tely connected, so firmly blended
together, that a dissolution of the Union would be destructive to all
the economical interests of both the North and the South. Cut off from
the South all that the North supplies to the planters, in such articles
as agricultural implements, furniture, clothing, provisions, horses, and
mules, and cotton culture would at once have to be abandoned to a great
extent. But would the South alone be the sufferer? Could the Northern
agriculturist, manufacturer, and mechanic, remain prosperous, and
continue to accumulate wealth, without a market for their products?
Could Northern merchants dwell in their palaces, and roll in luxury,
with a foreign commerce contracted to one-third of its present extent,
and a domestic demand for merchandize reduced to one-half its present
amount? Certainly not.

And if the mere necessity of self supply, of food and clothing, such as
existed in 1820, would now be disastrous to the South, and react
destructively upon the North, what would be the effect of emancipation
upon the country at large? What would be the effect of releasing from
restraint three and a half millions of negroes, to bask in idleness,
under the genial sunshine of the South, or to emigrate hither and
thither, at will, with none to control their actions? It is too late to
insist that free labor would be more profitable than slave labor, when
negroes are to be the operatives: Jamaica has solved that problem. It is
too late to claim that white labor could be made to take the place of
black labor, while the negroes remain upon the ground: Canada, and the
Northern States, demonstrate that the two races cannot be made to labor
together peacefully and upon terms of equality. Nothing is more certain,
therefore, than that emancipation would inevitably place the Southern
States in a similar position to that of Jamaica. On this point take a
fact or two.

The _Colonial Standard_,[103] of the 13th January, 1859, in speaking of
the present industrial condition of that Island, says, that there are
not more than twenty thousand laborers who employ themselves in sugar
cultivation for wages. This will seem astonishing to those who expected
so much from emancipation, when it is stated that the black population
of Jamaica, when liberated from slavery, numbered three hundred and
eleven thousand, six hundred and ninety two; and that the exports of
sugar from the Island, in 1805, before the slave trade was prohibited,