becomes of our cotton; this is the way in which it so
largely constitutes the basis of commerce and trade; and this is the
nature of the relations existing between the slavery of the United
States and the economical interests of the world.

But have the United States no other great leading interests, except
those which are involved in the production of cotton? Certainly, they
have. Here is a great field for the growth of provisions. In ordinary
years, exclusive of tobacco and cotton, our agricultural property, when
added to the domestic animals and their products, amounts in value
$1,551,176,490. Of this, there is exported only to the value of
$33,809,126; which leaves for home consumption and use, a remainder to
the value of $1,517,367,364.[28] The portions of the property
represented by this immense sum of money, which pass from the hands of
the agriculturists, are distributed throughout the Union, for the
support of the day laborers, sailors, mechanics, manufacturers, traders,
merchants, professional men, planters, and the slave population. This is
what becomes of our provisions.

Besides this annual consumption of provisions, most of which is the
product of free labor, the people of the United States use a vast amount
of groceries, which are mainly of slave labor origin. Boundless as is
the influence of cotton, in stimulating slavery extension, that of the
cultivation of groceries falls but little short of it; the chief
difference being, that they do not receive such an increased value under
the hand of manufacturers. The cultivation of coffee, in Brazil, employs
as great a number of slaves as that of cotton in the United States.

But, to comprehend fully our indebtedness to slave labor for groceries,
we must descend to particulars. Our imports of coffee, tobacco, sugar,
and molasses, for 1853, amounted in value to $38,479,000; of which the
hand of the slave, in Brazil and Cuba, mainly, supplied to the value of
$34,451,000.[29] This shows the extent to which we are sustaining
foreign slavery, by the consumption of these four products. But this is
not our whole indebtedness to slavery for groceries. Of the domestic
grown tobacco, valued at $19,975,000, of which we retain nearly
one-half, the Slave States produce to the value of $16,787,000; of
domestic rice, the product of the South, we consume to the value of
$7,092,000; of domestic slave grown sugar and molasses, we take, for
home consumption, to the value of $34