Economic and Political Connections between
Lowell and Southern States
Document 10

. . . I say to the North, to the Free States, why agitate or discuss at all the question of Slavery? There are four millions of negro slaves in certain States of the Union, with about seven millions of whites. Between the two races there is an impassable gulf which makes amalgamation or absorption [of Black people into the mainstream population] impossible. . . . Then there is the question of property, to an amount of thousands of millions of dollars. . . . Any thing is property which the law makes so. Slaves are therefore property in the Slave States, and we of the Free States have nothing to do with the question. . . . Slavery has died out when slaves cease to have value, and not before. . . . All attempts of the North therefore, to affect the state of Slavery in the South, are utterly idle and futile. Doubtless some improvement may be made in the treatment of slaves; but this had best be left to the parties interested. All pressure from without is hateful and unjustifiable.

To the South I would say, why continue this useless agitation upon mere abstractions? You have possession of all the territory in which slave labor can be profitably employed, and large enough to allow its expansion for many generations. . . . Your true palladium is the Constitution of the United States. This is your ark of safety. . . . Why talk of disunion? A peaceable separation is impossible. . . . A civil war … may be easily brought about, under excited passions; but a peaceable division of this glorious Union, a voluntary disruption of a great nation, appears to me utterly impossible; as impossible as is the abolition of Slavery. . . . The idea that there is an irrepressible conflict between the Free States and the Slave States, is simply absurd and untrue. . . . The actual condition of the North and the South, in their natural productions, is most favorable to a trade … mutually advantageous and agreeable. . . . That mutual interest and mutual good-will may resume their natural functions throughout the nation, is the sentiment with which I subscribe myself, with great regard,

Your friend and very ob't serv't,
NATHAN APPLETON.

Boston, 12th March, 1860.
Hon. Wm. C. Rives.