power of
thought--though I fear his practical conclusions will be found of
little value--that it is hardly necessary to urge it.[237] Property--the
accumulation of capital, as it is commonly called--is the first element
of civilization. But to accumulate, or to use capital to any
considerable extent, the combination of labor is necessary. In early
stages of society, when people are thinly scattered over an extensive
territory, the labor necessary to extensive works cannot be commanded.
Men are independent of each other. Having the command of abundance of
land, no one will submit to be employed in the service of his neighbor.
No one, therefore, can employ more capital than he can use with his own
hands, or those of his family, nor have an income much beyond the
necessaries of life. There can, therefore, be little leisure for
intellectual pursuits, or means of acquiring the comforts or elegancies
of life. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that if a man has the
command of slaves, he may combine labor, and use capital to any required
extent, and therefore accumulate wealth. He shows that no colonies have
been successfully planted without some sort of slavery. So we find the
fact to be. It is only in the slaveholding States of our Confederacy,
that wealth can be acquired by agriculture--which is the general
employment of our whole country. Among us, we know that there is no one,
however humble his beginning, who, with persevering industry,
intelligence, and orderly and virtuous habits, may not attain to
considerable opulence. So far as wealth has been accumulated in the
States which do not possess slaves, it has been in cities by the
pursuits of commerce, or lately, by manufactures. But the products of
slave labor furnish more than two-thirds of the materials of our foreign
commerce, which the industry of those States is employed in transporting
and exchanging; and among the slaveholding States is to be found the
great market for all the productions of their industry, of whatever
kind. The prosperity of those States, therefore, and the civilization of
their cities, have been for the most part created by the existence of
slavery. Even in the cities, but for a class of population, which our
institutions have marked as servile, it would be scarcely possible to
preserve the ordinary habitudes of civilized life, by commanding the
necessary menial and domestic service.

Every stage of human society, from the most barbarous t