That we have not overstated her dependence upon our slave labor for cotton is a fact of world-wide notoriety. _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1853, in referring to the cultivation of the article, by the United States, says:
"With its increased growth has sprung up that mercantile navy, which now waves its stripes and stars over every sea, and that foreign influence, which has placed the internal peace--we may say the subsistence of millions in every manufacturing country in Europe--within the power of an oligarchy of planters."
In reference to the same subject, the _London Economist_ quotes as follows:
"Let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O'Groats. The lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any kind of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms; two thousand thousand mouths would starve, for lack of food to feed them."
A more definite statement of England's indebtedness to cotton, is given by McCullough; who shows that as far back as 1832, her exports of cotton fabrics were equal in value to about two-thirds of all the woven fabrics exported from the empire. The same state of things, nearly, existed in 1849, when the cotton fabrics exported, according to the _London Economist_, were valued at about $140,000,000, while all the other woven fabrics exported did not quite reach to the value of $68,000,000. On consulting the same authority, of still later dates, it appears, that the last four years has produced no material change in the relations which the different classes of British fabrics, exported, bear to each other. The present condition of the demand and supplies of cotton, throughout Europe, and the extent to which the increasing consumption of that staple must stimulate the American planters to its increased production, will be noticed in the proper place.[21]
There was a time when American slave labor sustained no such relations to the manufactures and commerce of the world as it now so firmly holds; and when, by the adoption of proper measures, on the part of the free colored people and their friends, the emancipation of the slaves, in all the States, might, possibly, have been effected. But that period has passed forever away, and causes, unforeseen, have come into operation, which are too powerful to be overcome by any agencies that have since been employed.[22] What Divine Providence may have in store for the future, we know not; but, at present, the institution of slavery is sustained by numberless pillars, too massive for human power and wisdom to overthrow.
