THE TERMS OF THE BARGAIN.

103

needed under a slave system, and is at the same time scarce. In the Northern cities it was abundant. To the capitalists of the Northern cities, therefore, the planters in need of funds for carrying on their industry had recourse; and a large amount of democratic capital came thus to be invested on the security of slave property. A community of interest was in this way established. But there was also a community of sentiment; for the Northern cities had formerly been the great emporia of the African slave trade, and had never wholly abandoned the nefarious traffic; and the tone of mind engendered by constant familiarity with slavery in its worst form naturally predisposed them to an alliance with slaveholders. Widely sundered, therefore, as were the Southern oligarchy and the Democratic party of the North in general political principle, there was enough in common between them to form the basis of a selfish bargain. A bargain, accordingly, was struck, of which the consideration on the one side was the command of the Federal government for the extension of slavery, and, on the other, a share in the patronage of the Union. On these terms a coalition between these two parties, so opposed in their general tendencies, has, almost from the foundation of the republic, been steadily maintained; and in this way the South-vastly inferior though it has been to its competitor in wealth, population, and intelligence-in all the conditions to which political power attaches in well-ordered states-has, nevertheless, contrived to exercise a leading influence upon the policy of the Union.

These considerations will suffice to explain how the South has been enabled, even when in a minority, to engage with success the representatives of the North. In the Lower House of Congress it has been always of necessity in this position; representation being here in proportion to population, in which, even including slaves, the South is inferior to its rival. But in the Upper House-the House which under the Constitution enjoys the most important prerogatives and the highest influence -the South has found itself at less disadvantage. In the Senate, as has been already stated, representation takes place according to states; each state returning two members without regard either to the number of its inhabitants or to the extent of its territory. To maintain itself, therefore, on an equal footing with the North in this assembly, the South has only need to keep the number of slave states on an equality with that of the free; and this did not seem to be beyond its power. For, the tendency of slavery being to disperse population, a given number of people under a slave régime would naturally cover a larger space of country, and consequently would afford the materials for the

104

THE POLITICAL MOTIVE MAINLY OPERATIVE.

creation of a greater number of states, than the same number under a régime of freedom. What, therefore, the South required to secure its predominance in the Senate, was a territory large enough for the creation of new slave states as fast as the exigencies of its politics might demand them. To keep open the territory of the Union for this purpose has, in consequence, always been a capital object in the politics of the South; and in this way a political has been added to the economic motive for extended territory. Two forces have thus been constantly urging on the Slave Power to territorial aggrandizement—the need for fresh soils, and the need for slave states. Of these the former-that which proceeds from its industrial requirementsis at once the most fundamental and the most imperative; but it has not been that which, in the actual history of the United States, has been most frequently called into play. In point of fact, the political motive has in a great measure superseded the economic. The desire to obtain fresh territory for the creation of slave states, with a view to influence in the Senate, has carried the South in its career of aggression far beyond the range which its mere industrial necessities would have prescribed. Accordingly, for nearly a quarter of a century-ever since the annexation of Texas-the territory at the disposal of the South has been very much greater than its available slave force has been able to cultivate; and its most urgent need has now become, not more virgin soils on which to employ its slaves, but more slaves for the cultivation of its virgin soils. The important bearing of this change on the views of the Slave Power will hereafter be pointed out: for the present, it is sufficient to call attention to the fact.

A principle of aggressive activity, in addition to that which is involved in the industrial necessities of slavery, has thus been called into operation by the conditions under which the Slave Power is placed in the Senate. But we should here be careful not to overrate the influence exercised on that Power by its position in the Federal Union. It would, I conceive, be an entire mistake to suppose that this desire for extended territory, which, under actual circumstances, has shown itself in the creation of slave states with a view to influence in the Senate, is in any such sense the fruit of the position of the South in the Federal Union as that we should be justified in concluding that, in the event of the severance of the Union, the South would cease to desire an extension of its territory on political grounds. Such a view would, in my opinion, imply an entire misconception of the real nature of the forces which have been at work. The lust of dominion, which is the ruling passion of

TRUE SOURCE OF THIS MOTIVE.

105

the Slave Power, is not accidental but inherent-has its source, not in the constitution of the Senate, but in the fundamental institution of the Slave States; and the lust of dominion, existing in an embodied form in a new continent, cannot but find its issue in territorial aggrandizement. This by no means. depends upon speculative inference. It admits of proof, as a matter of fact, that the projects of the South for extending its domain have never been more daring, and have never been pushed with greater energy, than during the last five years*— the very period in which the Southern leaders have been maturing their plans for seceding from the Union. The Federal connexion may have facilitated the ambitious aims of the South while the Federal government was in its hands, but, far from being the source of its ambition, it is because it offers, under the changed conditions, impediments to the expanding views of the more aspiring minds of the South, that the attempt is now made to break loose from Federal ties. Extended dominion is in truth the very purpose for which the South has engaged in the present struggle; and the thought which now sustains it through its fiery ordeal is (to borrow the words of the ablest advocate of the Southern cause) the prospect of "an empire in the future . . . extending from the home of Washington to the ancient palaces of Montezuma-uniting the proud old colonies of England with Spain's richest and most romantic dominions combining the productions of the great valley of the Mississippi with the mineral riches, the magical beauty, the volcanic grandeur of Mexico." In plain terms, the stake for which the South now plays is Mexico and the intervening Territories. The position of the Slave Power in the Union has thus determined the mode, not supplied the principle, of its aggressive action. It has brought out into more distinct consciousness, and presented in a more definite shape, the connexion between the ruling passion of the Slave Power and the natural means for its gratification. But the passion and the means for its gratification were there independently of the poli

* See Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society for the years 1859 and 1860. Spence's American Union, p. 286. Here for a moment the genius of the South is revealed in naked majesty. It is but for a moment. A few pages further on (p. 291) the scene changes, and the South is restored to its proper rôle. We have presented to us the aspect of a people spurning the idea of conquest, bounding its aspirations to the lowest requirement of free men-the demand for autonomy:— "Be our ignorance of the merits of this question ever so great, we behold a country of vast extent and large numbers earnestly desiring self-government. It threatens none, demands nothing, attacks no one, but wishes to rule itself, and desires to be "let alone.'"

"Amphora cœpit

Institui; currente rotâ cur urceus exit ?"

106

POSITION OF SLAVERY AT THE REVOLUTION.

tical system of the United States; and the Slave Power, with a vast unoccupied or half-peopled territory around it, could not have failed under any circumstances, in the Union or out of it, to find in the appropriation of that territory its natural career.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CAREER OF THE SLAVE POWER.

THE aggressive ambition of the Southern States has been traced in the last chapter to two principles-the economic necessities forced upon them by the character of their industrial system, and the growth of passions and habits, generated by the presence of slavery, which require for their satisfaction political predominance. In the present chapter I propose to show how these two principles have operated in the actual history of the United States.

At the time of the establishment of the Federal Union the position of slavery in North America was that of an exceptional and declining institution. Many circumstances conspired to produce this result. The war of independence had kindled among the people a spirit of liberty which was strongly antagonistic to compulsory bondage. In the leaders of the revolt this spirit burned with peculiar intensity; and though many of them were natives of the South and slaveholders, they were almost to a man opposed to the system, and anxious for its abolition. From the Northern States, where slavery had originally been planted, it was rapidly disappearing. In the unsettled territory then at the disposal of the central government-notwithstanding that this territory had been ceded to it by a slave state— the institution was by an ordinance of the central government proscribed. Economic causes were also tending to its overthrow. The crops which are adapted to slave cultivation are, as we have seen, few in number. Those which at this time formed the principal staples of the slave states of the Union were rice, indigo, and tobacco. The last was already produced in quantities more than sufficient for the market; and in the two former India was rapidly supplanting the United States. Sugar was not yet grown in the Union. Cotton was still an unimportant crop. But it happened that about this time several causes came into operation, which in their effect completely reversed the direction of events, drove back the tide of freedom, and gave to slavery a new vitality and an enlarged career.

It

RISE OF THE COTTON TRADE.

107

was now that the steam engine, having undergone the improvements of Watt, was first applied on a large scale to manufacturing industry. Contemporaneously the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton in cotton-spinning had been. made. But these inventions, momentous as they were, would have failed in great part of their effect, had they not been supplemented by another-the invention of the saw-gin by Whitney. Previously to this invention the only cotton grown in America, which was available for the general purposes of commerce, was that which was known as the Sea Island kind. This was long-fibred and only grew in a few favoured localities. The bulk of the cotton crop consisted of the short-fibred varieties, but the difficulty of separating the seed from the wool in this species of the plant by the methods then in use, was so great as to render it for the ordinary purposes of cotton manufacture of little value. It was to overcome this difficulty that Whitney addressed himself; and the success of his invention was so complete, that the whole American crop came at once into general demand. At the same time, while these causes were conducing to a great increase in the general consumption of cotton, a vast territory, eminently adapted for the cultivation as well of this as of most other slave products, came into the possession of the United States. The combined effect of all these occurrences was to give an extraordinary impulse to the cultivation of cotton; and cotton being pre-eminently a slave product, and moreover only suited to those districts of the United States where slavery was already established, this was followed by a corresponding extension of slavery. In a few years after Whitney's invention, the exports of cotton from the United States were decupled; by the year 1810, they had been multiplied more than a hundredfold, and, from being a product of small account, cotton rapidly rose to be the principal staple of the Southern States.

The early progress of the Southern planters, under the stimulus thus given to their enterprise, attracted little observation. To the west of the original slave states-Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia—lay extensive districts still unsettled, well suited for cultivation by slave labour, and too far removed from the Free States to be sought as a field for free colonization. Over these regions the planters rapidly spread themselves. But in 1804 an immense range of country was gained to the United States by purchase from France, which, including some of the richest portions of the valley of the Mississippi, from its junction with the Missouri to its mouth, offered equal attractions to settlers from both divisions of the Union. This was the Terri