The Impending Crisis of the South

The Impending Crisis of the South:
How to Meet It

Title page for The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (1860 edition)
Author	Hinton Rowan Helper
Publisher	Burdick Brothers
Publication date	1857
OCLC	226488928
Website	https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36055

The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It is an 1857 book by Hinton Rowan Helper, who declares himself a proud Southerner. It was written mostly in Baltimore, but it would have been illegal to publish it there, as he pointed out. It was a strong attack on slavery as inefficient and a barrier to the economic advancement of whites. The book was widely distributed by Horace Greeley and other antislavery leaders, and infuriated Southerners. According to historian George M. Fredrickson, "it would not be difficult to make a case for The Impending Crisis as the most important single book, in terms of its political impact, that has ever been published in the United States. Even more perhaps than Uncle Tom's Cabin, it fed the fires of sectional controversy leading up to the Civil War; for it had the distinction of being the only book in American history to become the center of bitter and prolonged Congressional debate". In the Northern United States, it became "the book against slavery." 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."

Condemnation of slavery

Events leading to the American Civil War

1. Northwest Ordinance
2. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
3. End of Atlantic slave trade
4. Missouri Compromise
5. Tariff of 1828
6. Nat Turner's Rebellion
7. Nullification crisis
8. End of slavery in British colonies
9. Texas Revolution
10. United States v. Crandall
11. Gag rule
12. Commonwealth v. Aves
13. Murder of Elijah Lovejoy
14. Burning of Pennsylvania Hall
15. American Slavery As It Is
16. United States v. The Amistad
17. Prigg v. Pennsylvania
18. Texas annexation
19. Mexican–American War
20. Wilmot Proviso
21. Nashville Convention
22. Compromise of 1850
23. Uncle Tom's Cabin
24. Recapture of Anthony Burns
25. Kansas–Nebraska Act
26. Ostend Manifesto
27. Bleeding Kansas
28. Caning of Charles Sumner
29. Dred Scott v. Sandford
30. The Impending Crisis of the South
31. Panic of 1857
32. Lincoln–Douglas debates
33. Oberlin–Wellington Rescue
34. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
35. Virginia v. John Brown
36. 1860 presidential election
37. Crittenden Compromise
38. Secession of Southern states
39. Peace Conference of 1861
40. Corwin Amendment
41. Battle of Fort Sumter

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 for the good of the whole world; proslavery men are working for the disunion of the States, and for 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 to the 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. Many draw on the U.S. Census, or other "confessedly authentic, and for the most part official, sources of information."

Political impact

A version of it was published in German translation in 1860.

With the approach of the 1860 presidential election, to help the Republican Party a Compendium version appeared in July 1859; it was an abridgement that kept the statistics but watered down some of the confrontational rhetoric. It was endorsed by 68 Republican members of Congress. By December 1859, 500 copies a day were being sold.

This version met with fierce opposition. Possession of a copy was treated as criminal offense in most of the South. Distributors of the book were arrested, and three men in Arkansas were hanged for possession of it.

Congress convened on December 5, 1859. The House of Representatives was unable to conduct any business until February 1, 1860, because the body was so divided that it was unable to elect a speaker. Helper's book was the only topic. During the "ill-tempered and acrimonious election for Speaker of the House, the second longest in congressional history ... southern politicians refused to accept as Speaker anyone who had supported Helper". Another source says it was the longest dispute, with 44 elections for speaker.

In rebuttal, Louis F. Schade published in 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! (80 pages).

Helper's racism

Abolitionists mostly ignored the fact that Helper was an adamant white supremacist. His goal in writing the book, as he says, was to help Southern whites, not Blacks. According to him, Blacks were inferior to whites, and there was no place for them in the United States; after emancipation, they should be removed from the country, he said. "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."

Further reading

• Fredrickson, George M. (1988). "Antislavery Racist: Hinton Rowan Helper". The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. pp. 28–53. ISBN 0-8195-5177-5.
• Wilson, Edmund (1962). Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 364–379. OCLC 34962267.
• Bailey, Hugh C. (1965). Hinton Rowan Helper: Abolitionist-Racist. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. Review, pp. 410-411
• Brown, David (2006). Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and the Impending Crisis of the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Review

External links

• 1857 text of The Impending Crisis at the University of North Carolina
• Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South (1859 version online)