nd that as the free negro has
demonstrated his inability to engage successfully in cotton culture,
therefore American slavery remains immovable, and presents a standing
monument of the folly of those who imagined they could effect its
overthrow by the measures they pursued. This was the author's aim.

Another charges, that the whole work is based on a fallacy, and that all
its arguments, therefore, are unsound. The fallacy of the book, it is
explained, consists in making cotton and slavery indivisible, and
teaching that cotton can not be cultivated except by slave labor;
whereas, in the opinion of the objector, that staple can be grown by
free labor. Here, again, the author is misunderstood. He only teaches
what is true beyond all question: not that free labor is incapable of
producing cotton, but that it does not produce it so as to affect the
interests of slave labor; and that the American planter, therefore,
still finds himself in the possession of the monopoly of the market for
cotton, and unable to meet the demand made upon him for that staple,
except by a vast enlargement of its cultivation, requiring the
employment of an increased amount of labor in its production.

Another says: "The real object of the work is an apology for American
slavery. Professing to repudiate extremes, the author pleads the
necessity for the present continuance of slavery, founded on economical,
political, and moral considerations." The dullest reader can not fail to
perceive that the work contains not one word of apology for the
institution of slavery, nor the slightest wish for its continuance. The
author did not suppose that Southern slave holders would thank any
Northern man to attempt an apology for their maintaining what they
consider their rights under the constitution; neither did he imagine
that any plea for the continuance of American slavery was needed, while
the world at large is industriously engaged in supporting it by the
consumption of its products. He, therefore, neither attempted an apology
for its existence nor a plea for its continuance. He was writing history
and not recording his own opinions, about which he never imagined the
public cared a fig. He was merely aiming at showing, how an institution,
feeble and ill supported in the outset, had become one of the most
potent agents in the advancement of civilization, notwithstanding the
opposition it has had to encounter; and that those who had attempted its
overthrow,