Helper, Hinton Rowan

Life Span
to
Full name
Hinton Rowan Helper
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
North
Origins
Slave State
No. of Spouses
1
No. of Children
1
Family
Daniel Helper (father), Sally Brown (mother), Maria Louisa Rodriguez (wife, 1863)
Education
Other
Other Education
Mocksville Academy, NC
Occupation
Diplomat
Businessman
Writer or Artist
Political Parties
Republican
Government
Diplomat

Hinton Rowan Helper (American National Biography)

Scholarship
Helper's career as a writer began with the publication in 1855 of Land of Gold, a little-noticed account of how California had failed to live up to his expectations. His next book, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (1857), became the center of a national controversy. The book called for the abolition of slavery because it was retarding the economic development of the South and limiting the opportunities of its nonslaveholding white majority. Helper argued that slavery was responsible for a one-crop system of plantation agriculture that benefited the slaveholding minority but denied to lower class whites the range of opportunities that a more diversified economy, like that of the North, would have provided. Since it appeared in the midst of the national debate over the fate of slavery in the federal territories, Helper's book attracted great public attention, being praised by northern free soilers and condemned by southern sectionalists. In 1859 an inexpensive Compendium, or digest, of The Impending Crisis was published with the endorsement of some leading members of the Republican party, who hoped to use it as a campaign document. Approximately 75,000 copies of the book and the Compendium were sold or distributed. Helper's work became a central issue in the bitter and prolonged contest for the Speakership of the House of Representatives that began in December 1959 and lasted for two months.
George M. Fredrickson, "Helper, Hinton Rowan," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00488.html.
Chicago Style Entry Link
Bailey, Hugh C. Hinton. Rowan Helper: Abolitionist-Racist. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1965. view record
Brown, David. Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and The Impending Crisis of the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. view record
Crenshaw, Ollinger. "The Speakership Contest of 1859-1860: John Sherman's Election a Cause of Disruption?" Mississippi Valley Historical Review 29, no. 3 (December 1942): 323-338. view record
Helper, Hinton Rowan. Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South. New York: A. B. Burdick, 1860. view record
Helper, Hinton Rowan. Nojoque: A Question for a Continent. New York: G. W. Carleton, 1867. view record
Helper, Hinton Rowan. The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. New York: Burdick Brothers, 1857. view record
Helper, Hinton Rowan. The Land of Gold: Reality Versus Fiction. Baltimore, 1855. view record
Wolfe, Samuel M. Helper’s Impending Crisis Dissected. Philadelphia: J. T. Lloyd, 1860. view record
How to Cite This Page: "Helper, Hinton Rowan," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5870.