ee States, and the result is the
same as to wealth and education also. Under the _best_ circumstances for
the slave States, and the _worst_ for the free States, this result
proves the uniformity of the rule (like the great law of gravitation),
knowing no exception to the effect of slavery, in depressing the
progress of States in population, wealth, and education. Would we then
in all these advance more rapidly, we must remove slavery and negroism,
the retarding cause. I know it is asked, how shall we then cultivate the
cotton lands of the South without slaves? This does not apply to the
border States; but before closing these letters, I will prove
conclusively, by the census and other statistics, what, from long
residence in the South, and from having traversed every Southern State,
I know to be true, that cotton is now raised there most extensively and
profitably by non-slaveholders, and upon farms using exclusively white
labor. Indeed the cotton raised on small farms in the South where there
are no slaves and exclusively by free white labor, commands a price from
five to ten per cent. greater than the slave grown cotton. In Texas,
especially, it is a great truth, that skilled, educated, persevering,
and energetic free labor, engaged voluntarily for wages or its own use,
would, in time, when aided by improved culture and machinery, produce
much larger crops and better cotton than now raised by the forced and
ignorant labor of slaves, and at a much cheaper rate, at a far greater
profit, than any crop now produced in the North, and in a more
salubrious climate. In western Texas, counties on the same parallel with
New Orleans, and a little north and south, cultivated mainly by Germans
without slaves, produced large quantities of the best cotton, and the
supply with augmented labor might be increased almost indefinitely.
Having thrice visited Texas, and traversed nearly the whole State,
north, south, east, and west, I speak from personal knowledge. In one
county, I observed first rate wheat, cotton, and sugar cane growing in
adjacent fields, and the soil and climate well adapted for all three
crops. In Texas, the product of wheat has increased from 41.79 bushels
in 1850, to 1,464,273 bushels in 1860, and the number of bales of cotton
from 58,072 in 1850, to 405,100 bales in 1860, far exceeding the rate of
increase in any other State. (See table of Census, No. 36, pp. 200,
210.) Having very nearly six times the area of New Yo