" In the towns alone was the loss offset in any
degree by an inflow of immigration.[80]
[Footnote 79: L.W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source of
political power, of material progress, of social integrity and of social
emancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8.]
[Footnote 80: L.W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana," in the
Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861.]
A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect upon
prosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. The
slave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozen
central counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple here
left that will pay for investment in negroes," and that can hardly hold
them against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of the
upland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly markets
in response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, he
continued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordingly
served, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrent
hampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated the
complete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetus
to the state's prosperity.
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