Henry Thoreau and Frederick Porcher both felt America was not heading in the right direction. However, they had different reasons for suggesting this. Thoreau thought slavery and those who ignored it were the problem while Porcher thought the conflict between capital and labor was the problem. Thoreau believed that government ignorance was the reason slavery still existed and Porcher believed that capitalism was the cause of the conflict between capital and labor. They each wrote of possible remedies to fix America from heading down a road from which it would never return. Henry Thoreau considered slavery and ignorance what was wrong with the United States. He believed slavery was immoral and the activism of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry …show more content…
In his essay, he gave several examples of how when nations became richer, the people became poorer. The poor had no chance of becoming rich because the odds were stacked against them. The poor were stuck being poor. Porcher assumed that political philosophy favored the rich by urging them to use their advantages. However, this philosophy also urged the poor to use their advantages, which were almost nonexistent. He considered this to be a mockery of the poor. According to Porcher, capitalism caused the conflict between capitalism and labor and therefore, poverty. Laborers had to work for bare means of subsistence because the capitalistic workplaces only had a certain number of jobs. Once this amount was reached, the workers’ pay became less and less. Their hard work was exchanged for little pay. Porcher’s complaints were not new. In Rochester, New York, the greatest rewards went to the masters or businessmen, while the workingmen experienced harsh exploitation. This revealed that it was not just Southerners who experienced the injustice of poverty, but the entire …show more content…
The first possible solution was put into place in England by Mr. Mill. Mr. Mill’s solution was to apply Malthusian philosophy. However, the impoverished knew nothing of this system. Mr. Carlyle suggested the other two solutions: education and emigration. However, Porcher believed that education was overrated. He stated that the rich barely had time for education, let alone the poor. Mr. Carlyle’s other solution of emigration would be a temporary fix. Porcher speculated the only way to solve the conflict was an interpretation of moral law. If the rich and powerful read and apply the law to their lives, society can be fixed.
If these two men, one a Northerner and one a Southerner, both believed that their country was headed down a dangerous path, then more Americans must have thought the same. The people of the Early Republic in the late 1850s knew they were headed down a dark path. However, these essays show that the North and South were focusing on different problems. To the North, the biggest problem was slavery, and to the South, the biggest problem was