By law, midshipmen and cadets, at West Point, are appointed according to the Federal ratio; thus have the slaveholders secured to themselves an additional number of officers in the Army and Navy, on account of their slaves.
Tappan highlights how the appointment of military cadets is skewed in favor of slaveholders, benefiting them in military ranks.
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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.
Slavery is maintained by you whom it impoverishes and degrades, not by those upon whom it confers wealth and influence.
In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor.
Education elevates the inferior classes of society, teaches them their rights, and points out the means of enforcing them.