Yet Since I Have Been In England, I Am Informed By The
Friends Here, That There Has Been For Many
Years an association of
Friends in Philadelphia, who have sent their agents through the entire
Southern States, entering by them
Into communication with quite a
considerable number scattered through the states, who, either from
poverty or principle, raise their cotton by free labor; that they have
established a depot in Philadelphia, and also a manufactory, where the
cotton thus received is made into various household articles; and
thus, by dint of some care and self-sacrifice, many of them are
enabled to abstain entirely from any participation with the results of
this crime.
As soon as I heard this fact, it flashed upon my mind immediately,
that the beautiful cotton lands of Texas are as yet unoccupied to a
great extent; that no law compels cotton to be raised there by slave
labor, and that it is beginning to be raised there to some extent by
the labor of free German emigrants. [Footnote: One small town in Texas
made eight hundred bales last year by free labor.] Will not something
eventually grow out of this? I trust so. Even the smallest chink of
light is welcome in a prison, if it speak of a possible door which
courage and zeal may open. I cannot as yet admit the justness of the
general proposition, that it is an actual sin to eat, drink, or wear
any thing which has been the result of slave labor, because it seems
to me to be based upon a principle altogether too wide in extent.
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