shington, 1846.)
_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of
Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.]

The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other
essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding regime. With most
of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such
extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the
proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy.

On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn
of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery,
attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the
United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency.
His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining the
enslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and made
applicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. Among
Dew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave labor
was dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productive
industry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercion
necessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond,
likewise, agreed that "as a general rule ... free labor is cheaper than
slave labor," but in addition to the factor of race he stressed the
sparsity of population in the South as a contributing element in
economically necessitating the maintenance of slavery.[10]

[Footnote 10: "Essay" (1832), Harper's "Memoir" (1838), and Hammond's
"Letters to Clarkson" (1845) are collected in the _Pro-Slavery Argument_
(Philadelphia, 1852).]

Most of the foregoing Southern writers were men of substantial position and
systematic reasoning. N.A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued in
the capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on Political
Economy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main theme
that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he
asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted
to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price
of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then,
curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall have
run itself out or yielded to the changes and ameliorations of the time