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THE COUNTRYMAN.
TURNYVOLD, GA., FEBRUARY 7, 1865.
Shall the Confederacy Abolish Slavery?
It is a strange thing, indeed, that we
have got to fight the battle of slavery with
southern men. But so it is. There are
men at the south who go in for abolishing
it, in order to induce England and France
to intervene in our behalf. We don’t be
lieve these two heartless nations will in
tervene in our favor, for any consideration.
* But grant that they will—we are opposed
to abolishing slavery to please them, or on
any other account.
If the war on slavery by southern men
continues, we shall take occasion to lay
the pro-slavery arguments before our
readers, in extenso, as we are quite famil
iar with them, it having been our prov
ince, for a number of years past, to con
tend for our institutions, in the newspa
pers, magazines, and quarterlies, north,
and south, of the old union.
There is one particular branch of the
subject upon which we propose to treat,
in this article: and that is that the non-
slaveholders of this country are more in
terested in the preservation of the institu
tion of slavery, than the slaveholders
themselves. It is upon the poorer classes
of our fellow-citizens that abolition would
fall in all its deadliest weight.
God, in making men, creates distinc
tions between them. He has never yet
created all men equal, nor do we believe
he ever will, in this world. There are
castes, and classes, the world over, found
ed upon the distinctions of blood, birth,
talent, and education. In no other local
ity, on the face of the earth, is there any
thing like such equality with the white
race, as at the south. Here, as elsewhere,
mankind are divided into plebeian, and
patrician. All negroes belong to the for
mer, and all white people belong to the
latter class. Abolish slavery—break down
the distinction based upon the color of the
skin, and then other distinctions will
arisd. God has made one portion of man
kind to serve the other portion. There
never has been on earth a nation, kindred,
nor tongue of people, of whom this propo
sition was not true. We hold it is better
for the negro to serve the white man, than
for one white man to serve another. This
is so, because it is the order of nature for
it to be so: and, besides this, we learn
from h6ly writ, that Noah, the servant of
God, denounced the curse upon Canaan,
the son of Ham, that he and his posterity
should serve their brethren :
“ And Noah awoke from his wine, and
know what his younger son bad done un
to him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan :
a servant of servants shall he be unto his
brethren. And he said, Blessed be the
Lord God of Shem : and Canaan shall be
his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth,
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem :
and Canaan shall be his servant.”—Gen.
9th, 24th-27th.
Here it is declared by God that the ne
gro shall serve the white man ; and we
have the voice of nature, and nature’s God,
both to that effect.
Wherever an inferior and superior race
both inhabit the same country, the former,
under some form, or other, is bound to
serve the latter: and where there is but
one race, the weaker ones serve the strong
er ones. Then if you destroy negro slave
ry, at the south, who will take the place
of the negroes ? Unfortunate white peo
ple, as a matter of course.
Some persons imagine that if negro
slavery were destroyed, there would then
be equality among all white people. Very
far from it. Such has never been, and
never will be the case. On the contrary,
the inequalities among white people will
be far greater than ever. If the negroes
are allowed to remain in the country, as
freemen, their labor will he brought into
competition with thatof white people, in
all the mechanic arts, and in all the vari
ous branches of labor, from the most ex
alted labor—that of the art preservative of
all the arts—down to the lowest. They
will underbid our white people in the
blacksmith’s shop, on the shoe-maker’s
bench, as engineers on railroads, as archi
tects, as compositors, and pressmen. In
stead of being confined to tilling the soil,
as they should be, there will be no chan
nel of labor, except that of .field labor,
which will not be glutted by them.
This will be the case if the free negroes
are allowed to remain in the country. If
they are expelled from it, then, of course,
the drudgery now perforated by them will
devolve upon white people.
The abolition of slavery will not fall
bard upon men of capital, upon doctors,
lawyers, editors, preachers, &c. These
can assemble in the towns and villages,
practise their professions, or enjoy their
capital. Not so with the masses. These,
or some of them, will have to remain in
the country, and the menial labor, and
drudgery^now done by slaves, will have
to be performed, at least in part, by them.
With the abolition of negro slavery, at the
south, the distinctive features of our civi
lization will be done away with. We shall
cease to be an agricultural people, and
become, probably, a manufacturing peo
ple. Wealth will accumulate on one hand,
and poverty on the other. The rich will
become richer, aud the poor poofer. A
white skin will no longer secure a man
against servitude. The distinctions be
tween our yeomanry, and that of all other
countries, will then be broken down. The
masses here will no longer be the high
born race of white men they have hereto
fore been—proud and sensitive as to their
birth-rights ; scornful of servitude, be
cause they lived in constant contrast with
the slave; unwilling to brook insult, be
cause once the equals of any ; jealous of
their liberties, because they had experi
ence of slavery before them, in the person
of the negro; but they will descend from
being.patricians, to the estate of plebeians ;
and as time advances, they will become
tame, and yielding; and as density of
population grows upon them, the pauper
ism, and Crime of other countries will be
fastened upon their shoulders. Who does
not feel that this fate can never be his,
and his children’s, so long as negro slave
ry remains among us? But when it is
gone, who can be satisfied that all these
things will not weigh heavily upon his
posterity ? Who of us can tell the evils
that will befall our children, if negro
slavery is abolished ?
Synopsis op Lincoln’s Message.— “Mo
bile,-Dec. 12.—Special despatches to the
Advertiser, from Senatobia, 10th, and 11th,
give northern dates to the 5th. Lincoln,
in his message, says that all the lines of
last year have been maintained, and the
federal lines steadily advanced ; he be
lieves the recent election indicates an in
tention of the people, to sustain his ad
ministration ; regards the emigrant scheme,
under Providence, as the principal means
of repairing the ravages of war, and re
plenishing our national wealth, and says,
that, notwithstanding losses by the war,
the voting population has increased one
hundred, and forty-five thousand votes.
He thinks that negotiation with the rebels
would amount to nothing, as they declare
that they will accept nothing short of a
severance of the union, an issue which
the north cannot accept; nothing short
of war, and victory can decide the ques
tion ; and thinks the time will come,
when more vigorous measures should be
adopted, for preventing the recurrence of
armed resistance to national authority, on
the part of insurgents. He retracts noth-
ing previously said, relative to slavery,
and repeats his declaration of a year ago, or
does not attempt to modify, or retract, his
emancipation proclamation, nor will he
return to slavery, any person freed by
congressional enactment, and that, finally,
the war will cease, on his part, when it
ceases on the part of those who began
it.
The senate has confirmed the nomina«
tion of Chase, as chief justice.”