The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities
Franklin Repository, "Is Poverty a Crime," April 11, 1860

Summary

Slavery was described in highly negative terms as a system of labor that impoverished and degraded white laborers, reducing them to the level of bondsmen, even if they were not actually enslaved. When U.S. Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas stated that "poverty is a crime" on the floor of the Senate, Republican editors excoriated the statement. They suggested that the slave South makes no room for poor men and reduced them to a state of abject slavery. They warned that Northern men, especially poor men, must resist "the manacles of a slavery extending party."

EXCERPT:

"It is high time for poor men in the North, who have heretofore assisted in fastening upon their limbs the manacles of a slavery extending party, to pause, before it is forever too late. Now they possess the power of saying to slavery--their natural foe--remain within your present limits; extend no further; thus far shalt thou go, but no farther; and here shall thy proud tyranny be stayed; but hereafter--if the aggressions of slavery are not arrested--the free men of the North, the bone and sinew of the land may be unable to assert their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The 'poor white' of the South are now in a condition of helplessness in every respect as degrading as that of slavery itself. How long would Northern 'poor men' enjoy any greater liberty of slavery becomes--as locofocos desire it shall--national, and freedom becomes sectional?"

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Points of Analysis to this Data:

"In the first half of 1860 Republican editors in Franklin's Repository and Transcript attacked slavery as a violation of nature that stole from the workingman the fruits of his labor; they focused mainly on slavery's potential to undermine free labor."


Citation: Key = E085
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