Southern Slavery--The Black Race--The Dangers of a Protracted War.
Since those stupendous military operations of last summer which resulted in the complete reopening of the Mississippi river, and since the advance of our Army of the Cumberland to the northern border of Georgia, we have had, from time to time, some startling admissions and complaints from Southern rebel journals of the alarming accessions to the slave population of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina from the other slave States occupied or invaded by the Union forces.
Thus, at length, we have the report that considerably over a million of slaves, by the pressure of war, have been added to the servile race in Alabama and Georgia. They have been drawn from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, and still the stream continues. Large numbers, also, from Missouri, and all the other slave States bordering on the Mississippi have been removed by their masters, for present security, into the ample domains of Texas; so that the slave population of that State has probably been increased to the extent of two hundred and fifty thousand souls since the beginning of the war.
These facts are very significant and suggestive. They awaken at once the inquiry, what is to become of Southern slavery, and what is to become of the black race, bond or free, if these alarming movements of the slave population shall be continued another year? The question is not relieved of its embarrassment by the fact that, while slavery is thus retreating into a corner to escape our advancing armies, hundreds of thousands of slaves are liberated by falling into the service of the government, while the residue of this class of the population in the slave States within the Union lines is held in servitude chiefly by the inclinations of the slaves themselves or by their immediate necessities in the way of subsistence.
The great facts before us are that the question is already settled against slavery in the border States; that the war is removing it from the next tier of States below; and that the suffocation of the institution is threatened in the remaining cotton States from a surfeit of negroes, involving the most fearful dangers to both races. We will, upon these points, bring the census of 1860 to our assistance, beginning with the loyal border slave States:––
Loyal Slave States: White Population: Slaves.
Delaware.................................. 20,789 1,798
Maryland....................................515,918 87,189
West Virginia (new) ...................200,000 40,000
Kentucky....................................919,517 225,483
Missouri....................................1,563,589 114,931
Total.................................2,789,533 469,491
Here we have an average of six free whites to one black slave. Delaware maybe ranked, however, a free State. Maryland has entered upon the work of emancipation, and, as half her black population are free negroes already, she will act with little difficulty in liberating the other half, or what has been left of it by the war. Missouri, in entering upon the work, will find it nearly completed by removals and runaways. Kentucky has not yet breached the emancipation question: but she cannot much longer postpone it.
We will next consider the rebellious States reoccupied entirely, or to a great extent, by theUnion forces. They are:––
States: White Population: Slaves.
Old Virginia.............847,431 456,000
Arkansas................324,191 111,115
Tennessee..............826,782 228,789
Mississippi..............353,901 476,421
Louisiana................357,639 331,720
Total..................2,709,914 1,000,191
Here we are getting into the heart of our subject. There are perhaps not now in Old Virginia three hundred thousand slaves. In Arkansas the advent of our army has resulted in a considerable stampede of slaveholders with their slaves for Texas. Tennessee is emerging from the war, will proceed to make ample room for free white labor by the abolition of slavery. Half her slaves of 1860 are perhaps now missing. In Louisiana––turned inside out and upside down by the war––it is hardly possible that slavery can recover from the shock. Mississippi, with two-thirds of her slaves removed, is in nearly the same condition. Thus far the war is working out the problem of emancipation. But this is not all.
We next come to the States held by the rebel armies, excepting their seacoast districts and some portions of their inland borders. These States are:––
States: White Population: Slaves.
North Carolina...........631,100 391,000
South Carolina...........291,383 487,000
Georgia......................591,687 462,393
Florida........................72,748 49,745
Alabama.....................326,634 415,000
Texas..........................422,294 182,000
Total..........................2,500,829 1,875,063
It will be perceived from these figures that, with an additional million of slaves thrown into Alabama and Georgia, their black is double their white population, and that all the slaves in these six States largely exceed their white people. Of these six States only two down to the outbreak of this war, were self-supporting in the way of provisions. These were Texas and North Carolina. The other four drew their flour, beef, &c., in immense quantities, from Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas and the Northwest. But all these sources of supply are now cut off, and, North Carolina is impoverished. What, then, will be the consequences to the black population of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, increased by a million of slaves from other States, and having to support, besides, the great army of Bragg and smaller detachments of troops, equal in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, or half a million ordinary consumers.
The rebel Commissary General, in April last, foreshadowed the starvation of his confederacy this winter, and he did not foresee the terrible pressure which has come upon it. With all the care and all the abundance of supplies possessed by the government, thousands of slaves or "freedmen," falling into its possession along the Mississippi valley have died and are dying from destitution and disease, resulting from the general chaos and confusion produced by the war. Plantations, in many cases, have been laid waste, and the slaves have been left behind to shift for themselves or to perish. In other cases large numbers herded together, without sufficient sanitary regulations, have died off as from a pestilence. And all over the war-wasted districts of the South these evils are still vigorously working out their harvest of death. What, then, will be the consequences to the slave population of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, under the circumstances detailed, should this war be continued till May next? Possibly a servile insurrection, involving the extermination of the blacks; inevitably their decrease by hundreds and thousands from lack of subsistence. Let the war be dragged along till May next, and by July it will probably have inflicted upon the black population of the whole country the loss of a million of its aggregate of four millions of slaves. Nor is it probable that even then, with the return of peace, the blacks of the South can be provided for or reorganized under any system of labor and substance in time to prevent the loss of another million from the disastrous effect of the war upon this unfortunate race.
Such are the consequences, actual and probable, to the poor African from this cruel war. Such are the fruits of the baneful agitation of slavery by the fanatics of the North and the lunatic fire-eaters of the South. The work of abolition philanthropy threatens the destruction of the slave race; while the doing of the conspirators with Jeff. Davis in behalf of a purely slaveholding confederacy threaten the absolute destruction of slavery itself. Such are ever the consequences of violent measures to anticipate the designs of Providence and the remedies of time for the evils of the hour.
In behalf of the white and the black races, North and South, we have urged the earnest prosecution of the war, in view of a speedy peace. The abolition faction, meantime, have been absorbed in the prospective glories of a war of "freedom," regardless of its duration. We would now call upon them to assist in pushing on the war, looking to the fearful consequences which its prolongation will inevitably entail not only upon the white race, but upon the blacks of the South. In this view, we say that it would be safer and better to rescue a remnant even of Southern slavery than in hazard the destruction of both races of the South by reducing the war to an abolition crusade.
"Southern Slavery - The Black Race - The Dangers of a Protracted War," New York (NY) Herald, November 22, 1863, p. 4.