How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans

[malaise]

33. that so-called English 'gentleman' Thomas Carlyle wanted us to starve as welll -

but in the tropics pumpkins were plentiful and he was disgusted. Check the title of his famous paper.
http://www.thephora.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-6572.html
<snip>

Sunk in deep froth oceans of “Benevolence,” “Fraternity,” “Emancipa- tion-principle,” “Christian Philanthropy,” and other amiable-looking, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and all-bewildering jargon, sad pro- duct of a sceptical eighteenth century, and of poor human hearts left destitute of any earnest guidance, and dis- believing that there ever was any, Christian or Heathen, and reduced to believe in rose-pink Sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its Christian, Antichristian, Broad- brimmed, Brutus-braded, and other forms, has not the human species gone strange roads during that period? And poor Exeter Hall, cultivating the Broad-brimmed form of Christian Sentimentalisin, and long talking and bleating and braying in that strain, has it not worked out results? Our West Indian legislatings, with their spoutings, anti-spoutings, and interminable jangle and babble; our twenty millions down on the nail for blacks of our own; thirty gradual millions [p.241] more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching blacks of other people's; and now at last our ruined sugar-estates, differential sugar-duties, “immigration loan,” and beautiful blacks sitting there up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful whites sitting here without potatoes to eat: never till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses. God grant that the measure may now at last be full! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and in fact an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists that merely have speeches to deliver and despatches to write. O, Heaven, in West Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with us: the more is the sorrow!

The West Indies, it appears, are short of labor, as indeed is very conceivable in those circumstances. Where a black man, by working about half an hour a day (such is the calculation), can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which science says should be brought to bear on him, have an uphill task of it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis, rich soil in those unpeopled, or half-peopled regions almost gratis; these are his “supply,” and half an hour a day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin, which is his “demand.” The fortunate black man, very swiftly does he settle his account with supply and demand ; not so swiftly the less fortunate white man of those tropical localities. A bad case his, just now. He himself cannot work; and his black neighbor, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him. Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man’s “demand,” and take his own time in supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-crop cannot wait; still higher, till no conceivable opulence of cane-crop will cover such wages. In Demerara, as I read in the blue book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide, stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the “demand” rise a little. Sweet, blighted lilies, now getting up their heads again!