The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 | Page 5

to avenge and right
one's self. The possession and exercise of almost irresponsible power
over others tend to destroy in the master all power of self-control;
foster intolerance of any legal restraint, of any law but one's own will,
that must either rule or ruin. It is a spirit that is cultivated assiduously
from childhood to youth, and from youth to full age, by constant and
ubiquitous subjection of the negro, young and old, to the petty tyranny,
the whims and caprices of little master and miss, and by the exercise of
authority at all times and in all places by the white over the black race.
It is a spirit that is essential to the slave driver; and when the habit of
dictation and command to inferiors has grown into every fibre of his
nature, he cannot dismiss it when he deals with his equals, whenever

his wishes are opposed. Hence the violence, the lawlessness, the
carrying and free use of deadly weapons, the duels and murders that are
so rife in the South, and the haughty manners of so many Southern
Congressmen. The rebellion is simply the culmination and breaking
forth of this arrogant, domineering, slavery-fostered spirit on a vast
scale. Failing to hold the reins of the National Government, it must
needs destroy it.
Such a temper and disposition is evidently incompatible with human
equality and equal rights; and in it we have one of the roots of Southern
ill-concealed antagonism to free republican government.
2d. The second Southern, or slavery-engendered element that is
antagonistic to free institutions, is contempt of labor.
Could anything else be expected? Because slaves work, and are
compelled to it by the overseer's lash, all labor necessarily partakes of
the disgrace which is thus attached to it. It is surprising how perverted
the Southern mind is upon this point. Because slavery degrades labor,
they maintain that the converse must also be true, viz., that all who
labor must unavoidably possess the spirit of slaves; and hence they
supposed that the North would not make a vigorous opposition,
because all Northerners are addicted to labor.
The truth however is this: Where labor is despised no community can
flourish as it is capable of doing; much less one with free institutions.
We might just as well talk of a body without flesh and bones; of a
house without walls or timbers; of a country without land and water, as
of free institutions without skilled and honorable labor. It is the very
ground on which they stand.
This then is another source of antagonism between slave and free
institutions.
3d. A third point, not only of difference, but also of antagonism
between slave society and free, consists in the permanent contraction or
limitation of the field of labor in the former, and its perpetual
expansion and multiplication of the branches of industry in the latter.

Not only does the slave perform as little work as he can with safety, but
besides this, the sphere in which slave labor can be profitably employed
is a limited one. Agriculture on an extensive scale, on large plantations,
is the only one that the slaveholder finds to repay him. All articles, or
the vast majority of them, used by the South, that require for their
production a great number of different and subdivided branches of
labor, come from the North.
We have said that labor, skilled, honored, educated labor, is the
material foundation, the solid ground upon which free institutions rest.
We now further add this undeniable and important truth, viz., that as
branches of labor are multiplied; as each branch itself is subdivided and
diversified; as new branches and new details are established by the aid
of the ever-increasing light of scientific discovery, and the exhaustless
fertility of human inventive genius; as all these numerous industries are
more or less connected and interlocked; as this great network of
ever-multiplying and diversified human labors expands its
circumference, while also filling up its interior meshes, in the degree
that all this takes place, the broader and firmer becomes this industrial
foundation for free institutions.
It is on this broad platform of diversified and interlocked labors that
man meets his brother man and equal. The variety and diversity of
labors adapts itself to a like and analogous diversity of human
characters, tastes, and industrial aptitudes and capacities. And the
mutual dependence and interlocking of these multiplied branches of
industry bring the laborers themselves into more numerous, more close,
and independent relations. Men are first drawn together by their mutual
wants and their social impulses; but when thus brought together, they
tend to remain united, not merely by affinity of character, but also, and
often mainly by their having something to do in common--by their
common labors and pursuits. Advancing civilization, since it ever