~Helper on Slavery- The Racist Abolitionist~
Consider this- a racist abolitionist. It’s crazy to think about because when most think of abolition they think of eradicating slavery for the sake of slaves. But upholding moral righteousness for the sake of those shackled by servitude was not on Hinton Helper’s mind or political agenda when he wrote The Impending Crisis of the South and How to Meet it. Instead, he cared only for the south and for renewing prosperity to the south. In his daily life, he frequently exhibited dislike to the slave population in America and cared little about what would happen to them after slavery was gone, his only care was that the dependency on slave labor was ruining the south.
Hinton Rowan Helper was born in Mocksville, North Carolina in 1829. He did not grow up poor but because his father died shortly after he was born he did not have as much of the financial security as the wealthy elite parasites who he felt seriously endangered the middle class. About his politics, you could say he was raw and unfiltered, understandably leading to his popularity.
But let me just begin with this- Hinton Rowan Helper was not a liberaterian. According to all evidence prompted from his own writings he was nothing of the sort. He had detestable opinions on race and even thought very little of the slaves who the fight for abolition would massivly affect. But he was of the opinion that the south’s system based and dependent on enslavement only worked to slow down their progress and was a lending force for why the region lagged so far behind the north. Because of this, his work lends itself to the fight against slavery despite his ill opinion of other races.
Helper had a three year daliance with the gold mining trade, following the migration to California, where he came up empty handed and when he returned to the east, no one had any particular reason to suspect that this otherwise unsuccessful person would go on to write one of the most important books on slave politics in history. Though his time in California was an abject failure in terms of striking wealth, as it turns out the disappointments he faced there largely affected his thoughts, attributing to his second, and infinitely more successful book, The Impending Crisis of the South and How to Meet it. After his experiences in California Hinton Helper came to the conclusion that most Americans live their lives somewhere between destitution and mild comfort owing to the unjust use of power by the ruling elite.
In his own words from pages 27 and 28 of his book you can find a succinct overview of his demands,
“The first and most sacred duty of every Southerner, who has the honor and the interest of his country at heart, is to declare himself an unqualified and uncompromising abolitionist . . . Nothing short of the complete abolition of slavery can save the South from falling into the vortex of utter ruin. Too long have we yielded a submissive obedience to the tyrannical domination of an inflated oligarchy; too long have we tolerated their arrogance and self-conceit; too long have we submitted to their unjust and savage exactions. Let us now wrest from them the sceptre of power, establish liberty and equal rights throughout the land, and henceforth and forever guard our legislative halls from the pollutions and usurpations of proslavery demagogues.”
Here there can be no denying that his anti slavery attitude has nothing to do with human rights. He does not care for other countries to forego slavery because of its heinous practices or states that it is against religion for people to own other people. And he does not argue that all men are created equal. Instead, he demands all southerners to declare themselves against the practice of slavery to excite the lower white class of citizens to rise up against the oppressive ruling class to to pull south out of the dependent muck its found itself in because of slavery.
Compared by many historians to the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Impending Crisis of the South has been attributed with rousing and fueling the anti slave movement since its publication in 1857. To be absolutely clear, Hinton Rowan Helper was not “anti slavery.” Rather, he was “anti-institution-of-slavery-in-the-south” which comes at a striking difference. Though his motives were strongly narrow set on the south prospering after the abolition, his writings did help the cause in unmeasurable ways. Readers today need not agree with his motives, but it’s of my opinion that his work should continue to be read in relation to the abolition motive, without which generations of students, historians, and learners will greatly miss out on one of the most influential slave peices of the era.