Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
slave kindly and loyal. When every argument against slavery had been
urged it still remained true that the patriarchal tie that existed
on the plantation was more humane than the cash-nexus of capitalism.
In this fundamental matter Carlyle was right; and right also in his
insistence on the need of capable masters. The South was fortunate in
its system. On the self-sufficient plantations there was many an Abbot
Sampson directing his little world wisely and humanely; collectively
these Abbot Sampsons formed a capable and socially responsible ruling
class worthy of their trust. The economic returns of a wage-slave
industrialism might be greater, but the returns in civilization were
far less.[406]
Such, in brief, was the reaction of the southern mind in the early
fifties to the challenge of an industrializing generation. It was not
till the publication of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ in 1851 that southern
apologists were fully aroused to the need of counter propaganda. They
had been moving slowly towards the conception of a Greek democracy
under the leadership of Calhoun, but now under the sharp prod of
Abolitionism they turned militant. Facts were collected and arguments
clarified, and the war was carried home to New England. In three
years following _Uncle Tom_, according to a recent student, fourteen
pro-slavery novels appeared together with other matter.[407] Much of
the material made use of in these stories was conveniently assembled
in a work entitled _Pro-Slavery Argument_, published in 1852, a
collaboration by Professor Dew of William and Mary College, Chancellor
Harper of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, Governor Hammond of
South Carolina, and Gilmore Simms. The first reviewed the Scriptural
authority for slavery; Chancellor Harper drew from Hobbes the familiar
argument that “a state of nature is a state of war”; Simms elaborated
the patriarchal theory; but Governor Hammond developed the more
significant argument of the degradation of the wage-slave, an argument
elaborated at considerable length in another work entitled _Letters
on Slavery_, in which he presented the results of his investigation
of English factory conditions. The novels that Miss Tandy comments
upon have been pretty much forgotten, but the titles of some of them
sufficiently reveal the lines of attack. L. B. Chase’s _English Serfdom
and American Slavery_ (1854), J. W. Page’s _Uncle Robin in His Cabin
in Virginia and Tom without One in Boston_ (1855), and S. H. Elliott’s
_New England Chattels_ (1858) quite evidently reflect the new southern
philosophy. If the South were attacked, it was not without weapons to
defend itself.
II • William J. Grayson
Of this very considerable literature of defense, _The Hireling and
the Slave_ presents in convenient compass the most telling southern
arguments, and reveals in its sharp contrast of realism and romanticism
the common southern temper. Its author, William J. Grayson, was a
cultivated South Carolinian who had served two terms in Congress and
for years was collector of the Port of Charleston. He was widely
read, was familiar with contemporary English writers on economics,
and possessed a fluent pen. He had published “an elaborate heroic
poem entitled _The Country_,” in which he had sung “the praises of
rural life and agricultural pursuits” (Introduction to Grayson’s
_Life of James L. Petigru_), and a volume entitled _Chicora and other
Poems_, the title work of which was a romantic poem celebrating the
primitive virtues of the Indian. Politically he was affiliated with
the anti-Calhoun party of Unionists. His closest friend was James L.
Petigru, a sketch of whose life he wrote as a last labor of love,
during the unhappy days of the Charleston siege. He did not go so far
as Petigru in refusing to have any part in a war that he opposed, but
the tragedy of it cut him to the quick. He was no Fire Eater, but a
southern moderate--a gentleman of old-fashioned tastes whose views
may be taken as those of the cultivated Charleston group to which he
belonged, of Petigru, of Legaré, of Alfred Huger.
_The Hireling and the Slave_, published in 1856 when Grayson was
sixty-eight and dedicated to Petigru, is a poem in heroic couplets of
approximately 1600 lines, divided into two parts. The first part draws
a realistic picture of the life of the wage-slave, the second paints an
idyllic picture of the life of the bond-slave. In this second part the
spirit of romance holds high carnival; the descriptions are done with
gusto and the rural pleasures that fall to the lot of the negro provide
a striking contrast to the mean environment of the factory worker.
About this contrast are grouped the lesser arguments: the hypocrisy of
the Yankee Abolitionist, the sentimentalism of English humanitarians,
the wisdom of providence in providing masters to protect the negro from
destruction by a superior race and train him through apprenticeship
in slavery to carry the blessings of civilization to Africa. The
heroic couplet was deliberately adopted to offer “some variety to
the poetic forms that are almost universally prevalent.” “The poetry
of the day is, for the most part,” Grayson remarked, “subtile and
transcendental in its character”; yet “the school of Dryden and Pope is
not entirely forgotten,” and “the most fastidious appetite may tolerate
an occasional change of diet, and exchange dainties now and then for
plainer fare” (_The Hireling and the Slave_, Preface, pp. xiv-xv). The
poem seems to have been popular in the South, and a southern reviewer
declared that “it ought to be on every man’s mantel” (_Life of James L.
Petigru_, p. vii).
In the preface Grayson discusses the subject of slavery with a
candor somewhat unusual, acknowledging its evils, yet discovering
compensations. As an expression of intelligent southern opinion on a
question in which the passions of the country were becoming deeply
engaged, his views deserve quotation. Slavery, he says,
... is that system of labor which exchanges subsistence for work,
which secures a life-maintenance from the master to the slave, and
gives a life-labor from the slave to the master. The slave is an
apprentice for life, and owes his labor to his master; the master
owes support, during life, to the slave. Slavery is the Negro
system of work. He is lazy and improvident. Slavery makes all work,
and it insures homes, food, and clothing for all. It permits no
idleness, and it provides for sickness, infancy, and old age. It
allows no tramping or skulking, and it knows no pauperism.
This is the whole system substantially. All cruelty is an abuse;
does not belong to the institution; is now punished, and may be in
time prevented. The abuses of slavery are as open to all reforming
influences as those of any civil, social, or political condition.
The improvement in the treatment of the slave is as marked as in
that of any other laboring class in the world.... If slavery is
subject to abuses, it has its advantages also. It establishes
more permanent, and, therefore, kinder relations between capital
and labor. It removes what Stuart Mill calls ‘the widening and
imbittering feud between the class of labor and the class of
capital.’ It draws the relation closer between master and servant.
It is not an engagement for days or weeks, but for life. There
is no such thing with slavery as a laborer for whom nobody cares
or provides. The most wretched feature in hireling labor is the
isolated, miserable creature who has no home, no food, and in whom
no one is particularly interested. _This is seen among hirelings
only._ (_Ibid._, Preface, pp. vii-viii.)
The principle on which Grayson bases his argument is the principle that
civilization rests on labor exploitation, but as a good churchman he
attributes the evil to God and discovers the children of Adam to be
suffering from the primeval curse--“Slave, hireling, help--the curse
pursues him still.” More specifically the thesis which he defends
is this, “The state of the hireling and the slave [is] the same
substantially--the condition hard labor, the reward subsistence;” and
the conclusion which he draws is that the slave obtains a larger return
for his labor than the factory hand. The picture he paints of the
condition of the wage slave of England is Hogarthian in its details:
There, unconcerned, the philanthropic eye
Beholds each phase of human misery;
Sees the worn child compelled in mines to slave
Through narrow seams of coal, a living grave,
Driven from the breezy hill, the sunny glade,
By ruthless hearts, the drudge of labor made,
Unknown the boyish sport, the hours of play,
Stripped of the common boon, the light of day,
Harnessed like brutes, like brutes to tug, and strain,
And drag, on hands and knees, the loaded wain:
There crammed in huts, in reeking masses thrown,
All moral sense and decency unknown,
With no restraint but what the felon knows,
With the sole joy that beer or gin bestows,
To gross excess and brutalizing strife,
The drunken hireling dedicates his life:
Starved else, by infamy’s sad wages fed,
There women prostitute themselves for bread,
And mothers, rioting with savage glee,
For murder’d infants spend the funeral fee;
Childhood bestows no childish sports or toys,
Age neither reverence nor repose enjoys,
Labor with hunger wages ceaseless strife,
And want and suffering only end with life;
In crowded huts contagious ills prevail,
Dull typhus lurks, and deadlier plagues assail,
Gaunt Famine prowls around his pauper prey,
And daily sweeps his ghastly hosts away;
Unburied corses taint the summer air,
And crime and outrage revel with despair.
(_Ibid._, pp. 24-25.)
Grayson does not stint his facts but traces the wretchedness of the
wage-slave through all the phases of his misery to provide a background
for the happier lot of the bond-slave. It is an unlovely picture, done
with considerable vigor, from which one turns gladly to contemplate
life on the southern plantation.
And yet the life, so unassailed by care,
So blessed with moderate work, with ample fare,
With all the good the starving pauper needs,
The happier slave on each plantation leads;
Safe from harassing doubts and annual fears,
He dreads no famine in unfruitful years;
If harvests fail from inauspicious skies,
The master’s providence his food supplies;
No paupers perish here for want of bread,
Or lingering live, by foreign bounty fed;
No exiled trains of homeless peasants go,
In distant climes, to tell their tales of woe:
Far other fortune, free from care and strife,
For work, or bread, attends the Negro’s life,
And Christian slaves may challenge as their own,
The blessings claimed in fabled states alone--
The cabin home, not comfortless, though rude,
Light daily labor, and abundant food,
The sturdy health that temperate habits yield,
The cheerful song that rings in every field,
The long, loud laugh, that freemen seldom share,
Heaven’s boon to bosoms unapproached by care,
And boisterous jest and humor unrefined,
That leave, though rough, no painful sting behind;
While, nestling near, to bless their humble lot,
Warm social joys surround the Negro’s cot,
The evening dance its merriment imparts,
Love, with its rapture, fills their youthful hearts,
And placid age, the task of labor done,
Enjoys the summer shade, the winter sun,
And, as through life no pauper want he knows,
Laments no poor-house penance at its close.
(_Ibid._, pp. 50-51.)
Convinced of the righteousness and humanity of slavery Grayson turns
with scorn upon the Abolitionists and their meddlesome interference
with the beneficent ways of Providence. With a few dexterous turns