January 16, 1861 (Wednesday)

Undercurrents

"We may, therefore, assume that of the million and a half of adult white males in the South who own no slaves, not more than a million are capable of reading understandingly, or writing their names.  This million of intelligent non-slaveholders is made up from all classes.  It comprises a large body of respectable farmers, located for the most part in the Border States...together with mechanics and small shop-keepers in the cities and towns, overseers, briefless lawyers, patientless doctors, patriotic politicians, and broken-down gentlemen with their sons.

This great class, which may be said to constitute the mass of the Southern people, since it is larger than all others combined, has been thoroughly indoctrinated with the Pro-Slavery creed...thoroughly inoculated with the rabid and reckless spirit of Slavery propagandism. 

Letters and other private informaton inform us that the large slaveholders are already sick of their rebellion against the General Government.  They are beginning to understand that they have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by success.  For the greatest good promised by the politicians to the people -- the reopening of the African Slave-trade -- would be the ruin of those whose wealth consists in Negroes.  The effect of that traffic would be to reduce the price of slaves to a merely nominal figure.  It is obvious that the large proprietors can have no sympathy with a policy which contemplates the destruction of their property; and we are not surprised to learn that they not only oppose it, but at length begin to see that their safety depends upon the preservation of the Union.

It will be remembered that there were only two men in the South who owned so many as one thousand slaves; only nine who owned so many as 500-1000, fifty-six who owned 300-500; 187 who owned 200-300; and and 1, 479 who owned 100-200 -- in all 1,733 who owned one hunderd slaves or more.  This insignificant number of men constitute the real "South" of which we hear so much, with its large planatations. 

What remain are 339, 596 slaveholders who own less than 100 and of those, 255, 268 slaveholders own between 1-10 slaves.  This group is less apprehensive of insurrections; they have more to hope than to fear, more to gain than to lose from the reckless reopening of the Slave-trade or the dissolution of the Union.  They carry much passionate devotion to what is regarded as the cause of the South, with patriotism fully up to the standard set by the Southern politicians."  (Who Rule the South?  Where Lies the Strength of the Disunion Movement, New York Times editorial, January 15, 1861)