It is this great upheaving
of our masses which we have to fear, so far as our institutions are
concerned."[B]
[Footnote B: _De Bow's Review_, January, 1850. Quoted in Olmsted's _Back
Country_, p. 451.]
Further, the policy of the Cotton King, however honestly in theory it
may wish to encourage it, renders general education and consequent
intelligence an impossibility. A system of universal education is made
for a laboring population, and can be sustained only among a laboring
population; but if that population consist of slaves, universal
education cannot exist. The reason is simple; for the children of all
must be educated, otherwise the scholars will not support the schools.
It is an absolute necessity of society that in agricultural districts
cultivated by slave-labor the free population should be too sparsely
scattered to support a system of schools, even on starvation wages for
the cheapest class of teachers.
Finally, though it is a subject not necessary now to discuss, the effect
of the Cotton monopoly and dynasty in depressing the majority of the
whites into a species of labor competition in the same branch of
industry as the blacks, because the only branch open to all, can
hardly have a self-respect-inspiring influence on that portion of the
community, but should in its results rather illustrate old Falstaff's
remark,--that "there is a thing often heard of, and it is known to many
in our land, by the name of pitch; this pitch, as ancient writers do
report, doth defile: so doth the company thou keepest.
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