1800-1860]

BANKING

423 new constitution, and inaugurated a sound banking policy. The clause was speedily copied in the West. Samuel J. Tilden, who was a member of this celebrated New York convention, related, in after years, that when the fiscal provision was proposed, it did not attract much attention. Neither was it seriously debated, nor any reason given for its adoption, but it was found at last that it had been incorporated in the constitution, though its authorship could not be traced, and, he slyly observed, it was later adopted by seven western states for the same reason. But the New York convention had inaugurated the reform of making stockholders in any banking corporation individually responsible, to the extent of their shares, for its debts and liabilities. The western states, especially Iowa, improved on the New York provision and surrounded the depositors with more ample security.

After 1848, the value of a sinking fund was emphasized, and the states began to require their legislatures to set apart annually a fixed portion of the public income which should be invested in state or federal bonds as a means of paying the public debt. It was in 1850 that Michigan* perfected another reform, begun by Indiana in 1819, the co-ordination of the educational opportunities of the state, and practically established a great system of education, beginning in the primary school and ending at the university. The remarkable characteristic of the system was the source of its support-public taxation.

The state constitutions made slight reference to the general government. Maine, in 1820, was the first state to acknowledge in its constitution the paramount authority of the national Constitution, but in this respect it was not a type of the constitutions of the country. On the other hand, the constitutions were almost equally free from any claim to state sovereignty. The term "sovereignty" was not found in any southern constitution, and was only a survival in the constitutions of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The effort to insert it in the constitution of

* For an account of the Michigan constitution of 1850, see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chapters VII-IX.

Kansas, in 1857, failed. All the constitutions were conspicuously silent as to local and municipal government. Michigan, in 1850, introduced an article on county and township government, almost the first of its kind, but municipal interests were scarcely hinted at. The reason is

obvious. The cities of the country were small, few were chartered, and all that were chartered derived their special privileges from acts of the legislature. The franchises which distinguish the modern city, and which have been utilized with such profit by private corporations, were not yet dreamed of.

Like the constitutions of the eighteenth century, those of the first sixty years of the nineteenth were made by a few men, who usually were of great eminence. Among the members of the conventions which assembled from 1800 to 1860 were Chief Justice Marshall, John Adams, Madison, Monroe, Aaron Burr, Daniel B. Tompkins, William R. King, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, Joseph Story, Alexander H. Stephens, Charles O'Conor, Horace Greeley, John M. Clayton, Thomas A. Hendricks, and Schuyler Colfax. In the aggregate, the men who framed the state constitutions from 1800 to 1860 numbered about eighteen hundred, and like their predecessors in the eighteenth century, represented the various interests in the country. Nearly all were native Americans. Thus these constitutions were distinctively American. No person of the African race was a member of any of them, and in none, excepting those which assembled after 1840, were the privileges of free persons of color discussed in any way.

Surveying the constitutions which were in force in 1860, it is easy to detect the line of demarkation which divided them, coinciding as it did with the line of the Missouri Compromise. North of that line a distinguishing provision was the declaration frequently to be found declaring the right of education; south of that line the claim of the right of property in man was the principal characteristic. The principles embodied in these constitutions were set forth by the courts from time to time.

CHAPTER XXXII

MEN AND MANNERS BEFORE THE WAR

1830-1860

The country over which Abraham Lincoln was chosen chief magistrate had an area of more than three millions of square miles (3,025,000), and a population of more than thirty-one millions (31,443,321), living in thirty-three states and two territories. During the new President's lifetime sixteen states had been added to the Union. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 1854, and the Dred Scott decision, in 1857, had erased the old political line of 36° 30' which so long divided free soil from slave, but there was as yet no slave state north of that line, and the fate of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska was uncertain.

One free state, California, ran far below the line. The country was divided, therefore, practically as before, into free soil and slave soil; and the people, into slave-holding and non-slave-holding. If, by law, slavery might exist wherever the people wished to have it, the law was bound to depend upon the will of the people. Over twenty millions of these (20,309,960) inhabited free soil; over eleven millions (11,133,361) lived on slave soil. Thus it was said that there were two men in the North to every one in the South.

The change in the rank of the states, since 1830, in wealth, population, and representation, was shown by the

The fifteen slave-holding states, in 1860, had only two hundred and ninety-six thousand more people than the four free states, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. Since 1830, the great increase in population had scarcely affected the states south of Mason and Dixon's line; these, relatively, had fallen behind in population, and chiefly for two reasons: a constant migration from these south Atlantic states into the West and Southwest, and the exclusion of foreign immigrants from these states by the presence of slavery and "native Americanism."'

The old states of the North were also constantly drained by migration west, but they were also constantly supplied by an increasing stream of immigrants from Europe. From 1850 to 1860, Wisconsin gained over 470,000 people; Michigan over 650,000, and many of these came from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. During the same time Arkansas gained 226,000, Texas 392,000, and most of these came from the states directly east. The period from 1830 to 1860 was one of great migration. It may safely be estimated that more than ten million people went West during that time.

During this period nearly five million European immigrants arrived in our country. In order of numbers, they were: Irishmen, Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Canadians. But many countries were represented. The Irish settled in the eastern cities and towns, were highly industrious, and willingly, built the canals and railroads so extensively put through during these thirty years. The Germans and the English took up land, especially in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. French found employment in the cities. The Swiss and the Scandinavians became farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. The Canadians became lumbermen, manufacturers, and farmers, and chiefly along the northern border.

The

There was no pauper immigration. Cheap lands in America, wars in Europe, cheap and fairly comfortable transportation, and the love of liberty and personal betterment brought these millions to our shores. Only a few went into the slave-holding states. Immigrants had to work for a living. Labor was wanted in the rapidly developing North

CHICAGO

427

1830-1860] and West. No slave-holding people have ever made free laborers feel welcome, or even encouraged them to come. Free labor and slave labor cannot be carried on side by side. It will be remembered that we became a manufacturing people about 1830, and from that time dates the rapid growth of our cities. In 1830, one person in sixteen of our population lived in a city of at least eight thousand; in 1860, one in six lived there. Our city population had increased during this time from eight hundred and sixtyfive thousand to over five million. No better illustration of this wonderful change can be given than Chicago. On the 4th of August, 1830, Chicago was surveyed, and on the 27th of September the sale of lots began. A letter written by an engineer at the time from Chicago says: "The commissioners of land received upwards of seven thousand dollars in cash here for what lots were sold; before said sale there was not one freeholder within one hundred miles of this place."'* In 1860, Chicago had a population of one hundred and ten thousand, and was the ninth city in size in the Union.

San Francisco had only one house in 1835. Madison, Wisconsin, and Davenport, Iowa, were founded in 1836; Sacramento, in 1839; Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1840; Dubuque, though founded by the French in 1788, was incorporated in 1842; Atlanta was laid out in 1845; Indianapolis was incorporated in 1847; Brooklyn, New York, and several contiguous townships were consolidated in 1855; also Philadelphia and several populous suburbs. The names of new towns that have become flourishing cities founded between 1830 and 1860 would cover half a dozen pages of this history. Chicago outgrew all others. This wonderful increase in the number, wealth, population, and importance of our cities was due to five great causes: Migration and immigration, prosperity in farming, cheap lands, prosperity in manufactures, improvements and inventions, extension of railroads and canals, and the comforts of city life, its multiplied opportunities of amusement, occupation, and the care of the unfortunate.

* MS. letter, James Herrington to Thomas Forster, Chicago, October 13, 1830.