The Remarkable Book that Contributed
To the Downfall of Slavery in America The Crisis of the American South
by Hinton Rowan Helper
Edited by Paul Dennis Sporer  Although Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is considered by many historians as the book that most motivated a nation against slavery, it was another book by a slaveholder's son, Hinton Rowan Helper, that actually did so. The Crisis of the American South is the most explosive indictment of slavery, relying not only on moral reasons, but on economic evaluation: the institution of slavery keeping the south backwards agriculturally and industrially, it was destroying land prices, and hindering railroad building. This book, published several years before the Civil War, calls for an end to slavery on the grounds that the institution had made the South economically and socially stagnant. The author puts forward detailed statistics comparing the conditions of North versus South to prove his case, as for example: quantity and value of agricultural products, value of lands, number of illiterate white adults, patents issued on new inventions, and value of church property. However, this work is challenging and complex, and it would simplistic to look at it solely as anti-slavery propaganda. Helper was interested in provoking a type of socialist revolution, rather than only helping to bring about emancipation. It is clear from his writing, that his sympathies lay with the downtrodden poor whites of the South, more than with the blacks, and he concludes the South's economic ills should be blamed on a small group of very powerful white slaveholders. The key cultural elements that were being ignored in the equation were the dependence of slaveholders on the products of Northern industry, a lack of patriotism in Southern merchants and slaveholders, and the inability of illiterate poor whites of the South to express their desires. The Crisis of the American South brings a much-needed new perspective on the condition of America on the eve of the Civil War.
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Other titles: Is Secession Treason? by Albert Bledsoe; End of an Era, by John Sergeant Wise. |
