page_0004
Facsimile
Transcription
From the seaboard slave States. It is the famous "Sea Island Cotton." Thousands of poor slaves have toiled away under burning suns, to produce this clean, white cotton, and scores have died martyrs to it! The price is high, averaging from 1s 1d, to 2s 6d per lb.—It is adapted for spinning the finest numbers of thread, and at preset no other cotton can be found to supply its place. It grows near the sea, on the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas and Georgia, in marshy land, often inundated with water, and in an atmosphere so unhealthy that white people cannot live more than half the year there! so a Charleston merchant recently told one of my friends.—What is the average life of the slaves there, I did not learn! Now, if what Dr. Livingstone says be true, and he has found a spot in Africa favorable to the growth of this valuable cotton, I trust that some of our princely merchants and manufacturers will unite and form a company that shall supply capital, and employ agents to sow and cutivate Sea Island Cotton amidst the marches of Africa.—But here is another cotton, darker, dirtier, and not so soft. This is from New Orleans; and in thought, (as I hold a little piece of it in my hand,) I am carried to the vast cotton fields of the West, and am wondering what is the sad history of the poor slave man or woman that picked this small tuft of cotton? Is he (or she) living or dead?—still in existence, toiling on, on, ON, beneath the lash, with
Notes and Questions
Nobody has written a note for this page yet
Please sign in to write a note for this page