Lewis Tappan

You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged.

It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing.

Cotton is the product of slave labor, and its profits at home are confined almost exclusively to the slaveholders.

With the exception of cotton, it is difficult to distinguish your agricultural products arising from slaves, and from free labor.

Here then we have an appalling proof of the paralyzing influence of slavery on the industry of the whites.

Hence the deficiency of agriculture and other products in Kentucky arises, not from a peculiar species of cultivation, but solely from the withering effects of slavery.

In one species of manufacture the South apparently excels the North, but unfortunately it is in appearance only.

We have thus, fellow-citizens, offered you the testimony of figures, as to the different state of society under freedom and slavery; suffer us now to present you pictures of the two regions, drawn not by abolitionists, but by Southern…

Such is the deplorable condition of one of the oldest members of this Union, that dates back its settlement more than a century and a half, while other States, born as it were but yesterday, already surpass what Carolina is or ever has…

How different the condition of these things in the South!

Here the face of the country wears the aspect of premature old age and decay.

If we are permitted to apply this rule in testing the moral condition of the South, the result will not be favorable.