Poor laborers of North compared to slaves of South

An item from the Lynn Record is titled, ‘Northern Slavery’, and in it there is a rebuke of the argument which claims that poor laborers of the North are worse off than slaves of the South.  “Now nothing can be more untrue; and how any man who has lived in the midst of slavery, and knows what it is, can make such an assertion, I cannot conceive, unless it be from the fact that he really loves the abominations of slavery. The truth however, is probably, that the remark is generally made by those persons who have only read about slavery, and taken their opinions from the floating maxims of papers and periodicals favorable to domestic servitude”.  The writer claims to have traveled much in the slave states …. “it is wicked blasphemy against heaven to institute any comparison between the freeman and the slave, except to show the dreadful degradation and misery of the latter…. The slaves better off!  Why the planters themselves are not so well off as our laborers!….”

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