Senator Wilson's Vindication of Free Labor.
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Senator Wilson's Vindication of Free Labor.
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Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, having denounced the laboring men of the North as the mere mudsills of Society, Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, who passed his youth and early manhood at hard and honest toil, said in reply:
But the Senator, filled with magnificent visions of Southern power, crowns cotton "king," and tells us that if they should stop supplying cotton for three years, "England would topple headlong, and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South!" What presumption! The South--which owns lands and slaves, the price fluctuating with the production, use and price of cotton, having no other resource or means of support--would go harmless, while the great commercial centres of the world, with the vast accumulations of capital, the products of ages of accumulation, with varied pursuits and skilled industry, would "topple" to their fall! Sir, I supposed the coffee-planters of Brazil, the tea-growers of the Celestial Empire, and the wheat growers on the shores of the Black Sea, and on the banks of the Don and the Volga, indulge in the same magnificent illusion. I would remind the Senator that the commercial world is not governed by the cotton planters of the South, the coffee planters of Brazil, the tea-growers of China, nor the wheat producers of Eastern Europe. I tell the Senator that England, France, Germany, Western Europe and the Northern States of this Union, are the commercial, manufacturing, business and monetary centres of the world; that their merchants, manufacturers and capitalists grasp the globe; that cotton and sugar, and tea and coffee, and wheat, and the spices of the isles of the Oriental seas. are grown for them. Sir, the cotton-planters of the South are simply their agents, and they perform their task under a necessity quite as great as their own slaves perform theirs under the taskmaster's eye. I would remind the Senator that the free States, in 1850, produced $850,000,000 of manufactures, and that only $52,000,000 of of that vast production--only about one-seventeenth part of it--was made up of cotton. Our manufactures and mechanics arts now must exceed twelve hundred million dollars, and cotton does not make up more than seventy million dollars. Does the Senator think the free States would "topple" down if they should lose one-seventeenth part of their productive industry?
The productive industry of Massachusetts, a State that manufactures more than one-third of all the cotton manufactured in the country, was in 1855, $350,000,000, about $280 per head for each person, would perish if she should lose $26,000,000 of that vast production?
It is no matter of surprise that gentlemen who live away off on cross-roads, where cotton blooms. should come to believe that cotton rules the world; but a few months' association with the great world would cure that delusion. "You are our factors!" exclaims the Senator. "You bring and carry for us. Suppose we were to discharge you? Suppose we were to take our business out of your hands, we should consign you to anarchy and poverty!" Sir, suppose, when the Senator returns from this chamber to the cotton-fields, his slaves should in their simplicity, say to him "Massa, you only sell de cotton; we plant; we hoes; we picks de cotton! 'Spose we discharge you!" The unsophisticated "mudsills" would be quite as reasonable as is the Senator. The Senator seems to think the cotton planters hold us in the hollow of their hands; if they shake them, we tremble; if they close them, we perish.
But the Senator from South Carolina, after crowning cotton as king, with power to bring England and all the civilized world "toppling" down in the yawning gulfs of bankruptcy and ruin, complacently tells the Senate and the trembling subjects of his cotton king that "the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political institutions;" that "her forms of society are the best in the world;" that "she has an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, seen nowhere on earth." The South, he tells us, "is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous," and he asked us if we "have heard that the ghosts of Mendoza and Torquemada are stalking in the streets of our great cities; that the inquisition is at hand, and that there are fearful rumors of consultations for vigilance committees?' Sir, this self-complacency is sublime! No son of the Celestial Empire can approach the Senator in self-complacency. That "society is the best in the world" where more than three millions of beings, created in the image of their God, are held as chattels--sunk from the lofty level of humanity, down to the abject condition of unreasoning beasts of burden! That "society is the best in the world" where are manacles, chains and whips, auction blocks, prisons, bloodhounds, scourgings, lynchings and burnings, laws to torture the body, shrivel the mind and debase the soul; where labor is dishonored and laborers despised! "Political freedom" in a land where woman is imprisoned for teaching little children to read the Holy Scriptures, where professors are deposed and banished for opposing the extension of slavery; where public men are exiled for quoting in a national Convention the words of Jefferson; where voters are mobbed for appearing to vote for free territory; and where booksellers are driven from the country for selling a copy of that master work of genius, "Uncle Tom's Cabin!" And land of "certain security," where patrols, costing, as in Old Virginia, more than is expended to educate her poor children, stalk the country to catch the faintest rumor of discontent; where the bay of the bloodhound never ceases; where but little more than one year ago rose the startling cry of insurrection; and where men, some of them owned by a member of this body, were scourged and murdered for suspected insurrection! "Political freedom" and "certain security" in a land which demands that seventeen millions of freemen shall stand guard to seize and carry back fleeing bondmen!
The Senator from South Carolina exclaims, "The man who lives by daily labor, your whole class of manual laborers, are essentially slaves--they feel galled by their degradation." What a sentiment is this to hear uttered in the councils of this democratic Republic! The Senator's political associates, who listen to these words which brand hundreds of thousands of the men they represent in the free States and hundreds of their neighbors and personal friends as slaves, have found no words to repel or rebuke this language. This language of scorn and contempt is addressed to Senators who were not nursed by a slave, whose lot it was to toil with their own hands--to eat bread, not by the sweat of another's brow, but by their own.
Sir, I am the son of a "hireling manual laborer," who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, "lives by daily labor." I too have been a daily laborer. I too have been a hireling manual laborer. Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood, and want was there sometimes--an unbidden guest. At the age of ten years--to aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt spectre from the hearth of the mother who bore me--I left the home of my boyhood and went to earn my bread by "daily labor." Many a weary mile have I travelled,
"To beg a brother of the earth
To give me leave to toil."
Sir, I have toiled as a "hireling manual laborer" in the field and in the workshop; and I tell the Senator from South Carolina that I never felt "galled by my degradation." No, sir--never! Perhaps the Senator who represents that "other class which leads progress, and civilization, and refinement," will ascribe this to obtuseness of intellect and blunted sensibilities of the heart. Sir, I was conscious of my manhood; I was the peer of my employer; I knew that the laws and institutions of my native and adopted States threw over him and over me alike the panoply of equality; I knew, too, that the world was before me, that its wealth, its garnered treasurees of knowledge, its honors, the coveted prizes of life, were within the grasp of a brave heart, and a tireless hand, and I accepted the responsibilities of my position, all unconscious that I was a "slave." I have employed others, hundreds of "hireling manual laborers." Some of them possessed, and now possess, more property than I ever owned; some of them were better educated and better read, too, than some Senators on this floor; and many of them, in moral excellence and purity of character, I could not but feel, were my superiors. I have occupied, Mr. President, for more than thirty years, the relation of employer, and while I never "felt galled by my degradation" in the one case, in the other I was never conscious that my "hireling laborers" were my inferiors. That man is a "snob" who boasts of being a "hireling laborer;" or who assumes any superiority over others because he is an employer. Honest labor is honorable; and the man who is ashamed that he is or was a "hireling laborer" has not manhood enough to "feel galled by degradation."
Having occupied, Mr. President, the relation of either employed or employer for the third of a century; having lived in a Commonwealth where the "hireling class of manual laborers" are the depositories of political power; having associated with this class in all the relations of life; I tell the Senator from South Carolina, and the class he represents, that he libels, grossly libels them, when he declares they are essentially slaves! There can be found nowhere in America a class of men more proudly conscious or tenacious of their rights. Friend or for has ever found them.
"A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none."
The Senator tells us, Mr. President, that slaves are "well compensated!" South Carolina slaves "well compensated!" Why, sir, the Senator himself, in a speech made at home, for home consumption, entered into an estimate to show that a field hand could be supported for from eighteen to nineteen dollars per annum on the rice and cotton plantations. He states the quantity of corn and bacon and salt necessary to support the "well compensated" slave. And this man, supported by eighteen dollars per annum, with the privilege of being flogged at discretion, and having his wife and children sold from him at the necessity or will of his master, the Senator from South Carolina informs the Senate of the United States is "well compensated!" Sir, there is not a poor house in the free States where there would not be a rebellion in three days if the inmates were compelled to subsist on the quantity and quality of the food the Senator estimates as "ample compensation" for the labor of a slave in South Carolina.
But the Senator, filled with magnificent visions of Southern power, crowns cotton "king," and tells us that if they should stop supplying cotton for three years, "England would topple headlong, and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South!" What presumption! The South--which owns lands and slaves, the price fluctuating with the production, use and price of cotton, having no other resource or means of support--would go harmless, while the great commercial centres of the world, with the vast accumulations of capital, the products of ages of accumulation, with varied pursuits and skilled industry, would "topple" to their fall! Sir, I supposed the coffee-planters of Brazil, the tea-growers of the Celestial Empire, and the wheat growers on the shores of the Black Sea, and on the banks of the Don and the Volga, indulge in the same magnificent illusion. I would remind the Senator that the commercial world is not governed by the cotton planters of the South, the coffee planters of Brazil, the tea-growers of China, nor the wheat producers of Eastern Europe. I tell the Senator that England, France, Germany, Western Europe and the Northern States of this Union, are the commercial, manufacturing, business and monetary centres of the world; that their merchants, manufacturers and capitalists grasp the globe; that cotton and sugar, and tea and coffee, and wheat, and the spices of the isles of the Oriental seas. are grown for them. Sir, the cotton-planters of the South are simply their agents, and they perform their task under a necessity quite as great as their own slaves perform theirs under the taskmaster's eye. I would remind the Senator that the free States, in 1850, produced $850,000,000 of manufactures, and that only $52,000,000 of of that vast production--only about one-seventeenth part of it--was made up of cotton. Our manufactures and mechanics arts now must exceed twelve hundred million dollars, and cotton does not make up more than seventy million dollars. Does the Senator think the free States would "topple" down if they should lose one-seventeenth part of their productive industry?
The productive industry of Massachusetts, a State that manufactures more than one-third of all the cotton manufactured in the country, was in 1855, $350,000,000, about $280 per head for each person, would perish if she should lose $26,000,000 of that vast production?
It is no matter of surprise that gentlemen who live away off on cross-roads, where cotton blooms. should come to believe that cotton rules the world; but a few months' association with the great world would cure that delusion. "You are our factors!" exclaims the Senator. "You bring and carry for us. Suppose we were to discharge you? Suppose we were to take our business out of your hands, we should consign you to anarchy and poverty!" Sir, suppose, when the Senator returns from this chamber to the cotton-fields, his slaves should in their simplicity, say to him "Massa, you only sell de cotton; we plant; we hoes; we picks de cotton! 'Spose we discharge you!" The unsophisticated "mudsills" would be quite as reasonable as is the Senator. The Senator seems to think the cotton planters hold us in the hollow of their hands; if they shake them, we tremble; if they close them, we perish.
But the Senator from South Carolina, after crowning cotton as king, with power to bring England and all the civilized world "toppling" down in the yawning gulfs of bankruptcy and ruin, complacently tells the Senate and the trembling subjects of his cotton king that "the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political institutions;" that "her forms of society are the best in the world;" that "she has an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, seen nowhere on earth." The South, he tells us, "is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous," and he asked us if we "have heard that the ghosts of Mendoza and Torquemada are stalking in the streets of our great cities; that the inquisition is at hand, and that there are fearful rumors of consultations for vigilance committees?' Sir, this self-complacency is sublime! No son of the Celestial Empire can approach the Senator in self-complacency. That "society is the best in the world" where more than three millions of beings, created in the image of their God, are held as chattels--sunk from the lofty level of humanity, down to the abject condition of unreasoning beasts of burden! That "society is the best in the world" where are manacles, chains and whips, auction blocks, prisons, bloodhounds, scourgings, lynchings and burnings, laws to torture the body, shrivel the mind and debase the soul; where labor is dishonored and laborers despised! "Political freedom" in a land where woman is imprisoned for teaching little children to read the Holy Scriptures, where professors are deposed and banished for opposing the extension of slavery; where public men are exiled for quoting in a national Convention the words of Jefferson; where voters are mobbed for appearing to vote for free territory; and where booksellers are driven from the country for selling a copy of that master work of genius, "Uncle Tom's Cabin!" And land of "certain security," where patrols, costing, as in Old Virginia, more than is expended to educate her poor children, stalk the country to catch the faintest rumor of discontent; where the bay of the bloodhound never ceases; where but little more than one year ago rose the startling cry of insurrection; and where men, some of them owned by a member of this body, were scourged and murdered for suspected insurrection! "Political freedom" and "certain security" in a land which demands that seventeen millions of freemen shall stand guard to seize and carry back fleeing bondmen!
The Senator from South Carolina exclaims, "The man who lives by daily labor, your whole class of manual laborers, are essentially slaves--they feel galled by their degradation." What a sentiment is this to hear uttered in the councils of this democratic Republic! The Senator's political associates, who listen to these words which brand hundreds of thousands of the men they represent in the free States and hundreds of their neighbors and personal friends as slaves, have found no words to repel or rebuke this language. This language of scorn and contempt is addressed to Senators who were not nursed by a slave, whose lot it was to toil with their own hands--to eat bread, not by the sweat of another's brow, but by their own.
Sir, I am the son of a "hireling manual laborer," who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, "lives by daily labor." I too have been a daily laborer. I too have been a hireling manual laborer. Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood, and want was there sometimes--an unbidden guest. At the age of ten years--to aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt spectre from the hearth of the mother who bore me--I left the home of my boyhood and went to earn my bread by "daily labor." Many a weary mile have I travelled,
"To beg a brother of the earth
To give me leave to toil."
Sir, I have toiled as a "hireling manual laborer" in the field and in the workshop; and I tell the Senator from South Carolina that I never felt "galled by my degradation." No, sir--never! Perhaps the Senator who represents that "other class which leads progress, and civilization, and refinement," will ascribe this to obtuseness of intellect and blunted sensibilities of the heart. Sir, I was conscious of my manhood; I was the peer of my employer; I knew that the laws and institutions of my native and adopted States threw over him and over me alike the panoply of equality; I knew, too, that the world was before me, that its wealth, its garnered treasurees of knowledge, its honors, the coveted prizes of life, were within the grasp of a brave heart, and a tireless hand, and I accepted the responsibilities of my position, all unconscious that I was a "slave." I have employed others, hundreds of "hireling manual laborers." Some of them possessed, and now possess, more property than I ever owned; some of them were better educated and better read, too, than some Senators on this floor; and many of them, in moral excellence and purity of character, I could not but feel, were my superiors. I have occupied, Mr. President, for more than thirty years, the relation of employer, and while I never "felt galled by my degradation" in the one case, in the other I was never conscious that my "hireling laborers" were my inferiors. That man is a "snob" who boasts of being a "hireling laborer;" or who assumes any superiority over others because he is an employer. Honest labor is honorable; and the man who is ashamed that he is or was a "hireling laborer" has not manhood enough to "feel galled by degradation."
Having occupied, Mr. President, the relation of either employed or employer for the third of a century; having lived in a Commonwealth where the "hireling class of manual laborers" are the depositories of political power; having associated with this class in all the relations of life; I tell the Senator from South Carolina, and the class he represents, that he libels, grossly libels them, when he declares they are essentially slaves! There can be found nowhere in America a class of men more proudly conscious or tenacious of their rights. Friend or for has ever found them.
"A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none."
The Senator tells us, Mr. President, that slaves are "well compensated!" South Carolina slaves "well compensated!" Why, sir, the Senator himself, in a speech made at home, for home consumption, entered into an estimate to show that a field hand could be supported for from eighteen to nineteen dollars per annum on the rice and cotton plantations. He states the quantity of corn and bacon and salt necessary to support the "well compensated" slave. And this man, supported by eighteen dollars per annum, with the privilege of being flogged at discretion, and having his wife and children sold from him at the necessity or will of his master, the Senator from South Carolina informs the Senate of the United States is "well compensated!" Sir, there is not a poor house in the free States where there would not be a rebellion in three days if the inmates were compelled to subsist on the quantity and quality of the food the Senator estimates as "ample compensation" for the labor of a slave in South Carolina.
Source
Friends' Review; a Religious, Literary and Miscellaneous Journal 11:35, p. 550
Date
5.8.1858
Collection
Citation
“Senator Wilson's Vindication of Free Labor.,” No Stain of Tears and Blood, accessed October 22, 2026, https://productsoffreelabor.com/items/show/129.
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