rarely is it joined to that self-restraint, willingness to sacrifice the present to the future, and eternal vigilance, which are the price of liberty.

Thus all nations inhabiting a warm climate tend naturally to servitude under foreign or domestic masters, whatever may be their pursuits.

We thus find, that, however other causes may have quickened or intensified the process, climatic influences are alone sufficient to produce an aristocratic tendency in the South, and a disinclination or unfitness for free, popular institutions. And when we consider the history of the early Colonies, remarking that there was a preponderance of Tories in South Carolina during the Revolution, and that Massachusetts sent more soldiers to fight Southern battles in that war than all the Southern Colonies,† and remember that at this time all held slaves, we shall be less inclined to attribute Southern unfitness or want of love for popular institutions to transient or accidental

causes.

It is hardly necessary to add anything upon the democratic tendencies of the North, since these are sufficiently obvious, resulting in a great measure from influences just the reverse of those operating upon the South.

We have thus endeavored to account for the growth of the aristocracy in the South, and the consequent social divergence of the two sections, which is assigned by many as the immediate cause of Secession.

Regarding their antagonistic interests, the cause assigned by so many others, but little need be added. We have shown the influence of the climate in making the Southerners an agricultural people; and as such, perfect free trade seemed to almost the whole population (except the sugar producers of Louisiana) a necessity of their well-being. Whether this opinion was correct or not we need not consider; it was their opinion, and probably will be that of every agricultural people to the end of time. And whether true or false, the belief would produce the same course of conduct as the fact. The power of this opin

Life of Marion, cited by F. L. Olmsted, “Seaboard Slave States," p. 503. ↑ Hildreth's History of the United States, Vol. IV. p 208.

ion of interest is seen in the relation of the West to Secession. The soil and climate devoted the West, as the South, to agriculture; and only by skilful management, as many believe, were several of the Western States prevented from joining the Secession movement. So strong was interest in producing Secession.

As the South were advocates of free trade, so the Middle and Eastern States mostly supported a tariff. And the soundness of their views, as in the case of the South, has no connection with the argument. Thus climatic influences produced the antagonism of interests, as well as the social divergence of the sections.

We spoke at the outset of the prominence and power at the South of the doctrine of State rights, which is sometimes assigned as the cause of Secession, saying that, admitting its influence, some explanation of its presence is required. Yet little need be said upon the subject. Given a divergence of institutions and an antagonism of interests, with a people uneducated to self-restraint, incapable of looking into the future, apt from their ignorance to magnify the disadvantages and under-estimate the benefits of a union, and some theory could easily be found to justify a separation. This the doctrine of State sovereignty afforded; harmless as a mere theory, it became powerful for evil only from the causes which we have shown above resulted from climatic influences. Such have been the effects of climate in the past, such they will be in the future, unless resisted by moral forces powerful enough to restrain them; for Nature's laws are uniform, constant, and implacable.

If climate, and not accidental causes, created the present aristocracy in the South, or was alone sufficiently powerful to have created it in a longer time, under the same conditions it will raise up another, though the whole existing population be exterminated and the land parcelled out among Northern soldiers. If climate is alone sufficient to make the poor whites such as now they are, ignorant, irreligious, and impoverished, it would degrade to their level even the transplanted yeomanry of New England. If climate devoted the South to agriculture, and so made her an advocate of free trade, it will still oppose manufactures, and make her a more bitter opponent of a tariff. And

lastly, if Secession and civil war were, as most thinking men believe, the legitimate results of this natural divergence of institutions and antagonism of interests, if these are not arrested, what must the future bear but wars, since the laws of Nature are invariable?

The discussion of the influence of climate has been thus far extended, in order to show more fully than is generally attempted the nature and difficulty of the problem presented to our people for solution. Its importance is sufficiently apprehended, as the almost universal desire for the legal abolition of slavery proves. The Constitutional amendment has been so generally favored, because men felt that slavery was the discordant element, the removal of which would secure future stability. But if the arguments here presented are valid, the delusiveness of this expectation will be readily seen. If slavery does not produce the exclusive devotion of the South to agriculture which makes her an advocate of free trade, its removal will not wean her from it. And if an aristocracy would arise in the South in the absence of the negro element, the abolition of slavery will not remove the opposition to popular institutions and contempt of labor, which inhere in aristocracy, Moreover, the brutality, licentiousness, and disregard of personal rights which accompany negro slavery, and which we regard rather as foul excrescences upon the Southern oligarchy than as vital elements of its hostility to the Union, even these will hardly be removed by the Constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery. For this long train of evils, which excites, the indignation and evokes the protest of philanthropists, leading, as some maintain, to the late civil war, springs from man's irresponsible power over man, call it by what name we will,-slavery, peon-` age, or serfdom. Leave now the freed but proscribed blacks to the almost illimitable power of State legislation, and what may we expect? The negro may be sold into apprenticeship, or may be prohibited from the witness-stand, and then the employer has an irresponsible power over the employed. The word "slavery," in the Amendment, is too indefinite a term, and is little aided by its adjunct, "involuntary servitude"; if the slavery agitation caused the late Rebellion, the mere construction of these words would be sufficient to create another.

We often hear it said, that the mere suppression of the Rebellion will be sufficient to prevent its repetition; but this assertion all history falsifies. If the causes which produced it still retain their vigor, wars and victories, confiscations, and execution of the leaders, will be but palliatives, temporary expedients, no more effectual to prevent future rebellions than they were in England against the Stuarts, or than they have been in Ireland, or in Poland. If now a remedy can be found to heal this division between the sections, there must be no delay in its application; it must be used while the horrors of war are fresh in the minds of the people, and while the late aristocracy of the South is powerless. Since the South tends to an aristocracy; since all the large estates will not be confiscated, thus leaving some rich men; and since Northern settlers will rapidly acquire large fortunes, and become, as heretofore, the most intense Southerners, this new-born aristocracy, supported again by a party in the North, as in the nature of things it will be, soon will acquire too great a power to permit any of those changes which now are possible. Time heals many diseases in the body politic; but, as we learned from slavery, some it only aggravates..

We cannot permit Secession; for the same Nature which has established these causes of discord and disunion has, by the stern decrees of geographical configuration, marked out this country for one people and one government. If, on the one hand, she seems to compel separation, on the other she commands union. But climate we cannot change. What, then, can be done? Are we thus the children of fate, the playthings of the elements? It cannot be. There must be some reconciliation between these decrees of Nature; if we can only find it.

We are taught every day, that, though man cannot destroy, he can direct natural forces; and if civilization and science are of any value, it is in teaching how to subdue Nature's laws, and make them servants instead of masters. "If," as says Emerson, "fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can control fate with fate."

We have seen that the chief denationalizing effect of climate in this country is in rendering the South wholly agricultural, since this tends to aristocracy and free trade. The

obvious remedy is the general establishment of manufactures, which, as already shown, are democratic in their influence. The problem is, How can this be effected?

Many attempts were made, in the years preceding the war, to establish various manufactures in the South, most of which were unsuccessful. An examination of the causes of their failure will show the prospect of future success, and the assist. ance needed for that object.

In the first place, the failure was not due to the want of natural advantages. That "great free soil wedge," the Alleghany range, extending through Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, into Alabama and Georgia, itself larger than all Great Britain, contains inexhaustible stores of coal, iron, salt, limestone, &c., with water-power enough to turn the machinery of the world. And, in fact, abundant supplies of iron and coal are found in most of the Southern States, and water-power is equally abundant. In addition to these are copper, lead, zinc, marble, &c.; while cotton, the great staple, is at their door.

Nor can we attribute the failure to difficulty in obtaining labor. The factories which have been successfully established have experienced no such obstacle. It was the common testimony of Southern manufacturers, that three times as much labor was offered, unskilled to be sure, as could be employed.

Nor was it due to the necessary unprofitableness of the investment. When manufactures gained a foothold, as they sometimes did, they were largely profitable.

Having considered what were not the obstacles to the manufacturing interest of the South, we are prepared to treat of those which did exist. In the first place, those enumerated as opposing their establishment in Colonial times operated, though to a modified extent. In addition to these was public opinion. Perhaps Jefferson was mainly instrumental in fostering this by his condemnation of the manufacturing classes in his Notes on Virginia. For although more extended observation caused a radical change of his opinions,f these new views never gained. publicity. Manufactures were felt to be opposed to the institutions of the South; a South Carolina paper called mechanics

Query 19.

↑ See Randall's Life of Jefferson, Vol. III. pp. 428-438.