Address on the annexation of Texas, and the aspect of slavery in the United States, in connection therewith: delivered in Boston November 14 and 18, 1845 Page: 54 of 56
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54
aspire to the improvement attainable by other human beings,
and when he is beginning to prove himself capable of attaining
it, - sufficiently so, at least, to convince us all, beyond
the possibility of a doubt, that, with free hands and for fair
wages, all who are slaves can and will labor for their masters,
or for themselves, and thus indirectly for us, far more diligently,
and with greater profit, than when shackled and
scourged, and subject to all the disadvantages of their present
condition.
I will briefly present another view. Let Texas be annexed
to the United States, - let the slave population amount
to what I have previously estimated it to be, - let it be covered
with cotton plantations, - you will at once see that
such an immense growth will produce a surplus of product,
far, far exceeding what is now, or soon or perhaps ever can
be, wanted for the manufactories of the country. Already,
without Texas, we can manufacture but a small proportion
- scarcely a fifth -of our crop, and all the rest goes to
Europe, principally to England. The export is so large,
that, although through the agency of commerce it becomes
exchanged for foreign productions, which are brought back
and distributed through the country, and thus a great general
benefit is derived from it, it has nevertheless had the
effect to produce a peculiar commercial sympathy and sense
of mutual obligation between the planters and those who
are thus their principal customers across the Atlantic, and to
lead the slave-holding politicians always to favor a tariff that
should have a partial regard to the interests of these foreign
buyers, and that should operate against, rather than in favor
of, our own manufactures, and thus withhold the encouragement
and facilities to domestic industry so much needed and
prized by the people of the Free States. This is one of the
cases in which a conflict of interests has produced discord
between the two sections of the country ; and in this particular
case all amongst us see and feel that whatever contributes
to extend the cotton-exporting interest, to strengthen
the bond of commercial alliance between the South and
Great Britain, to lead them to undervalue their commercial
relation to the North, to make our products and manufactures
less needful to them, and to put them more in the way of
obtaining their supplies from abroad, can hardly fail to prove
injurious to our interests, and must come in aid of the many
other causes which, like this, through the influence of slavery,
will operate to divide rather than to keep the country
together. If, while we have already cotton land enough, and
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Phillips, Stephen C. Address on the annexation of Texas, and the aspect of slavery in the United States, in connection therewith: delivered in Boston November 14 and 18, 1845, book, January 1, 1845; Boston. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2361/m1/54/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.