Emancipation and Cotton—The Triumph of British Policy [pp. 509-526]

522 EMANCIPATION AND COTTON.
tion. Nor has the expectation as to Southern Illinois been realized. Forty
years' experimenting, by South Carolina emigrants, had proved the climate unfavorable, and shown that not oftener than once in ten years could a paying
crop be expected. Illinois can never adopt cotton as a staple article of cultivation.
The vast sources of wealth which the Abolitionists wvere willing to destroy,
may now be comprehended by making an additional statement. The value of
the exports of raw cotton in 1860, the year before the war, was nearly
$192,000,000, while the value of the same article, exported in 1862, when we
were in the midst of our struggle, was only $1,180,000. And yet, our importations of foreign goods have continued to be enormous. But how have these
goods been paid for? We answer: In our bonds now held abroad, to the
amount of nearly $1,500,000,000, and upon which the interest has to be paid.
But let us take a glance at the prospects for restoring our cotton cultivation.
THE RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION IN THE COLONIES OF FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATIVE OF
THE SYSTEM OF PENAL AND CONTRACT LABOR IN TIlEIR OPERATIONS UPON LIBER ATED NEGROES.
The circumstances under which emancipation was effected in the colonies of
France have been briefly referred to inl the introductory portion of these articles. The results of that measure are exceedingly interesting, and should be
studied in detail in the work of M. Cochin, taken in connection with the facts
on the general subject of emancipation as embraced in "Cotton is King" and
"Pulpit Politics."
At present a reference can be Inade to a few of the prominent facts only, as
illustrative of the inextricable confusion into which both the French and English have thlrown the labor systems of their tropical possessions, by their efforts, under the professed name of philanthropy, in favor of the African race.
Designing great brevity, we proceed at once to the subject.
With emancipation, as carried out at Guadaloupe, came "the institution of
cantonal juries and the establisment of penal labor."
As applied to Bourbon, this system of penal labor ran thus:
"That before the 20th of December, the end of the delay accorded by the decrees, every
slave should hire himself to labor for two years on a sugar plantation, or for one year as a
domestic, under penalty of being regarded and punished as a vagrant."
That the planters should not be too much in the power of the liberated negroes,
"More than 20,000 East Indians, and some 100 Africans, were introduced during the first
years; an addition unfavorable to goodl order, morale, and even to wealth-since the coolies
ept their wages to carry back to their own country, instead of settling in the colony like the
negroes-but most valuable in making up for the desertion of the large plantations."
The great falling off in the cultivation of the French islands, after emancipation, is thus explained by M. Cochin, as a very natural consequence of that
measure:
"To the law that said,'The laborer is free;' regulations have added,' The labor is compulsory.' It will be admitted that the shade of difference was not easy of comprehension to
the newly freedmen. Escaped from constraint they distrusted all that resembled it."...
"This was natural. What prisoner does not escape when his prison door is broken? What
bird does not take flight when its cage is opened? What! we expect of an ignorant, wretched
being, less intelligent than a gamin of Paris, less virtuous than a iRezulus, what n(,ne of those
who speak or write on these subjects wouold assuredly have done I We expect of him to make
his freedom consist in resuming, under another title purely ideal, the same tool, in the sanme
place, under the same authority, to content himself with changing name, without changing
condition, and to receive this precious boon, freedom, without endeavoring to make use of it!'
This French system of penal labor, by means of which the newly-emancipated
negroes were controlled, and forbidden to lead the life of vagrants, has been
lauded as a vast improvement upon the involuntary servitude required under
American slavery. But the twenty-seven degrees and orders of 1848 were not
long-lived. The fourth, relative to juries, was abrogated by article eleven of the
decree of 1852, on bound labor, which also replaced the seventh decree on va