Let us then inquire, whether the inferior and unhappy condition of the slave States can indeed be ascribed to any natural disadvantage under which they are laboring, or to any partial or unjust legislation by the Federal Government?
Tappan questions whether the difficulties faced by slave states are due to natural disadvantages or unjust legislation.
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The very advertisements in your newspapers show that, for a vast proportion of the comforts and conveniences of life, you are dependent on Northern manufacturers and mechanics.
It has been the policy of the slaveholders to keep entirely out of sight their own numerical inferiority, and to speak and act as if their interests were those of the whole community.
When an infant will bring one hundred, and a man from four hundred to a thousand dollars in the market, slaves are not commodities to be found in the cabins of the poor.
We know that this result is so startling and unexpected, that you will scarcely credit the testimony of figures themselves.