Helper, Hinton Rowan

Helper, Hinton Rowan, 1829–1909, American writer, b. Davie co., N.C. He was in California during the gold rush and later returned east to write The Land of Gold (1855). His next book, The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), an attack on slavery, enraged the South. In 1860 the Republican party distributed 100,000 copies of the book. Helper condemned slavery not on humanitarian or moral grounds, but because it was an economic threat to the poor whites of the South. Three subsequent books, including Nojoque (1867), were vicious attacks on African Americans for their alleged basic inferiority.

Bibliography

See biography by H. C. Bailey (1965); study by H. Wish (1960).

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Helper, Hinton Rowan

(born Dec. 27, 1829, Davie county, N.C., U.S.—died March 9, 1909, Washington, D.C.) U.S. antislavery writer. His 1857 work The Impending Crisis of the South argued that slavery harmed nonslaveholding whites and inhibited economic progress in the South. It became influential in the antislavery movement in the North; in the South it caused a furor and was banned in several states. For his safety Helper moved to New York City. After the American Civil War, Helper wrote three bitter racist tracts advocating the deportation of blacks to Africa or Latin America.