Hinton Rowan Helper was born in Davie county, North Carolina, December 27, 1829. His paternal grandfather was born near Heidelberg, Germany, and came to North Carolina in 1752. His maternal grandfather, who was of English descent, was Cannon Brown, of Virginia. His father, Daniel Helper, married Sarah, the daughter of Cannon Brown, of Virginia. His father, Daniel Helper, married Sarah, the daughter of Cannon Brown, and the pair settled down on a small farm on Bear creek, a tributary of the South Yadkin river. Here there were born seven children, the last of whom is the subject of this subject of this sketch. Daniel Helper died in the fall of 1830, and the widow and her seven children, the eldest of whom was less than twelve, were left to support themselves as best they could. They had four slaves, a man and his wife and their two children, and from the labor of these the family managed to live. The training of young Hinton was such as many a backwoods boy gets; rough sports in the open air, hunting and fishing, all kinds of farm work in the season, a little schooling in the neighborhood schools, and finally a term or two in a neighboring academy, which, in this case, happened to be in the village of Mocksville. With such an outfit he found himself at the threshold of manhood. His health was not very robust, but as he grew older he became stronger, and he is now an admirable specimen of well-preserved manhood.

When twenty years old he moved to the city of New York, which he made his home for some months. When he came of age, however, he started off to California, by way of Cape Horn, hoping to make his fortune in the gold regions. At Valparaiso, Chile, the shop stopped for provisions and masts, and this gave the young man his first direct acquaintance with South America, a country with which his later life has been somewhat closely associated. His stay in the gold region was short and unprofitable. In 1854, three years after he had set out, he returned to the farm and settled down to the life in which his boyhood had been spent. Such a life was too dull for him. His mind was active, and hi had a store of observations made during his absence. Some minds seem to be set on ball bearings, they work so easily. Mr. Helper seems to have such a mind. His ready use of words and his incisive mental processes easily fitted him for writing. In the quiet of the farm life he wrote an account of his journey, which he called “The Land of Gold.” In 1855 the work was ready for the press. He made arrangements for publication with mr. Charles Mortimer of Baltimore, then the publisher of the Southern Quarterly Review, and a strong pro-slavery Virginian. In his travels Mr. Helper had found no slave labor. He had been struck with the superiority of free labor. This, he concluded, was particularly true of the cities; and he thought that slaves should be relegated to the country. The work of printing had progressed to some extent when the publisher discovered these sentiments. He refused to print them. The author, anxious for the safe delivery of his first-born, and having already paid $400 for work done on the book, was in despair. He hesitated as to what to do, and at length told the printer to do as he chose with the matter. Mortimer then cut out the objectionable passages and published the book.

The result of this course was important. The young man, chagrined at what he deemed an outrage, determined that he would be heard. He returned to North Carolina and began an extensive study of the question of slavery. In a year, he had formulated his views. In June, 1856, a few days after the nomination of Fremont for the Presidency, he started again for the North, taking with him the manuscript of “The Impending Crisis of the South.” In Baltimore he stopped long enough to aid in forming a Republican association, one of the first in the South, and destined soon to be broken up by a pro-slavery mob. He hardly expected to get a publisher for his work in this city; but he, nevertheless, tried to secure one. Failing completely, he went on to New York. Here he found more sympathy for his views, but only a little aid in putting them before the public. The work was offered to the Harpers, Scribner, Appleton and all the other regular publishers, but not one would take it. In his despair he offered the manuscript for nothing, but the offer was not accepted. They all declined, because to publish such strong anti-slavery views, or to have them brought out in connection with their firms, would drive away their Southern patronage. Mr. James Harper, an Abolishionist himself, and a man to whom Mr. Helper had brought a letter of introduction, said to the young author, with great frankness, that while he concurred with the book in its hostility to slavery, and found it worth bringing out, yet, after consulting with his business partners, it had been decided that publishing it would cause the firm to lose at least twenty per cent of their annual trade. In view of such a fact, they did not dare to undertake the work.

These were no doubt wise business methods, but they disheartened the author. Between seven and eight months he spent going from one publisher to another. How much he suffered in the meantime will not be easily imagined. Convinced that he had a great principle at stake, he was determined to exhaust every energy to accomplish his task. This long period of waiting was endured with steadfastness. He was committed to the right of being heard on a question on which his opinions had once been suppressed. He felt that he was demanding vindication. At length, worn out with anxiety and disgusted at what he thought a lack of courage on the part of the publishers, he decided to accept an offer made by Mr. A. B. Burdick. That gentleman, who was a book agent rather than a book publisher, agreed to issue the book in his own name, Mr. Helper having previously secured him against loss. The venture proved a handsome success. Mr. Burdick made a fortune from the sales, but, unfortunately, lost it in stock speculation.

"The Impending Crisis of the South" was well calculated to attract attention in the North. The author was a Southerner, not of the slave-holding aristocracy, but of the class of small farmers. He approached the question from the economic side, while other anti-slavery writers had approached it from the side of the rights of the negro. The literary style was clear and cutting. The author wrote in behalf of the non-slaveholding whites of the South, for whom he claimed an opportunity to make a living. There was a grim directness in the following words, taken from the preface to the first edition: "The genius of the North has also most ably and eloquently discussed the subject in the form of novels. New England wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. Against this, I have nothing to say; it is all well enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give the facts." In the same preface he referred to the fact that he was a Southerner, as proud as any of his birthplace, and added: "As the work, considered with reference to its author's nativity, is a novelty, * * * so I indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will be novel; that is to say, that they will receive it as it is offered, in a reasonable and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect on it as an honest endeavor to treat a subject of vast import without rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their own sympathies. "These were fair words; but Mr. Helper must have known well when he wrote them that his book would receive little favor in the South. If he hoped otherwise, he was soon undeceived. The appearance of the work in the summer of 1857 was the signal for a flood of denunciation from that quarter. It was at once declared to come within the provision of the laws against the circulation of incendiary literature. To own a copy was against good taste, and traitorous to the interest of the South. In 1859 John A. Gilmer was the Whig candidate for the governorship in North Carolina. His opponents charged him with owning a copy of "The Impending Crisis.' His friends replied by declaring that John W. Ellis, the Democratic candidate, had a copy. The Raleigh Standard, the leading Democratic paper of the State, indignantly denied the charge against Ellis. The truth of the matter, it said, was that in 1858, while Ellis was in New York, Mr. Helper, who had known him in North Carolina, called on him and later on sent a copy of the book.

This Mr. Ellis threw out of the window. Sometime later Governor Ellis received another copy through the mails, and that he used for lighting his pipe. Making bonfires of the book was a mild feature of its reception in many parts of the South. The Northern papers reported that a number of persons were hanged or otherwise killed for having copies in their possession. The truth of the latter statement it has been impossible to prove. The enemies of Mr. Helper tried to break down his arguments by blackening his character. It was charged that he had taken fraudulently a sum of money from an employer in Salisbury, N. C., and that when accused of the crime he had admitted it, alleging that he was at the time only seventeen years old, and that another clerk had induced him to take the money. This charge was repeated by Senator Biggs, of North Carolina, in a congressional debate, in 1857. Mr. Helper and his friends indignantly denied the charge, and produced a certificate from his former employer stating that it was false.[2] This accusation continued to be repeated by the Southerners.[3] The Standard believed the charge, and doubtless but echoed public sentiment in the State when, in 1859, it said that Helper was good enough for the Abolitionists; he stole money, while Greeley and Thurlow Weed wanted to steal slaves: there was no difference.

The reception of "The Impending Crisis" by the Northern public, while favorable, was not immediately flattering. Its great popularity was doubtless caused by the political interest that sprang out of it. This came about in this way: In 1857 a gentleman from Rhode Island, whose name is not given, acting in conjunction with Mr. John Bigelow, associate editor of the New York Evening Post, made arrangements to print 100,000 copies of a compendium of "The Impending Crisis." The panic of that year coming on soon after, the project was dropped. In March, 1859, the scheme was revived in a different form. A number of gentlemen, among whom were Samuel E. Sewell, Cassius M. Clay, F. P. Blair, Jr., Charles W. Elliot, David Dudley Field and Charles A. Peabody, now issued a circular, calling for subscriptions to a fund of $15,000 in order to print, as a campaign document, 100,000 copies of such a compendium. The circular said, among other things: "No other volume now before the public, as we conceive, is, in all respects, so well calculated to induce in the minds of its readers a decided and persistent repugnance to slavery and a willingness to cooperate in the effort to restrain the shameless advances and hurtful influences of that pernicious institution." The scheme was endorsed by the leading Republican members of Congress, among whom were Messrs. Colfax, Grow, Giddings, Dawes, Washburn and John Sherman, and by the most prominent Abolition leaders, among whom were Thurlow Weed, Wm. Cullen Bryant, B. S. Hedrick and Horace Greeley. The latter gentlemen declared: "Were every citizen in possession of the facts embodied in this book, we feel confident that slavery would soon pass away, while a Republican triumph in 1860 would be morally certain." It is of interest to know that of the amount collected, North Carolinians subscribed $165. Among the subscribers were Professor Hedrick and Mr. Goodloe, whom the Raleigh Standard described as "two other recreant sons of this State.

The plans thus set forth were accomplished. One hundred thousand copies of the compendium were printed in 1860 and distributed throughout the doubtful States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois. In their estimate of the book the Abolitionists were right. Its style cut like a knife. It showed clearness, conviction, and a certain intensity which would likely make a more striking appeal to the voters than the more restrained statements of a more scholarly work. It was not free from the vivid rhetoric to be expected from a self-taught young man from the backwoods, and yet, for the purposes in view, this was no disadvantage.

The success of this circular was not calculated to soothe the feelings of the Southern Democrats, whose feelings were already at the highest pitch. Their newspapers took up the matter, publishing extracts to show that "The Impending Crisis" was incendiary. To the Southerners this was a deliberate purpose of the Republicans to arouse the entire North against the South. Shortly after the compendium scheme was assured there occurred John Brown's attacks on Harper's Ferry. The South was more convinced than ever of the harmfulness of the book which the Abolitionists were using to propagate their doctrines. While affairs were in this shape Congress met. The caucus nominee of the Republicans for the Speakership was John Sherman, who, with other Congressmen, had signed the above-mentioned circular. To his election the Southerners opposed their strongest efforts. As soon as Congress met a resolution was introduced which declared "That no person who has endorsed and recommended [Helper's] book, or the compendium from it, is fit to be Speaker of this House." One of the fiercest debates in the history of that body now began. Southern members used the bitterest threats. Members on each side went armed, fearing a resort to force. The debate on the resolution was dropped long enough to take some ballots for Speaker, but without any election. Ignoring the usual holiday recess, the contestants went on until, on January 30, 1860, Sherman withdrew his name. Three days later Pennington, of New Jersey, was elected by the Republican and American votes.

The attracting of public attention to "The Impending Crisis" had a most exciting effect on its sale, which hitherto had not been extraordinary. The demand for it was now immense. Copies might be seen in stacks on every news stand and in every book store of the North. Some pro-slavery men tried to prevent its sale. The president of the Norristown Railroad Company ordered that it should not be sold in the railroad cars, the gentlemen's waiting-rooms, or the railway stations. Such efforts were in vain. By the autumn of 1860, 142,000 copies, including the compendium, had been sold. It is doubtful if any other American book not fiction, except, perhaps, Mr. Harvey's "Coin's Financial School," has reached so great a circulation in so short a time. Had the war not begun in 1861, which destroyed the occupation of more Abolitionists than one, the circulation would have gone much higher. A more impartial view of the book from a scholar's standpoint would be the book reviews it received at the time it was published. The New Englander (Vol. 75, p. 635, 1857), in calling attention to the fact that the author wrote from the side of sociology, said: "On the subject in this department he has made the most complete and effective presentation within our knowledge. It is thorough, reliable, demonstrating, overwhelming. It consists of facts which cannot be denied or gainsaid; facts derived to a large extent by careful examination and comparison from the census, which cannot be suspected of anti-slavery bias, since it was compiled under the direction of an eminent statistician who is notorious for his pro-slavery principles and zeal." The Westminster Review, having less interest in the conflict, and being more critical in point of style, said, with much justness: "The style of production is peculiarly American. Its language and ideas alike are often extravagant, and its allusions sometimes very personal. Statistics and other facts are well arranged and fully authenticated, but the conclusions of the author are not always correct, and occasionally exhibit a want of practical political knowledge.

The burden of Mr. Helper's story was the benefiting of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. These ought to be distinguished from the "poor whites." The latter were a class, in themselves more or less shiftless, living around among the large plantations, without ambition and mostly in extreme poverty. They were largely wrecks, both industrial and moral, on the shores of society; although a child occasionally came out from among them whose efforts enabled him to reach a high place in society. The former class were the small farmers who worked their lands without slave labor. They were most numerous in the west, among the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. They were thrifty and sturdy, and when they removed to the Northwest, as many of them did to escape the effects of slavery, they proved valuable citizens. Emancipation of the slaves would have been a blessing to either of these classes. By it one class would have been raised slowly from degradation to respectability, the other from respectability to wealth. What either of these classes suffered from the slaveholders is seen in this extract from Helper: He says there were several kinds of pine near his boyhood home, "by the light of whose flamable [sic] knots, as radiated on the contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or crook, had found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long winter evenings to some advantage, and have thus partially escaped from the prison grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the non-slaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined."

To improve the condition of this class it was necessary to abolish slavery. He started out to learn "why the North has surpassed the South." He boldly attacked the notion that the South excelled the North in agriculture. From the census of Professor De Bow himself, who was a strong Southerner, he showed that in bushel-measure products the North was far ahead of the South, and that the hay crop alone of the North was worth more than all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay, hemp and cane-sugar raised in the South. This comparison was also made in regard to farm animals, total wealth, gross expenditure and various other items from the census columns. These arguments, inasmuch as they attempt to prove the superiority of free labor over slave labor, were well taken. The North and the South had begun the period of national existence about equal in resources and opportunity. That the latter section had fallen so far behind must be due to slavery. In summing up this feature of the question he uttered the following characteristic sentence: "It makes us poor; poverty make us ignorant; ignorance makes us wretched; wretchedness makes us wicked, and wickedness leads us to the devil." Sound as the argument was, there was much that was calculated to make Southern blood boil. It was a time of stern conviction. Each side had little of the spirit of toleration. Mr. Helper ought not to be blamed, perhaps, that he did not rise above the spirit of his surroundings. Certain it is, he was no master of saying unpleasant truths in a palatable way. At times he spoke bluntly, often bitterly. In one place he exclaims: "No man of genuine decency and refinement would have them [the negroes] as property on any terms."Speaking of the increase that would be realized in the value of lands if slavery were abolished, he said, addressing the slaveholders: "Now, sirs, this last sum is considerably more than twice as great as the estimated value of all your negroes, and those of you, if any there be, who are yet heirs to sane minds and generous hearts, must, it seems to us, admit that the bright prospects which freedom presents for a wonderful increase in the value of real estate, ours as well as yours, to say nothing of the thousand other kindred considerations, ought to be quite sufficient to induce all the Southern States in their sovereign capacities to abolish slavery at the earliest practicable period."In the same spirit he finds in the South "three odious classes of mankind; the slaves themselves, who are cowards; the slaveholders, who are tyrants; the non-slaveholding slave-hirers, who are lickspittles."He arraigned severely "the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials" for their conduct in Washington, where, "on frequent occasions, choking with rage at seeing their wretched sophistries scattered to the winds by the logical reasoning of the champions of freedom, they have overstepped the bounds of common decency, vacated the chair of honorable controversy, and, in the most brutal and cowardly manner assailed their unarmed opponents with bludgeons, bowie-knives and pistols. Compared with some of their barbarisms at home, however, their frenzied onslaughts at the National Capital have been but the simplest breach of civil deportment, and it is only for the purpose of avoiding personalities that we refrain from divulging a few instances of the unparalleled atrocities they have perpetrated in the legislative halls south of the Potomac.* * * A few years of entire freedom from the cares and perplexities of public life would, we have no doubt, greatly improve both their manners and their morals; and we suggest that it is a Christian duty, which devolves on the non-slaveholders of the South, to disrobe them of the mantles of office, which they have so worn with disgrace to themselves, injustice to their constituents, and ruin to their country."

The last sentence brings up the non-slaveholders, whose wrongs he breathed out as fire. He said to the slaveholders "Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slave holding vengeance by day, and of the barbarous massacre of the negroes by night? Would you be instrumental in bringing upon yourselves, your wives and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate? Shall history cease to cite as an instance of unexampled cruelty the massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world—the South—shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage? Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads; but we have endured long, we have endured much; slaves only of the most despicable class would endure more.

* * * Out of your effects you have long since overpaid youselves [sic] for your negroes, and now, sirs, you must emancipate them—speedily emancipate them or we will emancipate them for you !" This extract smacks of insurrection. In another place this is found: "In reason and in conscience, it must be admitted, the slaves might claim for themselves a reasonable allowance of the proceeds of their labor. If they were to demand an equal share of all the property, real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced through their effort, heaven, we believe, would recognize them as honest claimants." These sentiments seemingly grew out of a commendable sympathy for the slaves, and they had a certain justification in facts, yet it is impossible not to see that preaching them to the slaves would have tended to arouse the negroes to insurrection. It is but just to add that such extreme statements occur rarely, and charity should prompt us to think that when they do occur they are but temporary feelings which sober action would repudiate. But it was the effect that the book might have on the non-slaveholding whites, more than its effect on the negroes, that the slave-owners feared. Well might they have feared on this score. In 1850 the white population of the slave States was 6,184,477. About 1,200,000 of these must have been voters. Mr. Helper calculated on the basis of De Bow's census that not more than 200,000 slaveholders were voters.[15] Accordingly, the non-slaveholding voters must have had a vast majority of the votes. What must have been the result if these votes could have been united against the slave power? He appealed to the non-slaveholders. He told them that they had had all the burdens of government and none of the benefits of legislation; they had furnished the fighting force of the armies of the South, yet they had never received from the legislators even "the limited privileges of common schools," while the slaveholders had gone to the North for their teachers and their skilled mechanics, and when asked to do so had contemptuously refused to redress the wrongs of the non-slaveholders. Today this may suggest the demagogue, but there is a deal of truth in it. The remedy must be political. He said: "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box." His programme [sic] embraced seven principles: "1. Thorough organization and independent political action on the part of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. 2. Ineligibility of pro-slavery slaveholders; never another vote to anyone who advocates the retention and perpetuation of human slavery. 3. No cooperation with pro-slavery politicians; no fellowship with them in religion; no affiliation with them in society. 4. No patronage of pro- slavery merchants, no guestship in slave-waiting hotels; no fees to pro-slavery lawyers; no employment of pro-slavery physicians; no audience to pro-slavery parsons. 5. No hiring of slaves by non-slaveholders. 6. Abrupt discontinuance of subscriptions to pro-slavery newspapers. 7. The greatest possible encouragement to free white labor."

To put these measures into force he proposed the calling of a convention of non-slaveholders from every State in the Union. This should devise the means of fighting slavery, and should publish a platform of principles and invite the support of the non-slaveholders of the South and Southwest. The tendency of this scheme toward Republican politics is evident. Of course the Democrats opposed it. Exceptions can only be taken to the methods by which they opposed it. It is not difficult to imagine the fate of a half-dozen Republican speakers, who, acting on Mr. Helper's suggestion, might have gone to North Carolina to organize the non-slaveholding whites. An illustration of what would have befallen them we have in the experience" of Rev. Daniel Worth. Were it not that slavery and the fortunes of many good but mistaken people went down so disastrously in the avalanche of war, words could not be found too strong to denounce the false spirit that made it impossible to preach in a fair manner a doctrine of simple political principles and to appeal in a constitutional way to the best intelligence of those who were recognized as legal voters. More unfortunate than reprehensible was it that the spirit of intolerance had so taken possession of some of the leading people of the State as is shown by the incident which will now be related.
(Source: Anti-slavery Leaders of North Carolina, By John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., J.H.U, Publisher: The John Hopkins Press , Baltimore, June 1898 - Transcribed and Submitted by: Michelle Kennedy Byrd)