bodies, and
estates of both races of men, and the very soil on which they existed
together--I came to the conclusion that immediate and entire emancipation
was not only an act of imperative right, but would be the safest and most
profitable course for the interests of both parties. The gradual and
inevitable process of ruin which exhibits itself in the long run on every
property involving slavery, naturally suggests some element of decay
inherent in the system; the reckless habits of extravagance and
prodigality in the masters, the ruinous wastefulness and ignorant
incapacity of the slaves, the deterioration of the land under the
exhausting and thriftless cultivation to which it is subjected, made it
evident to me that there were but two means of maintaining a prosperous
ownership in Southern plantations: either the possession of considerable
capital wherewith to recruit the gradual waste of the energies of the
soil, and supply by all the improved and costly methods of modern
agriculture the means of profitable cultivation (a process demanding, as
English farmers know, an enormous and incessant outlay of both money and
skill), or an unlimited command of fresh soil, to which the slaves might
be transferred as soon as that already under culture exhibited signs of
exhaustion. Now the Southerners are for the most part men whose only
wealth is in their land and labourers--a large force of slaves is their
most profitable investment. The great capitalists and monied men of the
country are Northern men; the planters are men of large estates but
restricted means--many of them are deeply involved in debt, and there are
very few who do not depend from year to year for their subsistence on the
harvest of their fields and the chances of the cotton and rice crops of
each season.

This makes it of vital importance to them to command an unrestricted
extent of territory. The man who can move a 'gang' of able-bodied negroes
to a tract of virgin soil is sure of an immense return of wealth; as sure
as that he who is circumscribed in this respect, and limited to the
cultivation of certain lands with cotton or tobacco by slaves, will in the
course of a few years see his estate gradually exhausted and unproductive,
refusing its increase, while its black population propagating and
multiplying will compel him eventually, under penalty of starvation, to
make _them_ his crop, and substitute, as the Virginians have been
constrained to do, a traffi