The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863, page 209 by Various Authors
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and philosophic argument, neither of which has been of much practical avail in this country, since we see the Church of the South quite as zealous in upholding slavery on Biblical grounds as that of the North is in opposing it, we come to Cochin's first real argument--that political economy affirms the superiority of free over forced labor. Policy and charity unite in this--'charity detests slavery because it oppresses; policy, more elevated, condemns it because it corrupts the inferior race.'
We call attention to this sentence because it accurately expresses the difference between mere 'Abolition,' which regarded only the sufferings of the blacks, and that higher and more comprehensive policy of 'EMANCIPATION FOR THE SAKE OF THE WHITE MAN,' which declares that slavery always in time inevitably makes of the slaveholder an intolerable neighbor to the free white laborer. From this point our author sets forth the gradual growth of the aversion to slavery all over the Continent, with the reactionary tendency in its favor in the Cotton United States and in England. It is needless to say that, before the overwhelming light of facts presented, especially when these facts are drawn from the past as well as the present, and from every country instead of one, slavery is shown to be more than deadly-conservative; more than cruel; more than a mere dead wall in the way of the onward march of the century. The time will come when such a curse will be rooted out of a country by the strong hand of all civilized nations. Had England and France been truly enlightened to their own interests, this war would never have taken place.
The history of the African slave trade and the efforts to destroy it, the Emancipation of the French Convention and the reëstablishment of slavery by the Consulate, from 1794 to 1802, form the first chapter of this work. Hence we have its history, its abolition in 1848, and, after this, that most important part, a careful examination of the results of Emancipati