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70 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.”