UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 57, 26 May 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

UNITED STATES OF AME RIC A.

[Selected from the MSS. of " The Foreigner's Book of American Knowldge," by William B. West, U. S. Consul at Galway.] Natic Cobeeb —Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, is well known by this sobriquet, and to his honor be it said, he was not ashfimed to declare in Congress his pride in having once "earned his bread by the sweat of his brow." Thus he loftily and uobly replied to the taunts uf a Southern Senator upon the free laborers of the North ; which I add without apology, for its racinessof the soil, and evincing so truthfully and characteristically the distinctive features, so antagonistic, " between the aristocracy of the South and the equalityism of the North : — "Sir, I am the son of a 'hireling inanuel laborer,' who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, still 'lives by daily labor.' I, too, have lived by daily labor. I. too, hay* been a 'hireling m-muel laborer. Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadows over the home of lny childhood, and want was there sometimes an unbidden guest. At the age of ten years, to aid him who gave him being, and keep the gaunt spectre from the hcarih of the mother who bore me, I left the home of my boyhoods and went to earn my bread by daily labor among strangers. Many a weary mile hnve I travelled — To bog a brother of the earth To give me leavo to toil. " Sir, 1 have toiled as a • hireling manual laborer ' in the field and in the workshop; and I tell the Senator from South Carolina that I never felt palled by my ' depredation.' Perhaps the Senator will ascribe this to obtuseness of intellect, and to blunt sensibilities. Sir, 1 was conscious of my manhood. I was the peer ct" my employer. I knew that the laws and institutions of my native and adopted states (New Hampshire and Massachusetts), throw over him and over me alike, thy panopoly of equality. I knew, too, tha.tthe world was before me with its wealth, its general treasures of knowledge, its honors, the coveted prizes of life, within the grasp of a brave heart and tireless hand ; and 1 accepted the responsibilities of my position nil unconscious that I was a 'slave.' I have employed others, hundreds of others, some of wjpom then possessed and now possess, more property than I ever owned ; some of them better educated than myself, better read and better educated than some senators on this floor, and many of them in moral excellence and purity of cheracter, my admitted superiors. I have occupied for more than twenty years the relations of employed or employer, and while I never felt "galled by any degradation ' in the one ease, in the other I was never conscious that my ' hireling laborers ' were my inferiors.''