The Continental Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 3, March 1862 | Page 5

its own
in the South, and the days of secession would speedily be numbered. In
a land where all rushes so rapidly to extremes, we should soon see the
war carried on for us with a bitterness fully equal to that now
manifested towards the North.
It is with no pleasant feelings that we thus commend counter-revolution.
It is the worst of war that it drives us to such considerations. But what
is to be done when our existence as a nation is at stake, and when we
are opposed by a remorseless foe which would gladly ruin us
irretrievably? There is no halting half-way. It was these endless
scruples which interfered with the prevention of the war under the
imbecile or traitorous Buchanan; it is lingering scruple and timidity
which still inspires in thousands of cowardly hearts a dislike to face the
grim danger and prevent it.
* * * * *
WESTWARD!
How the pink-hued morning clouds Go sailing into the west! And the
pearl-white breath of noon, Or the mists round the silver moon, In
silent, sheeny crowds Go sailing into the west!
The glowing, fire-eyed sun In glory dies in the west; And the bird with
dreamy crest, And soft, sun-loving breast, When throbbing day is done,
Floats slowly into the west.
Oh, everything lovely and fair Is floating into the west. 'Tis an

unknown land, where our hopes must go, And all things beautiful,
fluttering slow; Our joys all wait for us there,-- Far out in the dim blue
west.
* * * * *
IS COTTON OUR KING?
BY A COTTON-SPINNER.
No falsehood has been so persistently adhered to by the Southern
planters and their advocates, and so successfully forced upon the
credulity of the North, as the statement that white men can not perform
field labor in the cotton States, coupled with the equally false assertion
that the emancipated negro lapses into barbarism, and ceases to be an
industrious laborer.
It is one of the chief points of weakness in a bad cause, that, although a
single advocate may succeed in rendering it plausible, many are certain
to present utterly irreconcilable arguments. An impartial man,
examining De Bow's Review for a series of years, would arrive at
conclusions in regard to the economy of slave labor, and the necessity
of colored laborers in the Southern States, the very reverse of what the
writers have intended to enforce.
It is constantly asserted that white men can not labor in the tropics,
which we may freely admit; but the inference that the climate of the
Southern States is tropical we have the best authority for denying:
firstly, from the testimony of all Southern writers when describing their
own section of country, and not arguing upon the slavery question; and,
secondly, from Humboldt's isothermal lines, by which we find that the
temperature of the cotton States is the same as that of Portugal, the
south of Spain, Italy, and Australia. Do we find Australian emigrants
writing home to their friends not to come out because they will not be
able to work? We know they do not; and yet the mean annual
temperature of Australia is 70°--greater by five to six degrees than that
of Texas; and, from the best accounts we can get, the extreme of heat is
very much greater.

Examine De Bow's analysis of the census of 1850, and we find him
compelled to admit that one-ninth of the force then cultivating cotton
were white men. If one-ninth were white men in 1850, when the price
of cotton was much less and the crop much smaller than of late years,
how many are there now?
One of the most reliable witnesses to the cultivation of cotton by free
labor is a Quaker gentleman in Philadelphia, who conducts a cotton
factory supplied entirely with free-grown cotton, the goods being sold
to the Quakers, who will not use the product of slave labor of any kind.
This gentleman writes:--
I learned by correspondence with several intelligent Germans in Texas,
that their experiment of raising cotton by their own labor, without the
help of slaves, was a complete success. One planter offered to supply
me at once with one hundred and forty bales raised in this way. The
ground taken by thee that cotton can be raised by white men, as well as
by colored men, is entirely correct. A very large portion is every year
so raised. I have had particular information of its being thus raised in
Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North
Carolina. In some neighborhoods thousands of bales are thus raised
within the limits of two or three adjacent counties.
It may be urged that this is upon uplands almost exclusively, and that
upon bottom lands it is not possible, on account