Background
Hinton Rowan Helper was born on December 27, 1829 in Davie County, North Carolina, United States. He was the youngest of six children.
(A review from The North American Review, Vol. 89 1859 We...)
A review from The North American Review, Vol. 89 1859 We took up this volume with very great interest, on learning that the author was a native of the South, and a slaveholder's son; for we felt that he, from his peculiar position, might obtain a candid hearing in behalf of human freedom from those who would be deaf to a Northern voice. But we confess ourselves disappointed. The book is self-neutralizing. It embodies strong arguments against slavery with precisely the kind of rhetoric which will render them unavailing where they are needed. The economical bearing and results of slave labor, as compared with free labor, are here exhibited with an amplitude and precision which we have not seen approached elsewhere. In addition to a very able and thorough verbal statement of the whole case at issue, we have a series of tables, in which the numerical statistics of the free and the slave States bushels, pounds, and dollars are collated from confessedly authentic, and for the most part official, sources of information. On such a subject, arguments based on figures rightfully hold a second place only to those urged on moral and religious grounds, while practically, we fear, they are paramount to higher considerations. Had Mr. Helper confined himself to these statistical comparisons, his book would have been impregnable in its reasonings, and could hardly have failed of exerting a powerful influence on his own side of the great question. But the-effect of his statements is vitiated by the frequent use of terms of opprobrium and contempt for his opponents, and by the suggestion of modes of action impossible in the very nature of things, and, in our view, unjustifiable were they possible. He appeals to the non-slaveholding majority of the white population of the South, and urges upon them a distinct organization, whose watchwords shall be non-intercourse and proscription as to all the supporters of slavery. This plan would be impracticable, inasmuch as the major part of those to whom the appeal is addressed are directly dependent on slaveholders, and would be driven to starvation were they to assume this hostile attitude. But were such a proceeding practicable, we have grave objections to it, as involving a disruption of social ties and obligations among neighbors and fellow-citizens, and creating a condition of things which would be attended with all the rancor and malignity of civil war. If slavery is ever to be abolished, (and we doubt not it will be.) it must be first modified, and then abrogated, by the action of those immediately connected with the institution; and they can be moved in this direction only by their conviction of the impolicy or the wrongfulness of their present position. Whatever can tend to produce such conviction we cordially welcome. Emancipation, as fast and as soon as it can be thus effected, will be an unspeakable blessing to our country and our race. Emancipation forced (were it possible, which it is not) upon an unconvinced and recalcitrant body of slaveholders, would leave the enslaved to all the disabilities and wrongs of serfdom, without the protection now largely extended to them by the sentiments of humanity and the considerations of interest involved in the relation of ownership.
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(The Land of Gold Reality Versus Fiction 1855 by Hinton Ro...)
The Land of Gold Reality Versus Fiction 1855 by Hinton Rowan Helper
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(Originally published in 1868 by a northern publisher, thi...)
Originally published in 1868 by a northern publisher, this volume is a collection of extremely archaic and ignorant ideas on Africans, African life and the negroes and negro community in general within the United States.
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(Excerpt from The Negroes in Negroland; The Negroes in Ame...)
Excerpt from The Negroes in Negroland; The Negroes in America; And Negroes Generally: Also, the Several Races of White Men, Considered as the Involuntary and Predestined Supplanters of the Black Races, a Compilation His Apathetic Indifference to all Propositions and prises of Solid Merit. Many other differences might be mentioned; but the score and more of obvious and undeniable ones here enumerated ought to suffice for the utter confusion and shame of all those disingenuous politicians and others, who, knowing better, and who are thus guilty of the crime of defeating the legitimate ends of their own knowledge, would, for mere selfish and partisan purposes, convey the delusive impression that there is no other difference than that of color. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Hinton Rowan Helper was born on December 27, 1829 in Davie County, North Carolina, United States. He was the youngest of six children.
Hinton was educated at the Mocksville Academy taught by Peter Stuart Ney and the Reverend Baxter Clegg.
Graduating in 1848, he was apprenticed to a printer, Michael Brown, of Salisbury. Helper worked there until 1850, when he left for California with $300 in embezzled funds, which he agreed to pay back.
Helper's California adventure failed, and he returned home to write his first book, The Land of Gold, perhaps the most derogatory account of California ever written. Complaining that the proslavery publisher of the book had deleted his comments on slavery, he decided to write a criticism of the slave system. "The Impending Crisis: How To Meet It" was an instant success despite the 1857 depression. Using the census statistics of 1850, Helper developed a superb economic critique of slavery, a version of which the young Republican party distributed for campaign purposes in the 1860 election. Helper was destitute in late 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln made him consul to Buenos Aires. He served competently until 1866, but plunged deeply in debt.
Distraught at the failure of middling Southern whites to assume control of the South during the early Reconstruction period, he produced Nojoque (1867), a vitriolic attack on African Americans. He followed it the next year with Negroes in Negroland, another catalog of disaffection. After limited success as a real estate promoter and agent for Americans with claims against South American republics, Helper turned to railroads, which occupied his attention for nearly 40 years. He inspired essay contests, compiled statistics, wrote tracts and letters, lobbied incessantly, and produced a visionary feasibility study of intercontinental railroads. During this period he authored three books: the semiautobiographical Noonday Exigencies in America, an acerbic treatise on South American nations; Oddments of Andean Diplomacy; and The Three Americas Railway. He also tried to organize a third political party, encouraged the growth of the American Anthropological Society, and traveled extensively abroad.
Hinton Rowan Helper was the only prominent American Southern author to attack slavery before the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–65). His thesis widely influenced Northern opinion and served as an important force in the antislavery movement.
Also he developed an obsession to build a railroad from Hudson Bay to the Strait of Magellan.
(Excerpt from The Negroes in Negroland; The Negroes in Ame...)
(Originally published in 1868 by a northern publisher, thi...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(The Land of Gold Reality Versus Fiction 1855 by Hinton Ro...)
(A review from The North American Review, Vol. 89 1859 We...)
Helper was married to Marie Louisa Rodriquez, a well-born Argentinian. The had no children.
