we calculate to be able to preserve ourselves from occurrences which would be deemed to abrogate the obligations of a mere treaty of peace? A treaty of peace with the South, as a foreign. power, would be a cowardly armistice, a cruel aggravation and prolongation of war."

The capabilities of Southern soil for growing cotton are palpable; and if they could be fully developed would be a source of untold wealth. But slavery-which is assumed to be essential to the cotton culture-renders it impossible that these inherent resources be made speedily available. The number of slaves cannot be greatly increased-the supply being necessarily regular and limited. As each planter must own his laborers, vastly more capital is requisite to carry on the business, than would be necessary, did he simply hire them. Fifty laborers make by no means a large gang for a plantation, but on the supposition that each laborer costs a thousand dollars, the cost of carrying on a plantation becomes a serious item. The consequence is, that but a small proportion of the territory is under cultivation. "According to the Census," says Mr. Olmsted, "the whole crop of cotton is produced on 5,000,000 acres. It could be produced, at the rate common on good South-western plantations, on less than half that area. The rest of the land of the Slave States, which amounts to over 500,000,000 acres, is condemned, so far as the tendencies I have indicated are not overweighed here and there by some special advantages, to non-cultivation, except for the hand-tomouth supply of its people. And this is true not only of its agricultural but of all other of its recources."

Now in the culture of cotton, as well as in its manufacture, the proprietor who can bring the largest number of hands into the work, has the advantage. Hence, the owner of but few slaves is unable to compete with the owner of many; hence again, the few planters become immensely wealthy, and the many become exceedingly poor. Mr. Olmsted's experience is to the point here:

"I went on my way into the so-called cotton States, within which I travelled over, first and last, at least three thousand miles of roads, from which not a cotton plant was to be seen, and the people living by the side of which certainly had not been made rich by cotton or anything else. And for every mile of road-side upon which I saw any evidence of cotton production, I

am sure that I saw a hundred of forest or waste land, with only now and then an acre or two of poor corn half smothered in weeds; for every rich man's house, I am sure that I passed a dozen shabby and half-furnished cottages, and at least a hundred cabins-mere hovels, such as none but a poor farmer would house his cattle in at the North." (Vol. i. p. 12.)

Again; and especially in confirmation of the alleged disadvantage of slave-labor as rendering the supply of laborers limited.

"The area of land on which cotton may be raised with profit is practically limitless; it is cheap; even the best land is cheap; but to the large planter it is much more valuable when held in large parcels, for obvious reasons, than when in small; consequently the best land can hardly be obtained in small tracts or without the use of a considerable capital. But there are millions of acres of land yet untouched, which if leveed and drained and fenced, and well cultivated, might be made to produce, with good luck, seven or more bales to the hand. It would cost comparatively little to accomplish it—one lucky crop would repay all the outlay for land and improvements - if it were not for hands.' The supply of hands is limited. It does not increase in the ratio of the increase of the cotton demand. If cotton should double in price next year, or become worth its weight in gold, the number of negroes in the United States would not increase four per cent. unless the African slave-trade were re-established." (Vol. i. p. 15.)

the

Mr. Olmsted's observations led him to detect the fallacy of presuming wealth in a slave-community to be equivalent to wealth in a free community. The having of wealth is virtually contingent upon the things in which it is invested. Certainly the power which wealth gives, is wholly dependent upon the things which represent wealth.

"One of the grand errors, out of which this rebellion has grown, came from supposing that whatever nourishes wealth and gives power to an ordinary civilized community, must command as much for a slave-holding community. The truth has been overlooked that the accumulation of wealth and the power of a nation are contingent not merely upon the primary value of the surplus of productions of which it has to dispose, but very largely also upon the way in which the income from its surplus is distributed and reinvested. Let a man be absent from almost any part of the North, twenty years, and he is struck, on his

return, by what we call the improvements' which have been made. Better buildings, churches, schoolhouses, mills, railroads, etc. In New York city alone, for instance, at least two hundred millions of dollars have been reinvested merely in an improved housing of the people; in labor-saving machinery, waterworks, gasworks, etc., as much more. It is not difficult to see where the profits of our manufacturers and merchants are. Again, go into the country, and there is no end of substantial proof of twenty years of agricultural prosperity, not alone in roads, canals, bridges, dwellings, barns, and fences, but in books and furniture, and gardens, and pictures, and in the better dress and evidently higher education of the people. But where will the returning traveller see the accumulated cotton profits of twenty years in Mississippi? Ask the cotton-planter for them, and he will point in reply, not to dwellings, libraries, churches, schoolhouses, mills, railroads, or anything of the kind; he will point to his negroes-to almost nothing else. Negroes such as stood for five hundred dollars once, now represent a thousand dollars. We must look, then, in Virginia, and those Northern Slave States which have the monopoly of supplying negroes, for the real wealth which the sale of cotton has brought to the South. But where is the evidence of it? where anything to compare with the evidence of accumulated profits to be seen in any Free State? If certain portions of Virginia have been a little improving, others unquestionably have been deteriorating, growing shabbier, more comfortless, less convenient. The total increase in wealth of the population during the last twenty years shows for almost nothing. One year's improvements of a Free State exceed it all." (Vol. i. pp. 25, 26.)

Our author's observations do not confirm the common impression, that none but blacks can labor in the cottonfield. He says: "As to the more common and popular opinion, that the necessary labor of cotton tillage is too severe for white men in the cotton-growing climate, I repeat that I do not find the slightest weight of fact to sustain it. The necessary labor and causes of fatigue and vital exhaustion attending any part, or all, of the process of cotton culture does not compare with that of our July harvesting; it is not greater than attends the cultivation of Indian corn in the usual New England method. I have seen a weakly white woman the worse for her labor in the cotton field, but never a white man, and I have seen hundreds of them. at work in cotton fields under the most unfavorable cir

cumstances, miserable, dispirited wretches, and of weak muscle, subsisting mainly, as they do, on corn bread. Mr. De Bow estimates one hundred thousand white men now engaged in the cultivation of cotton, being one ninth of the whole cotton force (numerically) of the country. I have just seen a commercial letter from San Antonio, which estimates that the handful of Germans in Western Texas will send ten thousand bales of cotton, the production of their own labor, to market this season. He confesses, however, that it will not surprise him to learn that the cultivation by the Germans in Texas, does not prove so profitable, as when the cultivation is carried on by slaves. But he does not attribute the difference of profit to any inherent advantage of black over white labor. As the results of the experiment, now being made by these German settlers, will have weight in forming an estimate of the relative advantages of slave and free labor, it is important that we know how to judge of these results. Mr. Olmsted's opinion on this point has especial value.

"It would not surprise me to learn that the cultivation of cotton by the German settlers in Texas had not, after all, been as profitable as its cultivation by the planters employing slaves in the vicinity. I should attribute the superior profits of the planter, if any there be, however, not to the fitness of the climate for negro labor, and its unfitness for white labor, but to the fact that his expenses for fencing, on account of his larger fields and larger estate, are several hundred per cent. less than those of the farmer; to the fact that his expenses for tillage, having mules and ploughs and other instruments to use at the opportune moment, are less than those of the farmer, who, in many cases, cannot afford to own a single team; to the fact that he has, from experience, a better knowledge of the most successful method of cultivation; to the fact that he has a gin and a press of his own in the midst of his cotton fields, to which he can carry his wool at one transfer from the picking; by which he can put it in order for market expeditiously, and at an expense much below that falling upon the farmer, who must first store his wool, then send it to the planter's gin and press, and have it prepared at the planter's convenience, paying, perhaps, exorbitantly therefor; and, finally, to the fact that the planter deals directly with the exporter, while the farmer, the whole profit of whose crop would not pay his expenses in a journey to the coast, must transfer his bale or two to the exporter through two or three middle-men,

carrying it, one bale at a time, to the local purchaser." (Vol. ii., p. 266.)

In one important respect, free labor has a very decided advantage over slave labor. The planter who owns slaves seldom visits the plantation. Our author quotes from a letter in the New Orleans Price Current.

"There are probably no set of men, in any business of life, who take as little pains and care to inform themselves with regard to the character and quality of their marketable produce as the cotton-planter. Not one in a thousand knows, or cares to know, whether the cotton he sends to market is ordinary, good ordinary, or middling. Not one in a hundred spends one hour of each day at his gin in ginning season; never sees the cotton after it is gathered, unless he happens to ride near the scaffold and looks from a distance of a hundred yards, and declares the specimen very white and clean, when, perhaps, it on the contrary, may be very leafy and dirty. I have often seen the hands on plantations picking cotton with sacks that would hardly hold stalks, they were so torn and full of holes; these sacks dragging on the ground and gathering up pounds of dirt at every few steps. The baskets, too, were with scarcely any bottoms remaining, having been literally worn out, the cotton lying on the ground. Indeed, some overseers do not forbid the hands emptying their cotton on the ground when their sacks are full, and they some distance from their baskets. When this cotton is taken up, some dirt must necessarily come with it. When gathering in wet weather, the hands get into their baskets with their muddy feet, and thus toss in some pounds of dirt, in this way making their task easier." (Vol. ii., pp. 263–4.)

The important result is, that cotton picked and cleaned by free laborers-in which case the interested party is on the ground-brings from one to two cents a pound more than that picked by slaves.

The circumstance that the wealthy planters - from whom public improvements must come, if they come at all-are few in number, and widely separated, operates to great disadvantage, so far as regards even the common wants of civilized life. Poor roads, few bridges, few churches, and no public schools, characterise the cotton. regions generally.

"It is hardly worth while to build much of a bridge for the