,809,126; while the products of our
slave labor, manufactured and unmanufactured, paid to the amount of
$133,648,603, on the balance of this foreign debt. This, then, is the
measure of the ability of the Farmers and Planters, respectively, to
meet the payment of the necessaries and comforts of life, supplied to
the country by its foreign commerce. The farmer pays, or seems only to
pay, $33,800,000, while the planter has a broad credit, on the account,
of $133,600,000.

This was true in 1853: is it so in 1859? The amounts are not now the
same, but the proportions have not varied materially. Reference to Table
VIII, in the Appendix, will show, that while the provisions exported,
for the three years preceding 1859, amounted to a yearly average of
$67,512,812, the value of the cotton and tobacco exported, during the
same period, amounted to an annual average of $147,079,647.

But is this seeming productiveness of slavery real, or is it only
imaginary? Has the system such capacities, over the other industrial
interests of the nation, in the creation of wealth, as these figures
indicate? Or, are these results due to its intermediate position between
the agriculture of the country and its foreign commerce? These are
questions worthy of consideration. Were the planters left to grow their
own provisions, they would, as already intimated, be unable to produce
any cotton for export. That their present ability to export so
extensively, is in consequence of the aid they receive from the North,
is proved by facts such as these:

In 1820, the cotton-gin had been a quarter of a century in operation,
and the culture of cotton was then nearly as well understood as at
present. The North, though furnishing the South with some live stock,
had scarcely begun to supply it with provisions, and the planters had to
grow the food, and manufacture much of the clothing for their slaves. In
that year the cotton crop equaled 109 lbs. to each slave in the Union,
of which 83 lbs. per slave were exported. In 1830 the exports of the
article had risen to 143 lbs., in 1840 to 295 lbs., and in 1853 to 337
lbs. per slave. The total cotton crop of 1853 equaled 395 lbs. per
slave--making both the production and export of that staple, in 1853,
more than four times as large, in proportion to the slave population, as
they were in 1820.[47] Had the planters, in 1853, been able to produce
no more cotton, per slave, than in 1820, they would have grown but
359,308