TRUE SOURCE OF THIS MOTIVE.

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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.""

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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 statethe 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.

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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

108

ACQUISITION OF THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY.

tory of Louisiana, out of which the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas have since been formed; and it was here that the rival pretensions of the two systems of freedom and slavery first came into collision.

The Territory thus acquired stood, in its relations to the Federal government, on precisely the same footing with a large district known as the North-western Territory, which had at an earlier period, by cession from Virginia, come into possession of the United States. The government of this Territory had been provided for by a celebrated instrument-the ordinance of 1787-enacted by Congress while yet constituted under the Articles of Confederation, and by this instrument involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, was prohibited within the Territory. It has been questioned whether, in issuing this ordinance while still under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not exceed its proper powers.* The question is, however, curious rather than important; for in framing the Constitution of the United States an article was introduced to provide for this very case. By this article it was enacted that "Congress should have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting, the Territory or other property belonging to the United States." There could, therefore, be no doubt as to the competency of Congress, under the Constitution, to legislate for the Territories; and there was, consequently, no legal barrier to applying to the new acquisition obtained from France the same rule which had by the ordinance of 1787 been applied to the North-Western Territory. There were, however, practical difficulties in the way. Slave institutions were already existing in some portions of the Territory of Louisiana; and when the occasion arose for providing for the government of the remainder, it happened that the attention of the North was fully occupied with its foreign relations; for this was the time when those negociations with England were in progress which resulted in the war of 1812. These circumstances were favourable to the advances of the Slave Power. From the basis of operations supplied by the French slave colony at the mouth of the Mississippi the planters rapidly carried their institution along the western bank of that river. By degrees they reached the district which now forms the State of Missouri, and by the year 1818 had acquired there so firm a footing as to be enabled to claim for it admission into the Union as a slave state.

The admission of Missouri to the Union forms for many rea

*The Federalist, No. 38. See Story on The Constitution of the United States, vol. i. p. 184.

IMPORTANCE OF MISSOURI.

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sons an epoch in the grand struggle between free and slave labour in North America. It was on this occasion that both parties appear first to have become sensible of the inherent antagonism of their respective positions, and to have put forth their whole strength in mutual opposition. The contest was carried on with extraordinary violence, and was terminated by a compromise, which was long considered in the light of a national compact irrevocably binding on the combatants on both sides. The occasion being of this importance, it is desirable that we should appreciate with as much precision as possible the stake which was at issue, and the motives which animated the contending parties.

And here, though at the risk of wearying the reader, it may be well once more to repeat that the aggressive character of the Slave Power has been traced to two principles-the one economic, proceeding from the necessity to slavery of a constant supply of fresh soils; the other political, having its roots in that passion for power which the position of slaveholders-as a dominant race, isolated from their equals, and shut out from the pursuits which distribute the energies of free communities into various channels-inevitably engenders. Again, it has been seen that this latter principle, under the Constitution of the United States, exerts itself chiefly in the effort to increase Southern representation in the Senate through the creation of new slave states. Lastly, it has appeared that the system of society which slavery produces is in its nature an exclusive system-its presence acting as a cause of repulsion towards free societies and that, consequently, when these two forms of society come into contact on the same territory, an inevitable antagonism springs up between them, an antagonism which displays itself in the efforts which they make to outstrip each other in a race of colonization, each side endeavouring by prior occupation of the soil to exclude its rival and keep open for itself a field for future growth.

These being the principles which governed the conflicting interests, we shall find that the stake which was at issue in the Missouri controversy was well calculated to call them actively into play.

The position of Missouri is one of the most commanding in the central portion of North America. Possessing great agricultural and mineral resources, it is watered by two of the noblest rivers in the continent-the Mississippi and the Missouri. It is in the direct line of movement westward from the Free States. If established as a free state, it would become a centre of colonization for the North, from which free labour would