About this Item
162 Pp. Green Cloth, Gilt. First Printing. Fine Book, Gilt Brilliant. Dj Priced $2.50, Light Wear, A Few Minute Losses At Corners. Per Wikipedia, Hinton Rowan Helper (1829 ? 1909), From North Carolina, Was A Writer, Abolitionist, And White Supremacist Who Went To California In 1851 Hoping To Get Rich, But He Came Back In 1854, Disillusioned. In 1855 Helper Wrote The Book The Land Of Gold. Reality Versus Fiction, In Which He "Attempted To Tell, Incidentally, Of His Discovery In The Course Of His Travels That Slave Labor Was Less Profitable Than Free Labor And In Baltimore, Where The Book Was To Be Published, He Had Run Into A Maryland Statute, Dating From 1831, Which Made It A Felony With A Penalty Of Not Less Than Ten Years In Jail Knowingly To Write Or Print Anything 'Having A Tendency To Excite Discontent . Amongst The People Of Color'. Compelled To Excise These Comments, Hinton Helper ? An Irascible Man ? Resolved To Speak Out His Whole Mind In A Book Devoted Entirely To This Subject." The 1857 Book Was The Impending Crisis Of The South: How To Meet It. Expressing Helper's Deep Opposition To Slavery And The Condition Of Southern Culture And The South's Lack Of Economic Progress, It Was One Of The Most Effective Criticisms Of The South. Helper Argued That The South's Growth, Prosperity, And Cultural Development Were Being Held Back By Slavery. He Deployed Statistics From The Census To Show That Land Values, Literacy Levels, And Manufacturing Rates Were Considerably Lower In The South Than In The North. He Warned Of The Devastation Caused By Slavery Through Deforestation. He Proposed That Slaveholders Be Taxed To Colonize All Free Blacks In Africa Or Latin America.Lincoln Appointed Helper As United States Consul In Buenos Aires From 1861 To 1866. He Spent Most Of The Postwar Years Promoting A Scheme To Build An Intercontinental Railroad Connecting North And South America, Which Would Help Replace Black And Brown Peoples With Whites. The "Three Americas Railway" Was Supposed To Extend From The Bering Sea To The Strait Of Magellan. After The War, Helper Appeared As A Fire Eater, Urging The Wholesale Expulsion Of Former Slaves. He Believed The United States Should Be Exclusively White (Also Excluding Chinese, Native Americans, And Other Non-White Groups). "A. B. Burdick, The Publisher Of The Impending Crisis, Testified That Helper . Avoided All Contacts With Negroes, Refusing Even To Patronize Hotels Or Restaurants Which Employed Negroes In Menial Capacities. Another Man Who Knew Helper Before The War Recalled That 'He Has Always Been Inflexibly Opposed To All The Relations And Conditions Which Have Kept The Two Races Close Together; And This . Was One Of The Principal Grounds Of His Opposition To Slavery." Nevertheless, Southern Enemies Of Reconstruction Were Unwilling To Forgive His Previous Opposition To Slavery, And He Remained A Marginal And Increasingly Unstable Character In Postwar America. His Schemes Never Came To Anything, And He Died By Suicide By Turning On The Gas In His Washington, D.C. Apartment. Seller Inventory # 043186
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