ATTITUDE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS. 3,000,000 negroes had been carried to the West Indies and other English colonies. The determined policy of the British government to make America a slave mart was boldly declared by Burke to have been one of the causes of the breach with England, and it is well known that in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence one of the indictments against the king was that "he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in the transportation thither. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce." Although this resolution probably represented the prevailing sentiment in America as a whole, it was struck out in deference to the views of South Carolina and Georgia, which States no longer desired to see the importation of negroes restricted.* At the time of the Revolution many of the foremost leaders of America, including Washington, Jefferson, Randolph, Henry, Franklin, Mason, and others, not only favored the abolition of the slave trade, but desired to see the adoption of measures toward the * Schouler, Life of Jefferson, p. 81. 11 gradual extinction of slavery itself. The economic weakness of slavery was early perceived by many of the slaveholders themselves, agreeing with Mason when he declared in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 that 66 slavery discourages arts and manufactures," as well as "brings the judgment of heaven" upon the country which permits it. Before the close of the Eighteenth century the principal staple crops of the country in the production of which slave labor was extensively utilized were tobacco, rice, and indigo. In the North, where cereal crops were the principal staple, for the cultivation of which slave labor was less adapted, slavery declined, and before the end of the century it had been abolished in all of the Northern States. The motive which led to the abolition of slavery in the North was quite as much economic as humanitarian, and there is no reason to believe that, had economic conditions in the Northern States been as favorable to the employment of slave labor as they were in the South, the abolition movement in that part of the country could not have spread as it did. It is well known that moral scruples did not prevent the New England merchants. from engaging actively in the slave trade; throughout the Eighteenth century they were, in fact, the principal carriers of negroes to the Southern colonies and to the West Indies. New England ships which traded to Europe were accustomed to touch on the return voyage at the Guinea coast, take 12 DECLINE OF SLAVERY. on a cargo of negroes, and dispose of them in the West Indies or the Southern colonies of America-a traffic in which Rhode Island led the rest of the New England States.* While slave labor was well adapted to the production of tobacco, rice, and indigo, the first-mentioned staple could be cultivated almost as well by free help; and the commercial demand for rice and indigo and the comparatively limited area in which they could be successfully grown, rendered an extensive system of slave labor in the production of these staples unnecessary. These facts, together with the decline in the price of rice and indigo after the Revolution, helped to render those industries more insignificant; and this was chiefly responsible for the decline of slavery in many parts of the South at the close of the Eighteenth century. Before 1796 not fewer than five of the Southern States had forbidden the further importation of slaves, and a strong sentiment was growing up in favor of gradual abolition. A representative of Georgia in the Fifth Congress declared: "There is not a man in Georgia but wishes there were no slaves; they are a curse to the country." The unprofitableThe unprofitableness of slave labor during this period * Samuel Hopkins says in his reminiscences that in 1770 Rhode Island had 150 vessels engaged in the slave trade and was more deeply interested in the importation of slaves (especially Africans) than any other colony in New England (Spears, The American Slave Trade, p. 19). For a more detailed account of the New England slave trade, see Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England. had also resulted in a fall in the price of slaves, the best of them in 1790 bringing only $200 each. At this juncture the movement toward the abolition of slavery in the South received a set-back through the invention of the cotton-gin, an invention which enormously increased the economic value of slave labor and greatly stimulated the demand for slaves. Before the Revolution, comparatively little attention had been bestowed on the production of cotton owing to trade restrictions which closed foreign markets to the American supply, to British legislation forbidding the manufacture of cotton goods in the colonies, and to the lack of mechanical processes for separating the seed from the lint. With the outbreak of the Revolution, however, the home demand for cotton goods occasioned by the curtailment of the foreign supply, gave a stimulus to the production of cotton in America, and the provincial congress of the several colonies, as well as the Continental Congress, urged the people to turn their attention to the raising of this then muchneeded staple. But the difficulty of separating the seed from the lint, as already noted, rendered the production of cotton for commercial purposes unprofitable. So unimportant was the industry then that Jay, in 1794, agreed to a stipulation in his treaty with Great Britain that cotton should be one of the articles which should not be exported from the United States in American ships-a provision which, INFLUENCE OF THE COTTON-GIN. fortunately, the Senate struck out. The invention of the cotton-gin in 1793, however, entirely changed the situation and immensely stimulated the cotton industry. Formerly, by hand, one person could separate only a few pounds of lint from the seed in a day. With the gin, he could clean a thousand pounds a day. The effect on the production and export of cotton was magical. In 1790 the amount produced in the United States was 1,500,000 pounds; in 1795 it was 8,000,000 pounds; in 1800, 35,000,000 pounds; and in 1807, 80,000,000 pounds. At the same time the exports increased from 6,276,300 pounds in 1795 to nearly 64,000,000 pounds in 1808.* The most far-reaching influence of the invention of the cotton-gin and the consequent stimulation of cotton production was the promotion of the institution of slavery. It was rescued from its moribund or decaying condition, henceforth to play the dominant rôle in the history and economic life of the South. The demand for slave labor soon exceeded the supply. South Carolina repealed her prohibitory laws and threw open her ports to the foreign slave trade, and the activity of New England traders was immediately revived. From 1804 to 1807 202 cargoes of negro slaves were brought into the harbor of Charleston alone. Even the act of Congress of 13 1807 prohibiting the foreign slave trade did not entirely stop the traffic, because the penalty attached to the violation of the law was inadequate. In 1819, however, Congress went the limit, and declared the slave trade to be piracy-a declaration which practically put a stop to the traffic thereafter. As the demand for slave labor increased, the loss of the foreign supply was met by slave-breeding, which presently became an important industry in such border States as Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, where, owing to the character of the principal crops, slave labor was much less profitable than in the cotton-producing States. The rapid rise in the price of slaves still further increased the lucrativeness of this peculiar industry and stimulated its growth.* Thus the border States shared in the prosperity of their Southern sisters and their interest in the extension and perpetuation of slavery was secured. So closely connected was slavery with the cotton industry that it may truthfully be said that, just as slavery was the prime cause of the Civil War, cotton was the raison d'être of slavery. The demand for slave labor in the production of tobacco, rice, and indigo had never been great. The production of indigo soon became an industry of minor importance, the 14 THE ECONOMIC NECESSITY FOR SLAVERY. growth of rice was restricted to a comparatively small area, while tobacco, as already stated, could be cultivated with more success by free laborers. Without the demand for slave labor to cultivate the cotton plantations and the consequent impetus this gave to the slave-breeding industry in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, slavery would probably have soon disappeared in those States, Missouri would not have been admitted as a slave State, and the South's demand for "equal rights in the Western Territories would probably never have been insisted upon.* Meanwhile the rapid rise of the price of cotton stimulated its production, and increased correspondingly the demand for slaves. From 142 cents in 1790, the price rose to 44 cents in 1799, though a decline to a more normal figure came later. From 1790 to 1830 the number of slaves in the States increased from 677,897 to over 2,000,000, and by 1860 it rose to nearly 4,000,000, over two-thirds of whom were in the cotton-growing States. As time passed, slavery came to be defended in the South as an economic necessity. Negroes, it was argued, were better fitted than white men to clear and drain malarial swamps and cultivate cotton. They were capable of enduring the burning sun and of resisting malaria to which the white man succumbed. It was asserted, * See Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. i., p. 27. moreover, that the free white labor necessary to the cultivation of cotton on the extensive scale required to meet the world's demand was not to be had. Without slave labor, therefore, it was argued, one of the greatest of the world's industries would be destroyed. With it, cotton was king and slavery its sceptre. Rapidly the cotton belt was extended from Georgia and South Carolina to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally to the fertile plains of Texas, so that the system of slavery became so strongly intrenched that its eradication came to be regarded an impossibility. In the beginning slavery might have been abolished without disturbing the economic order or seriously injuring the South, but at that stage of its development this was no longer possible. Naturally, her people resented attacks upon the system as a strike at the heart of their very existence. The system of slave labor in the South had its economic advantages and disadvantages. Of all crops grown in America, the cultivation of cotton was especially adapted to slave labor. For the most part, it was planted by hand and cultivated by the simplest of farm implements, so that little intelligence was required in the work. The hoeing of the plant and the picking of the lint were tasks in which the women and children could be employed to advantage, so that the planter was able to utilize the services of the entire family. Moreover, the cultivation and gathering of cotton extended ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SLAVERY. over the greater part of the year, so that the idleness of the slaves engaged in it was reduced to a minimum. Slave labor, especially in the cotton industry, was also well adapted to organization on a large scale. While one man could cultivate 20 or 25 acres of grain, he could take care of an average of but five or six acres of cotton, thus making it possible for one overseer to direct the labor of a large number of slaves within a limited area. The cost of maintaining a slave was also slight, rarely exceeding $15 to $30 a year. His labor was, of course, unpaid, and hence the owner received the entire output of his services. He was housed in a small oneroom shanty, and the warm climate. necessitated but the simplest clothing, while the cost of food was inconsiderable. The slave's labor being compulsory, it was more easily managed and directed than free labor, as the employer had absolute control over it; and, being permanent, one of the chief sources of loss which the Southern planter now suffers from the frequent abandonment of his crop by negro tenants, was then unknown. Thus there was then greater certainty in the labor system, for the planter was always reasonably sure of retaining his laborers to gather what was planted and grown. Moreover, as slave labor was under the complete control of the owner, the maximum hours of work could be exacted. Finally, cotton being less exhaustive to the soil than cereal or other crops, 15 the destructive effects of unintelligent cultivation were smaller in the South than they would have been in other parts of the country where different crops were grown and where intelligent handling of the soil through rotation, diversification, and scientific. treatment was essential to the maintenance of its productive power. However, the economic disadvantages of slavery as a system of labor were very great and came in time to be generally recognized by the slaveholders themselves. In the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832, Mr. Marshall thus described some of its evils: "Slavery is ruinous to the whites. retards improvement- roots out industrious population -banishes the yeomanry of the country — deprives the spinner, the weaver, the shoemaker, the carpenter, the smith, of employment and support. This evil admits of no remedy - it is increasing and will continue to increase, until the whole country will be inundated with one black wave covering its whole extent, with a few white faces here and there floating on the surface. The master has no capital but what is vested in human flesh; the father, instead of being richer for his sons, is at a loss how to provide for them; there is no diversity of occupations, no incentive to enterprise. Labor of every species is disreputable, because performed mostly by slaves. Our towns are stationary, our villages almost everywhere declining, and the general aspect of the country marks the course of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the soil, and care not how much it is impoverished. Public improvements are neglected and the entire continent does not present a single region for which nature had done so much and art so little. If cultivated by free labor, the soil of Virginia is capable of supporting a vast population, among whom labor would be honorable, and where the ‘busy hum of men' would tell that all were happy and all were free." In the first place, slave labor really cost more than free labor, since it in |