power, and with our virtual monopoly
of cotton confirmed and consolidated. It is easy to see how dazzling is
the temptation which induces England and France to play the false and
dangerous part which they are so plainly acting, in this, the most
critical emergency which has arisen during the whole period of our
national existence. But the stake at issue, however valuable to them, is
of infinitely greater importance to us.

It is not merely a question of philanthropy to the liberated negroes of
our Southern section; nor do we approach the limits of the subject, when
we show how deeply the wealth and power of our country and its
commercial greatness are involved in it. There are other questions of
still greater importance necessarily arising out of it, and they concern
the rights and interests of the people of the loyal States, especially
of the great mass of laboring white men, in every part of the country,
North, South, East, and West. Destroy the labor of the South, cut off
its cotton crops, and a fatal blow will be struck at the commerce and
manufactures of the whole country. Every other branch of industry,
throughout all its minutest ramifications, will feel the shock and
languish accordingly. If, instead of using our fine Southern cotton at
ten cents per pound, we are compelled to go to a distance of ten or
twelve thousand miles, paying fifty or sixty cents for the inferior,
coarse, short-staple production of India, it is apparent that the whole
fabric of our prosperity would be prostrated, and remain so, until
industry and commerce should find new and profitable channels for their
enterprise. Clothing would be greatly enhanced in value, and this, to
the laboring man, would be equivalent to a corresponding diminution of
food and all the other comforts of life. Cleanliness and health,
necessarily dependent on the abundance and cheapness of clothing, would
be to some extent affected; and, indeed, every interest of society, in
all sections and among all classes, would suffer more or less from the
same causes. With the cotton production destroyed or materially injured,
our means of paying the vast debt which the war will leave against us
would be seriously impaired, and the burden of taxation would be to that
extent heavier and more intolerable to the masses of our people.

Thus this question of emancipation to the blacks is intimately connected
with that of justice to the whites. It involves in it all the most
importa