WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
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the relation of overseers for the gentlemen of the North. Why is it so? We produce the raw material; we have the physical responsibility of seeing to the laborer and tending the hands who produce the raw material. When it is prepared for the market, the marine of the North comes and receives it and brings it here. Our cotton and sugar are brought here for consumption. Cotton especially is the most important article of this kind of commerce. The cotton is transported here and you derive the benefit of the carrying trade. This we don't think hard of. You have the advantage of your industry, your ingenuity, your ma- chinery, and its fabrications. By the same means that brought it, you transport it back again, and we consume it. So then, we are the producers and consumers, while you are the manufac- turers, and to you we pay tribute. That is all right enough. I don't think hard of it. But it is truth. Thus you are benefitted by it. Where would be your spindles and looms but for the pro- ductions of the South on which they depend? We take your manufactures and you supply our demand. This is all fair trade and it is all right. It shows that there is a mutual dependence of one section upon the other, and without both neither can exist and be happy and independent. Hence it is that I have always been devoted to the Union. Upon that subject I may be a mono- maniac; at all events I am very much devoted to the fancy. [Ap- plause.] We found slavery in our country. We use slaves but we do not abuse them. One race or the other must give way. If slavery were to give way the spindles of the North would stop. It may be objected that I am appealing to the cupidity of the Northern people. I am appealing to their common sense and experience, and they may give it what name they please that object to it. Look to Jamaica. Has the slave advanced with all the advantages of emancipation, after passing through all the stages of apprenticeship? No, he has deteriorated. He is lower than when he was a slave. His labor is unproductive; he is not profitable to himself or to any other. How would it be in the South? Turn them loose and they could not set up in business. Land could not be appropriated to them; and if it were they would not work it. They would be as they are in Bermuda and everywhere else where they are thrown upon their own resources. They are listless, inert, lazy, living on the fruits of the earth where they can be had, but never will be industrious.
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