EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
466 
tha American farmer is visited by blight, resulting from taking from the soij 
the material for the ever-recurring wheat crop. The man who has a market 
at his door finds blight and insects vanish, and is able to make his crops more 
certain. 
This plot for keeping back diversified industry in the Northwest is of South¬ 
ern origin, and you have been kept raising cheap food by the craft of the 
same class of men who rebelled against our free institutions, and slaughtered 
your sons in the struggle. 
A book was published at Augusta, Ga., sold only by subscription, and thus 
kept away from the North while it was a sort of political gospel on the tables 
of leading slaveholders. A copy was brought away from some rebel’s library 
by one of the “ boys in blue,,’ from which I make extracts. 
The title of this large volume is “ Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Argu¬ 
ments, comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christie, Stringfellow, 
Hodge, Bledsoe and Cartwright on this important subject, by E. N, Elliott, 
D. D., President of Planter’s College, Mississippi, with an Essay on Slavery 
in the light of Interna ional Law, by the Editor.” 
It is the plots and plans of the slave power, got up for their own study 
and use, and a part of the base scheme was to form an alliance with British 
cotton spinners, raise the delusive cry of “ free trade,” to give them a mar¬ 
ket for their cotton goods, and to keep down manufactuaing in the North and 
West, that you might raise cheap food for their negroes ! 
A writer on the “ Economic Rlations of Slavery,” thus states the case: 
“ But they could not monopolize the market for cotton unless they could 
obtain a cheap supply of food and clothing for their negroes, and raise their 
cotton cheaper than their rivals. A manufacturingpopulaiion, with its mechan¬ 
ical coadjutors amidst the provision growers^ on a scale such as the protective policy 
jrroposed^ would create a permanent market {at home) for their products^ and enhance 
the price, whereas, if this manufacturing coidd he prevented, and a system of free 
trade adopted, the South would he the chief provision market and the fertile lands North 
suptply the cheap food for our slaves. * * * 
“ If they could establish free trade it would insure the American market to 
foreign manufactures, secure the foreign market for their cotton, repress home 
manufactures, force a large number of northern [men into agriculture, multiply 
the growth and diminish the price of provisions, and feed and clothe their slaves 
at lower rates.” 
The writer goes on to show how the West “ had its attention turned South 
for a market,” and fully reveals their scheme for making you pioneers of the 
West work cheap, and keep factories away, for their benefit, under a “free 
trade ” delusion, to strengthen which “ the southern planter and the English 
manufacturer become united.” Comment is needless. Farmers of Wiscon¬ 
sin, how do you like the plot? 
I present these facts because no class of men in this country should have 
more interest in, or would reap equal benefit from, the building up of varied 
30 Ag. Trans. 
