422

SLAVERY IN CALIFORNIA,

from the slavery issue, and was considered by the slavocrats as an offset to California. They confidently expected to organize the entire California purchase as slave soil. The contest opened with the assertion by slave owners of their right to carry slave property into any part of the new country. The exercise of this right would transform it into slave soil, and compensate the South for its loss through the Missouri Compromise and the recent Oregon act. With the California country given over to slavery, with a strict execution of the fugitive slave act, and with a complete, and if necessary, enforced cessation of anti-slavery agitation, the pro-slavery people of the United States, North and South, thought that the country might have peace. No subject in American history has been so prolific a source of literature as slavery. Its aspects were innumerable; it touched American life at every point. With much that has been written that is true there has gone more which is false; and perhaps the consummation of falsity has been the emphasis of the causes which precipitated the final struggle, culminating unexpectedly in the abolition of slavery.

The contest in 1848, while differing from that of 1820, resembled it in many essential features, the contest over the rights of property. Slavery in America was a far more merciful institution than slavery in any form had been in any former time. Ill treatment of the slave at the South was the exception, but slavery is an evil thing, however kind the master may be, and moralists at the North found in it ample texts for sermonizing, a social condition that demanded reform. The essential difficulty was the law of the land: not only the Constitution of the United States and acts of Congress, but the State constitutions and the statutes. Nor were these all, for behind them lay public opinion, and public opinion was

SLAVERY A QUESTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS. 428

against the negro, whether bond or free. The South in demanding protection of the right to carry its property into the territory believed that it was asking no more than did the North when it asked protection for its personal property, its chattels of various kinds with which its hardy immigrants moved into the new region north of Missouri. The laws of the country equally recognized the rights of property, whether of horses and plows at the North, or of negroes and plows at the South. Primarily, the question was economic and industrial, and the very fact that its solution was attempted through politics also made it one of the most dangerous questions which the people could face. At the South the issue was very clearly recognized as one of property,1 an economic truth emphasized in Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia, in 1850.

He who would understand the causes of the rise and fall of slavery in America must devote himself to a study of its economic features, and though he will find less literature on this phase of the subject than he might be led to expect, he will be rewarded, if he pursues his investigation, with an opportunity of examining the sources of all our knowledge concerning slavery, and finally, with the discovery of the causes which were sooner or later to compel its abandonment. As soon as property in slaves became too insecure for profitable investment, the institution of slavery was doomed. After 1848, the contest nar

1 This was brought out very clearly in the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1849, for an account of which see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chaps. I-VI. Essentially the same conclusions were reached in Maryland and Virginia about the same time; see the Debates and Proceedings of the Maryland Convention, November 4, 1850; May 13, 1851, 2 Vols., Annapolis, 1851; Journals and Documents of the Virginia Convention, October 14, 1850; August 1, 1851; Richmond, 1851.

424

ISOLATION OF THE SOUTH.

rowed down to a supreme effort on the part of the slave holders to keep that form of property secure. They were beginning to doubt its profitableness. The census of 1840 plainly showed that the slave States were falling behind and ceasing to compete with the free States. While acknowledging this fact, Southern men denied that the conditions which it indicated were attributable to slavery. They preferred the social and economic condition of the South to that of the North. They did not desire immigration, nor those opportunities in life of which the North was wont to boast. The cry at the South was, "Let us alone, slavery and all;" at the North there was a propagandism for free institutions. Behind this spirit of reform was the stern face of nature, which forbade slavery. The line of the Missouri Compromise coincided approximately with that isothermal line, north of which slave labor could not be made profitable. The question was one not alone of morality, but of heat and cold. Had the frosts of New England overspread North Carolina and Texas the people of the South would have been antislavery. The economic struggle over slavery was one of morality, because primarily, one of climate. Had the United States never expanded beyond its original domain, slavery would never have become the gravest issue in its annals; it would have died of limitation.

The views of the South concerning slavery were shared by many people at the North, possibly by the majority in 1848. Oregon was far away and whether it was free soil or slave seemed of little moment to the majority of people pursuing their daily affairs in the older parts of the Union. But the majority had not yet awakened to the full meaning of the situation. The Oregon country was not a region in which slavery could be made profitable, and little was known of the country to the south of it.

DISCOVERY OF GOLD.

425

Under Mexican law that country had been free soil; Texas had once been free soil, but in the twinkling of an eye had been transformed into slave soil. The opinion of the Virginia legislature, that Congress had no authority to exclude slavery from a territory or from a prospective territory, like the California country, was not shared by the people of the North. Accustomed to free institutions they naturally favored free expansion.

At this moment, while the boundaries of the acquisition from Mexico were yet undefined, just at the close of the Mexican war, the discovery of gold was announced from California, and it may be said to have changed the history of the United States. Europe at this time was convulsed by revolutions, and multitudes of people were turning their faces toward America. They were looking for homes for themselves and their posterity. Unaccustomed to slavery, though familiar with many forms of oppression, they naturally sought homes at the North. The feelings of the Southern people toward European immigrants were well known in the old country, and helped to shape the course of migration. By July, 1849, upward of two hundred thousand men, chiefly from the older States, but also many from Europe, were in California; a number sufficient to form a State. They petitioned for admission into the Union, but Congress ignored their request. It did not realize that a new State had suddenly emerged on the Pacific coast, with a population the most composite of any that had yet assembled in one community in America. But the people of California were in earnest. They comprised men of every profession and occupation, young and vigorous, the men to build a great State. In convention at Monterey, during the month of September, 1849, they proceeded to form a State constitution, which in due time was sent to Congress.

426

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN CALIFORNIA.

The attitude of the people of California toward slavery shows plainly the social character of the institution as a factor in the development of the United States. If the slave owner could bring his property into the mines and monopolize their riches, he could outstrip his less favored associates. The problem in California was to maintain equal economic opportunities for all, and these could not be maintained if slavery was permitted; therefore, though most of the people of California were hostile to the negro, bond or free, and the debates in the Monterey convention sufficiently indicate this hostility,-they were compelled by economic conditions such as would be tolerated on the coast, to forbid slavery. Racial antipathy was so strong that the Monterey convention seriously discussed a proposition to exclude free persons of color from the State, but this raised the old question of citizenship debated at the time of the Missouri Compromise, and it was feared that if the free negroes were forbidden the State, Congress might refuse to admit it into the Union, for at this time the representatives from the free States were in the majority in Congress, excepting, of course, in the Senate, in which there was an equal representation of free and slave States. California would break the balance of power, and this very fact would intensify the struggle over its admission.

Though there were thousands of Southern men in California, they recognized the impossibility of introducing slavery. A pro-slavery constitution, even if it passed the Monterey convention, was not likely to pass Congress. But public opinion on the coast was well settled that free persons of color should not be made welcome. It was unnecessary to declare this fact in the constitution. Nearly

1 See my Constitutional History of the American People, 17761850, Vol. II, Chaps. X-XII.