SECTIONAL RIVALRY IN THE WEST

By migrating to the West the democratic frontiersmen of the back country of the old states escaped from the domination of the aristocratic class. In founding the new states which entered the Union between 1815 and 1821 they formed constitutions to suit themselves. By these judges as well as governors and legislators were made elective and manhood suffrage became the almost universal rule.

The democracy of the West and its devotion to the party of Jefferson in the early years of the nineteenth century had aroused the jealous apprehension of the Federalists, as has been shown. They regarded even the New England emigrants to the West as the refuse of society.1 Nevertheless the New England settlers carried with them many of the ideals and institutions of the states from which they came. The same was true of the southerners, and in a sense the whole process of colonizing the West was a race between rival sections. The southerners transplanted the county as the unit of local government, while the men of the Northeast were equally tenacious of the town. As a result Illinois, for example, adopted the county system for that portion of the state where the Piedmont stock predominated, while the New Englanders succeeded in introducing many features of the township system into the region which they occupied later. The educational ideals and methods of the two classes presented another occasion for dispute.

The rival stocks showed remarkably persistent sympathy with the sections from which they sprang. Even as late as the Civil

1 Timothy Flint, one of the contemporary authorities on conditions in the West, wrote about 1826: "The people in the Atlantic states have not yet recovered from the horror inspired by the term 'backwoodsman.' This prejudice is particularly strong in New England, and is more or less felt from Maine to Georgia."

War the southern element in the Northwest retained a lively partiality for the Confederacy, as the Copperhead movement shows. The affinity of the people of the upper Mississippi Valley with the South was enhanced by geographical influences, since the river and its branches formed the natural system of communication, while the mountains were a barrier to intercourse with the East. To some extent artificial factors tended to modify the original bias of the people. The construction of the Erie Canal turned the course of the Mississippi, as it were, and made New York rather than New Orleans the chief entrepôt of the great interior. Thereafter the East gained relatively in influence over the West. The Ordinance of 1787 had a profound influence upon this rivalry, for by interposing a legal barrier to the expansion of slavery into the Old Northwest it discouraged proslavery men from becoming residents in any great numbers, and thus gave a decisive advantage to the free states in the contest for institutional control.

Because slavery was excluded from this northwest region where the streams of migration met, their rivalry was not too intense to permit adjustments and compromises. If slavery had been tolerated, this would not have been the case. Experience proved that slavery and free labor could not prosper together in the same community. The inevitable effect of the one had been to degrade or expel the other. Many of the southerners in the lower counties of the states north of the Ohio were in a real sense driven from their former homes by the irreconcilable character of the two systems of labor.

HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

Chattel slavery had disappeared from western Europe long before the discovery of America. However, when the expansion of Europe brought Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen into contact with primitive, non-Christian races, the institution was revived in their colonial possessions. There was much labor to be performed which whites refused to do for hire, and the scruples which had put an end to slavery in Europe were much less felt amid New-World conditions. There was some Indian servitude in the possessions of all of the powers which colonized

America. It was especially common in the Spanish dominions until prohibited by the government, which inconsistently encouraged the importation of negroes to serve in the stead of the natives.

The rise of the plantation in the English colonies was accompanied by the use of servile labor - red, white, and finally black. But negro slavery had hardly become established before American opinion began to turn against it. Repeatedly during the colonial era provincial legislatures tried to restrict the importation of blacks, but the trade was a source of profit to British merchants, and the colonial acts were invariably set aside. When the Revolution brought freedom of action, the Association of 1774 included negroes among the forbidden imports, and later regulations of the Continental Congress continued the non-importation until the end of the war. Then control over the whole matter passed to the states.

Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence included in its charges against the British Crown that of vetoing the colonial acts relating to the slave trade, but this clause was dropped out of deference to South Carolina and Georgia, where alone at that time were to be found apologists for human bondage. Under the influence of the revolutionary philosophy of the rights of man the belief was quite general that slavery was iniquitous. Patrick Henry affirmed that "every thinking honest man rejects it in speculation," and Jefferson exclaimed, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

There were slaves in every state when independence was declared. Above Mason and Dixon's line they were employed chiefly as coachmen, butlers, cooks, and body-servants in wellto-do families, and their numbers were relatively few. In the years following the Revolution, consequently, the Northern states found slavery a simple matter to deal with. In one case, that of Vermont, the state constitution abolished it outright. In Massachusetts emancipation resulted from judicial interpretation of the constitution of 1780, which declared that all men are by nature free. This clause, the court ruled, was incompatible with the existence of chattel slavery within the commonwealth. Most of the Northern states adopted some plan of gradual emancipa

tion. Pennsylvania was the first to take such action (1780), and its law is typical. It left unchanged the status of persons already held in bondage but gave their children freedom when they attained adult years.

Southern states also discussed plans of emancipation. The depression of the tobacco, rice, and indigo industries after the Revolution made the support of the laborers burdensome to the masters, and fostered the growth of humanitarian sentiments. It was difficult, however, to break away from established custom. In the same letter quoted above Patrick Henry wrote, "I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not, I cannot, justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them." Moreover, the large number of blacks in the Southern states made emancipation a much more difficult undertaking than in the North. In some regions they outnumbered the white inhabitants, and it was feared that freeing an ignorant and undisciplined race would result in an idle, vicious, uncontrollable population. Slavery had at least the merit of keeping the negro under management.

Emancipation in the South, therefore, waited upon some practicable plan of dealing with the free blacks. In 1816 the American Colonization Society was formed for the purpose of transporting freedmen to Africa. For a time its program awakened some enthusiasm, especially in the South, where its chief support was found. The little republic of Liberia was the fruit of its activities, but its means proved to be quite insufficient for an undertaking of such magnitude, and its efforts in sum made no appreciable impression upon the black mass of American slavery. Then as cotton culture spread and southern prosperity increased conditions demanded a greater labor supply and sentiment changed.

From the close of the Revolution slavery was regarded as a question for the states. The fathers of the Constitution have been criticized for not incorporating in the supreme law a provision for gradual emancipation. Such criticism rests on an entire misconception of the task of the Convention. It was believed that the states separately would provide for emancipation; any such antislavery provision would have insured the

rejection of the Constitution; above all, the intent of the Convention to intrust to the federal government only matters of general concern-excluded the relation of master and slave as naturally as it did that of employer and employee from its sphere. Yet the Constitution touched slavery at many points in restricting the control of Congress over commerce, in fixing the rule of apportionment of taxes and representatives, in defining the obligations which states owed to one another as members of the federation, such as the rendition of fugitives from justice and service, and otherwise. The first Congress was confronted with petitions from antislavery societies, praying it to use its powers for the furtherance of the cause of freedom. The petitions led to the appointment of a committee of inquiry into the scope of the powers of Congress in the matter. The report set forth that the legislature could not interfere in any way with slavery in the states; that it could not prohibit the importation of slaves prior to 1808 but might lay a duty of ten dollars per head upon such importation and regulate the conditions of ocean transportation in the interests of humanity; and that the slaveholders were entitled to the enactment of a law for the rendition of fugitive slaves escaping into other states.

This report led to some legislation for the mitigation of the horrors of the "middle passage," by way of securing for the miserable blacks reasonable air space and of preventing needless suffering — much like provisions of our own times regulating shipments of live stock in railway cars. Another result was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Any white person who claimed a negro as his runaway property had merely, by oath, to satisfy a federal or state magistrate of the validity of his claim. The law made the recovery of fugitives easy, but it did not safeguard the rights of free persons of color, whom unprincipled white men were willing to enslave by perjuring themselves.

As the year 1808 approached, Jefferson congratulated Congress that the time was near when it might constitutionally make an end of the African slave trade. Accordingly an act was passed to take effect January 1, 1808. It laid heavy penalties in fines and imprisonment upon slave importers, but found no better disposition for the blacks illegally brought into the country than to turn them over to the state concerned to be sold. Despite