It is worthy of remark that in their denunciations of the populace, the rabble, those who work with their hands, they refer not to complexion, but to condition; not to slaves, but to the poor and laborious of their own color.
Tappan points out that the elite's disdain for the working class is based on economic status rather than race, challenging prevailing prejudices.
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The power of the slaveholders, as we have already showed you, depends on the acquiescence of the major part of the white inhabitants in their domination.
There is not a State or Territory in the Union in which you, fellow-citizens, have not an overwhelming majority over the slaveholders; and the majority is probably the greatest in those in which the slaves are the most numerous, because in…
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.
You are told, much of the wealth is invested in negroes--yet it obviously is a wealth that impoverishes; and no stronger evidence of the truth of this assertion is needed, than the comparative price of land in the free and slave States.