the northern states, and drives those of the north to the south.

The want of free hands is felt in a state in proportion as the number of slaves decreases. But in proportion as labor is performed by free hands, slave-labor becomes less productive; and the slave is then a useless or an onerous possession, whom it is important to export to those southern states where the same competition is not to be feared. Thus the abolition of slavery does not set the slave free, but it merely transfers him from one master to another, and from the north to the south.

The emancipated negroes, and those born after the abolition of slavery, do not, indeed, migrate from the north to the south; but their situation with regard to the Europeans is not unlike that of the aborigines of America; they remain half civilized, and deprived of their rights in the midst of a population which is far superior to them in wealth and in knowledge; where they are exposed to the tyranny of the laws,[Footnote: The states in which slavery is abolished usually do what they can to render their territory disagreeable to the negroes as a place of residence; and as a kind of emulation exists between the different states in this respect, the unhappy blacks can only choose the least of the evils which beset them.

] and the intolerance of the people. On some accounts they are still more to be pitied than the Indians, since they are haunted by the reminiscence of slavery, and they cannot claim possession of a single portion of the soil: many of them perish miserably,[Footnote:

There is a very great difference between the mortality of the blacks and of the whites in the states in which slavery is abolished; from 1820 to 1831 only one out of forty-two individuals of the white population died in Philadelphia; but one negro out of twenty-one individuals of the black population died in the same space of time. The mortality is by no means so great among the negroes who are still slaves. (See Emmerson’s Medical Statistics, p. 28.)

] and the rest congregate in the great towns, where they perform the meanest offices, and lead a wretched and precarious existence.

But even if the number of negroes continued to increase as rapidly as when they were still in a state of slavery, as the number of whites augments with twofold rapidity since the abolition of slavery, the blacks would soon be, as it were, lost in the midst of a strange population.

A district which is cultivated by slaves is in general more scantily peopled than a district cultivated by free labor: moreover, America is still a new country, and a state is therefore not half peopled at the time when it abolished slavery.

No sooner is an end put to slavery, than the want of free labor is felt, and a crowd of enterprising adventurers immediately arrive from all parts of the country, who hasten to profit by the fresh resources which are then opened to industry. The soil is soon divided among them, and a family of white settlers takes possession of each tract of country. Besides which, European emigration is exclusively directed to the free states; for what would be the fate of a poor emigrant who crosses the Atlantic in search of ease and happiness, if he were to land in a country where labor is stigmatized as degrading?

Thus the white population grows by its natural increase, and at the same time by the immense influx of emigrants; while the black population receives no emigrants, and is upon its decline. The proportion which existed between the two races is soon inverted.

The negroes constitute a scanty remnant, a poor tribe of vagrants, which is lost in the midst of an immense people in full possession of the land; and the presence of the blacks is only marked by the injustice and the hardships of which they are the unhappy victims.

In several of the western states the negro race never made its appearance; and in all the northern states it is rapidly declining. Thus the great question of its future condition is confined within a narrow circle, where it becomes less formidable, though not more easy of solution.

The more we descend toward the south, the more difficult does it become to abolish slavery with advantage: and this arises from several physical causes, which it is important to point out.

The first of these causes is the climate: it is well known that in proportion as Europeans approach the tropics, they suffer more from labor. Many of the Americans even assert, that within a certain latitude the exertions which a negro can make without danger are fatal to them;[Footnote:

This is true of the spots in which rice is cultivated; rice-grounds, which are unwholesome in all countries, are particularly dangerous in those regions which are exposed to the beams of a tropical sun. Europeans would not find it easy to cultivate the soil in that part of the New World if it must necessarily be made to produce rice: but may they not subsist without rice-grounds?

] but I do not think that this opinion, which is so favorable to the indolence of the inhabitants of southern regions, is confirmed by experience. The southern parts of the Union are not hotter than the south of Italy and of Spain;[Footnote: These states are nearer to the equator than Italy and Spain, but the temperature of the continent of America is very much lower than that of Europe.

] and it may be asked why the European cannot work as well there as in the two latter countries. If slavery has been abolished in Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of the masters, why should not the same thing take place in the Union?

I cannot believe that Nature has prohibited the Europeans in Georgia and the Floridas, under pain of death, from raising the means of subsistence from the soil; but their labor would unquestionably be more irksome and less productive[Footnote: The Spanish government formerly caused a certain number of peasants from the Azores to be transported into a district of Louisiana called Attakapas, by way of experiment. These settlers still cultivate the soil without the assistance of slaves, but their industry is so languid as scarcely to supply their most necessary wants.

] to them than the inhabitants of New England. As the free workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the slave in the southern states, there are fewer inducements to abolish slavery.

All the plants of Europe grow in the northern parts of the Union; the south has special productions of its own. It has been observed that slave labor is a very expensive method of cultivating corn. The farmer of corn-land in a country where slavery is unknown, habitually retains a small number of laborers in his service, and at seed-time and harvest he hires several additional hands, who only live at his cost for a short period.

But the agriculturist in a slave state is obliged to keep a large number of slaves the whole year round, in order to sow his fields and to gather in his crops, although their services are only required for a few weeks; but slaves are unable to wait till they are hired, and to subsist by their own labor in the meantime like free laborers; in order to have their services, they must be bought. Slavery, independently of its general disadvantages, is therefore still more inapplicable to countries in which corn is cultivated than to those which produce crops of a different kind.

The cultivation of tobacco, of cotton, and especially of the sugar-cane, demands, on the other hand, unremitting attention: and women and children are employed in it, whose services are of but little use in the cultivation of wheat. Thus slavery is naturally more fitted to the countries from which these productions are derived.

Tobacco, cotton, and the sugar-cane, are exclusively grown in the south, and they form one of the principal sources of the wealth of those states. If slavery were abolished, the inhabitants of the south would be constrained to adopt one of two alternatives: they must either change their system of cultivation, and then they would come into competition with the more active and more experienced inhabitants of the north; or, if they continued to cultivate the same produce without slave labor, they would have to support the competition of the other states of the south, which might still retain their slaves. Thus, peculiar reasons for maintaining slavery exist in the south which do not operate in the north.

But there is yet another motive which is more cogent than all the others; the south might indeed, rigorously speaking, abolish slavery, but how should it rid its territory of the black population? Slaves and slavery are driven from the north by the same law, but this twofold result cannot be hoped for in the south.

The arguments which I have adduced to show that slavery is more natural and more advantageous in the south than in the north, sufficiently