The Impending Crisis of the South

Condemnation of slavery

The book condemned slavery, but "not with reference, except in a very slight degree, to its humanitarian or religious aspects," which had already been dealt with at length by Northern writers. Instead, Helper criticized slavery on economic grounds, appealing to whites' rational self-interest, rather than "any special friendliness or sympathy for the blacks." Helper claimed that slavery hurt the Southern economy by preventing economic development and industrialization and that it was the main reason why the South had fallen far behind the North, both economically and demographically. Helper tried to speak on behalf of the majority of Southern whites, poor or of moderate means — the plain folk of the Old South — who he claimed were oppressed by a small aristocracy of wealthy slave owners.

Helper's tone was aggressive: "Freesoilers and abolitionists are the only true friends of the South; slaveholders and slave-breeders are downright enemies of their own section. Anti-slavery men are working for the Union and the good of the whole world; proslavery men are working for the disunion of the States, and the good of nothing except themselves."

The poverty of the slaveholding South

According to a published summary of the book, the South, despite slavery, was not doing well economically. Massachusetts produced sixteen bushels of wheat per acre, while Virginia produced only seven. Iowa produced thirty-six bushels of oats to the acre; Mississippi produced only twelve. In 1790, at the time of the first census, the population of New York was 340,000 and that of Virginia 748,000; in 1850 the population of New York was 3,097,000, while that of Virginia was 1,421,000. Land in the North sells for much more than land in the South. These are only a few examples of the many statistics of this sort in the book.{{cite news

Political impact

A version of it was published in German translation in 1860.{{cite book

With the approach of the 1860 presidential election, to help the Republican Party a Compendium or Compend version appeared in July 1859; it was an abridgement that kept the statistics but watered down some of the confrontational rhetoric. Sixty-eight Republican members of Congress endorsed it. By December 1859, 500 copies a day were being sold.{{cite journal

This version met with fierce opposition. Possession of a copy was treated as a criminal offense in most of the South. Distributors of the book were arrested, and three men in Arkansas were hanged for possession of it.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/bookbanninginame00nobl/page/77}}

Congress convened on December 5, 1859, but the House of Representatives was unable to conduct any business until February 1, 1860 because it was unable to elect a Speaker of the House after a Congressman, John Bullock Clark of Missouri, floated a resolution that no one who had endorsed the Compendium could be chosen. This would knock one of the previously favored candidates, John Sherman of Ohio, out of contention, along with 67 other Republican Congressman.{{cite news

In 1860, Louis F. Schade published an 80 page rebuttal to Helper's book, A Book for the "Impending Crisis!" Appeal to the Common Sense and Patriotism of the People of the United States. "Helperism" Annihilated! The "Irrepressible Conflict" and Its Consequences!.

Helper's racism

Abolitionists mostly ignored the fact that Helper was an adamant white supremacist.{{cite journal |url-access=subscription

Notes

References

References

1. {{rp. 75 A book reviewer wrote, "Next to ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1852), Hinton Helper's critique of slavery and the Southern class system, ''The Impending Crisis of the South'' (1857), was arguably the most important antislavery book of the 1850s."[https://muse.jhu.edu/article/372790/pdf Smith, David, ''Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and The Impending Crisis of the South'' (review), ''Civil War History'', vol. 55, no. 4, December 2009, pp. 531-532, The Kent State University Press.]
2. Schade, Louis. (1860). "A Book for the "Impending Crisis!" Appeal to the Common Sense and Patriotism of the People of the United States. "Helperism" Annihilated! The "Irrepressible Conflict" and Its Consequences!". Little, Morris, & Co..
3. Fredrickson, George M., "Introduction" to ''The Impending Crisis of the South'' (1968), p. liv.