a greater distance. In 1847, the law required that adhesive stamps, sold by the government, be affixed to mail matter before it would be sent through the mails. In 1851, the rate was fixed at three cents, if the letter was prepaid; five cents, if not, for any distance less than three thousand miles; for a greater distance, the rate was double.

The Book of Mormon appeared in 1830. Joseph Smith, of Palmyra, New York, claimed that he had received it from heaven, three years before, as a new Bible for all mankind. He began preaching Mormon doctrines, gathered followers who migrated to Kirkland, Ohio, and later to Missouri, whence they were driven out by their neighbors, and then settled in Illinois, building the city of Nauvoo. Here they built a temple and adopted polygamy. But their Illinois neighbors disapproved of them, and under the guidance of Brigham Young they started across the plains for some region so far removed from Gentiles that these would never again disturb them. They delayed at Council Bluffs, Iowa, for a season, but, intent on isolation, they started for Mexico in 1848, and settled at Salt Lake. They had scarcely unhitched their horses before the foreign soil they had chosen was a part of the United States, by treaty with Mexico. They changed the desert about them into a garden, and began Utah.

In 1850, the people of Kentucky adopted a new state constitution. During the discussions in the convention, at Frankfort, which framed it, the relative resources of the free states and the slave states were shown, based on the census of 1840. Virginia had eleven million dollars employed in manufactures; New England, eighty-six million dollars. The banking capital of Virginia was three million five hundred thousand dollars; of New England, sixty-two million dollars. The agricultural products of Virginia were about two-thirds the value of those of New England. The cotton, the sugar, the rice, the tobacco exported from the South to foreign countries in one year amounted to seventyfive million dollars; the agricultural products of the state of New York were yearly worth over one hundred and eight million dollars. The South manufactured articles, yearly, of the value of forty-two million dollars; the free states

1830-1860]

ALARMING SECTIONALISM

439

manufactured to the value of over one hundred and ninetyseven million dollars. The annual income of New York state alone exceeded by more than nine million dollars the united earnings of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Essex County, Massachusetts, with a population of less than ninety-five thousand, produced as much as the state of South Carolina with a population five times as great. Ohio had in her primary schools seventeen thousand more pupils than had all the primary schools of the South. Massachusetts had more than four times as many students in her high schools as were to be found in all the high schools of the slave states. In the free states, one person in one hundred and fifty-six could not read or write; in the slave states, one-tenth of the free white population of age was illiterate. The aggregate earnings of the slave states in one year were $403,429,718; of the free states, $658,705, 108.

Long before the election of Lincoln, North and South were socially, industrially, and politically apart. The lines of migration and of business ran east and west, not north and south. Northern people did not go south, nor southern people north for permanent homes. But people north and south went directly west for homes.

Final proof of threatening sectionalism in the country was furnished by the election in 1860. Lincoln and Hamlin were both northern men, although Lincoln was a native of Kentucky. They received no electoral votes from slave soil, and but few popular votes. Douglas and Johnson. fared little better; they carried New Jersey and one slave state, Missouri. Breckenridge and Lane carried every slave state except Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but not one free state. Eighteen free states supported Lincoln; one supported Douglas. Eleven slave states supported Breckenridge, and one Douglas. Three slave states supported Bell and Everett. So all the slave states voted against Lincoln, and all the free states, save one, voted for him.

When the election of Lincoln was known, the legislature of South Carolina was in session, and on the 13th of November, just a week after the election, it called a state convention at Columbia, for the 17th of December. Dele

gates were chosen; the convention met on the 20th, passed an ordinance which declared "that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." The convention issued a declaration which concluded with the announcement, "that the state of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world." South Carolina was followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, which before the close of January, 1861, passed ordinances of secession. The Senators and Representatives of these states in Congress (with one or two individual exceptions) withdrew.

At Montgomery, Alabama, on the 4th of February, 1861, a convention of delegates from the seceding states assembled, adopted a temporary constitution, organized a government for one year, with Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, as President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, as Vice-President. The title of the new organization was "The Confederate States of America." All United States property

in the seven states that could be seized was seized.

In Charleston Bay were three forts, Sumter, Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney, in charge of Major Robert Anderson, of the United States army. He had eighty-three officers and men under him. He retired to Fort Sumter, December 26, 1860. While the seven states had been seceding and seizing national property, President Buchanan had done nothing. He said that he had no power under the Constitution to wage war against a state. Meanwhile, Major Anderson was shut up in Fort Sumter. The South Carolina troops occupied Castle Pinckney and other commanding points, and all the batteries along the shore. Should supplies be sent to Fort Sumter?

Congress and the people of the North said "Yes." President Buchanan hesitated. At last public opinion forced him to act. The Star of the West, with food and reinforcements, was dispatched to Anderson's relief. On the 9th of January, the steamer entered Charleston harbor. She was fired on from the insurgent batteries and forced to return to New York. Buchanan attempted no further relief. What would Lincoln do?

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CIVIL WAR

1861-1865

As it became more certain that civil war might break out, efforts were made to compromise all differences and to prevent war. These efforts were numerous, and emanated from private persons, from state legislatures, and from members of Congress.

A peace convention assembled in Washington in February, 1861, at the suggestion of Virginia; ex-President John Tyler, of that state, was chosen its presiding officer.* Twenty-one states were represented. John J. Crittenden, a Senator from Kentucky, proposed one of the many "resolutions of Congress' prepared at the time to compromise all difficulties.

A thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was proposed by Congress as a settlement of all difficulties. The amendment, which was offered by Stephen A. Douglas early in 1861, was, in substance, that the federal government should never interfere with slavery in the states. President Lincoln said, in his inaugural, that he believed this was already "implied constitutional law" and that he had "no objection to its being made express and inviolable." It was acted on by three states. Its ratification by the Illinois convention of 1863 was repudiated later by the people of that state.

The Crittenden resolutions (1860) proposed that slavery be abolished north of 36° 30', be protected south of it, and

*Among its members were William P. Fessenden, of Maine; George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; David Dudley Field, of New York; Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; Thomas Ruffin, of North Carolina; Robert L. Carruthers, of Tennessee; James Guthrie, of Kentucky; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana; John M. Palmer, of Illinois, and James Harlan, of Iowa.

never be interfered with by Congress. The people of a territory should be left to make it a free or slave state. Congress should never abolish slavery in the District of Columbia as long as it existed in Maryland or Virginia; nor prohibit interstate slave trade. All fugitive slaves rescued should be paid for by the United States. The Constitution should never be amended so as to give Congress power to abolish slavery in a slave state.

The substance of the resolutions was to deny to Congress any control as to slavery anywhere in the Union. The Peace convention re-echoed the amendment and the resolutions.

But the time for compromise was past. Seven states had declared themselves out of the Union; had seized and appropriated the property of the United States, and South Carolina had fired on the national flag.

South Carolina issued a "declaration of causes" in justification of secession, and an "address" to the people of the slave-holding states. These may be accepted as the authoritative excuse for secession; they asserted that the states were free, sovereign, and independent; that they had made the compact called the Constitution of the United States, and that each state had the right to judge whether the compact was kept; if broken, the state could withdraw from the Union.

Thirteen northern states, so ran the declaration, had violated the compact by their "personal liberty laws," a specific violation of the fourth article-the fugitive slave provision of the Constitution.

The Constitution recognized the right of property in slaves. Anti-slavery agitation in the North had made such property wholly insecure.

"A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states North of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because he has declared that that 'government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slav