Stake of the South

This text is part of the Teaching Hard History Text Library and aligns with Key Concept 7.

When Mr. Burke conjured the English people to resist the division of the British empire, and when Mr. Webster made a similar appeal for the preservation of the American Union, each of these statesmen presented an exhibit of the material values involved in the conflict, which they respectively deplored. This was an argument which addressed itself directly to every class of interest and intelligence. Behold, then, fellow-citizens, the actual value at stake upon the integrity of slave title, add to them the moral consequences inseparable from its overthrow, and say whether with the tremendous responsibility trembling upon the issue of the present Presidential campaign, you dare pursue the abstractions of personal consistency, indulge the animosities of party prejudice, or hesitate to cast your vote for the man and the party who can best protect your honor, your rights, and your interest. 

STAKE OF THE SOUTH. 

• Value of slaves   $1,750,000,000 

• Estimated value of all other taxable property   1,250,000,000 

• Value of annual products of slave labor*  500,000,000 

• Total   4,000,000,000 

[Note : *This is a very moderate estimate of the value of slave productions, since the staples exported last year were as follows: 

• Cotton    $88,143,844 

• Tobacco   $14,712,648 

• Sugar and hemp   $400,000 

• Spirits from molasses   $1,448,280 

• Rice   $1,717,953 

• turpentine   $1,137,152 

• Tar, pitch, &c.    $1,849,456 

• Flour, wheat, &c., about   $3,000,000 

• Corn and meal   $5,500,000 

• Total   $117,909,153 

We cannot reduce civil war, with all its terrible concomitants and consequences to a money equivalent, but there can be no southern man who will not admit that the great interests of the south are staked upon the continued agitation of the slavery question, nor deny that the happiness and safety of more than seven millions of southern slaveholders and non-slaveholders are involved in a common responsibility, and liable to a common ruin. 

We regret to believe that these dangers have been concealed from our fellow-citizens of the south, that partial statements have been made to prejudice them against the fidelity of the Democratic party to the great trust confided to them in the administration of the federal government, to convince them that the present agitations have been the work of a few ambitious men, and that the Whig and Know-Nothing parties, headed by a candidate notoriously non-committal upon the immediate issues of the day, affords the best protection for the rights of the south and the duration of the Union. 

Fellow-citizens! No man, however powerful in station or ability, could have excited this national agitation. It has originated long since, in other days and other councils. It is a radical, spontaneous, and irrepressible strife between antagonist principles embodied in the Constitution. They are now grappling in a conflict which will tolerate no compromise. Upon the part of your antagonists it is an unconcealed effort at supremacy and domination, and to obtain this they are willing to destroy your rights, property, and political influence [f]orever. Do you believe this?