The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 06/Discourse 1
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PROGRESS OF AMERICA,
AND THE INFLUENCE OF HER DIVERSE
INSTITUTIONS.
AN ADDRESS
prepared for the anti-slavery convention in boston,
May 31, 1854.
At this day there are two great tribes of men in Christendom, which seem to have a promising future before them—the Sclavonic and the Anglo-Saxon. Both are comparatively new. For the last three hundred years each has been continually advancing in numbers, riches, and territory; in industrial and military power. To judge from present appearances, it seems probable that a hundred years hence there will be only two great national forces m the Christian world—the Sclavonic and the Anglo-Saxon.
The Anglo-Saxon tribe is composite, and the mingling so recent, that we can still easily distinguish the main ingredients of the mixture. There are, first, the Saxons and Angles from North Germany; next, the Scandinavians from Denmark and Sweden; and, finally, the Normans, or Romanized Scandinavians, from France.
This tribe is now divided into two great political branches, namely, the Anglo-Saxon Briton, and the Anglo-Saxon American; but both are substantially the same people, though with different antecedents and surroundings. The same fundamental characteristics belong to the Briton and the American.
Three hundred years ago, the Anglo-Saxons were scarce three millions in number ; they did not own the whole of Great Britain. Now there are thirty or forty millions of men with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins. They possess the British Islands; Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Isles ; St. Helena, South Africa, much of East and West Africa; enormous territories in India, continually increasing; the whole of Australia; almost all of North America, and I know not how many islands scattered about the Atlantic and Pacific seas. Their geographical spread covers at least one-sixth part of the habitable globe; their power controls about one-fifth of the inhabitants of the earth. It is the richest of all the families of mankind. The Anglo-Saxon leads the commerce and the most important manufactures of the world. He owns seven-eighths of the shipping of Christendom, and half that of the human race. He avails himself of the latest discoveries in practical science, and applies them to the creation of "comforts" and luxuries. Iron is his favourite metal; and about two-thirds of the annual iron crop of the earth is harvested on Anglo-Saxon soil. Cotton, wheat, and the potato, are his favourite plants.
The political institutions of the Anglo-Saxon secure National Unity of Action for the State, and Individual Variety of Action for each citizen, to a greater degree than other nations have thought possible. In all Christendom, there is scarce any freedom of the Press except on Anglo-Saxon soil. Ours is the only tongue in which Liberty can speak. Anglo-Saxon Britain is the asylum of exiled patriots, or exiled despots. The royal and patrician wrecks of the revolutionary storms of continental Europe, in the last century and in this, were driven to her hospitable shore. Kossuth, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, and Comte, relics of the last revolution, are washed to the same coast. America is the asvlum of exiled nations, who flee to her arms, four hundred thousand in a year, and find shelter.
The Sclavonians fight with diplomacy and the sword, the Anglo-Saxon with diplomacy and the doUar. He is the Roman of productive industry, of commerce, as the Romans were Anglo-Saxons of destructive conquest, of war. The Sclavonian nations, from the accident of their geographical position, or from their ethnological peculiarity of nature, invade and conquer lands more civilized than their own. They have the diplomatic skill to control nations of superior intellectual and moral development. The Anglo-Saxon is too clumsy for foreign politics; when he meddles with the affairs of other civilized people, he is often deceived. Russia outwits England continually in the political game now playing for the control of Europe. The Anglo-Saxon, more invasive than the Sclavonian, prefers new and wild lands to old and well-cultivated territories; so he conquers America, and tills its virgin soil: seizes on Africa, — the dry nurse of lions and of savage men,—and founds a new empire iii Australia. If he invades Asia, it is in the parts not Christian. His rule is a curse to countries full of old civilization; I take it that England has been a blight to India, and will be to China, if she sets there her conquering foot. The Anglo-Saxon is less pliable than the Romans, a less indulgent master to conquered men; with more plastic power to organize and mould, he has a less comprehensive imagination, limits himself to a smaller number of forms, and so hews off and casts away what suits him not. Austria conquers Lombardy, France Algiers, Russia Poland, to the benefit of the conquered party, it seems. Can any one show that the British rule has been a benefit to India? The Bussians make nothing of their American territory. But what civilization blooms out of the savage ground wherever the Saxon plants his foot!
I must say a word of the leading peculiarities of this tribe.
1. There is a strong love of individual freedom. This belongs to the Anglo-Saxons in common with all the Teutonic family. But with them it seems eminently powerful. Circumstances have favoured its development. They care much for freedom, little for equality.
2. Connected with this, is a love of law and order, which continually shows itself on both sides of the ocean. East as we gain freedom, we secure it by law and constitution, trusting little to the caprice of magistrates.
3. Then there is a great federative power—a tendency to form combinations of persons, or of communities and states— special partnerships on a small scale for mercantile business; on a large scale, like the American Union, or the Hanse towns, for the political business of a nation.
4. The Anglo-Saxons have eminent practical power to organize things into £|» mill, or men into a state, and then to administer the organization. This power is one which contributes greatly to both their commercial and political success. But this tribe is also most eminently material in its aims and means ; it loves riches, works for riches, fights for riches. It is not warlike, as some other nations, who love war for. its own sake, though a hard fighter when put to it.
5. We are the most aggressive, invasive, and exclusive people on the earth. The history of the Anglo-Saxon, for the last three hundred years, has been one of continual aggression, inyasion, and exteUination.
I cannot now stop to dwell on these traits of our tribal anthropology, but must yet say a word touching this national exclusiveness and tendency to exterminate.
Austria and Russia never treated a conquered nation so cruelly as England has treated Ireland. Not many years ago, four-fifths of the population of the island were Catholics, a tenth Anglican churchmen. All offices were in the hands of the little minority. Two-thirds of the Irish House of Commons were nominees of the Protestant gentry ; the Catholic members must take the declaration against Transubstantiation. Papists were forbidden to vote in elections of members to the Irish Parliament. They suffered "under a universal, unmitigated, indispensable, exceptionless disqualification." "In the courts of law, they could not gain a place on the bench, nor act as a barrister, attorney, or solicitor, nor be employed even as a hired clerk, nor sit on a grand jury, nor serve as a sheriff, nor hold even the lowest civil office of trust and profit; nor have any privilege in a town corporation ; nor be a freeman of. such corporation ; nor vote at a vestry,"[1] A Catholic could not marry a Protestant: the priest who should celebrate such a marriage was to be hanged. He could not be " a guardian to any child, nor educate his own child, if its mother were a Protestant," or the child declared in favour of Protestantism. "No Protestant might instruct a Papist. Papists could not supply their want by academies and schools of their own ; for a Catholic to teach, even in a private family, or as usher to a Protestant, was a felony, punishable by imprisonment, exile, or death." " To be educated in any foreign Catholic school was an unalterable and perpetual outlawry." "The child sent abroad for education, no matter of how tender an age, or himself how innocent, could never after sue in law or equity, or be guardian, executor, or administrator, or receive any legacy or deed of gift ; he forfeited all his goods and chattels, and forfeited for his life all his lands;" whoever sent him incurred the same penalties.
The Catholic clergy could not be taught at home or abroad: they "were registered and kept, like prisoners at large, within prescribed limits." "All Papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction; all monks, friars, and regular priests, and all priests not actually in parishes, and to be registered, were banished from Ireland under pain of transportation; and, on a return, of being hanged and quartered." " The Catholic priest abjuring his religion, received a pension of thirty, and afterwards of forty pounds." "No non-conforming Catholic could buy land, or receive it by descent, devise, or settlement; or lend money on it as security; or hold an interest in it through a Protestant trustee; or take a lease of ground for more than thirty-one years. If under such a lease he brought his farm to produce more than one-third beyond the rent, the first Protestant discoverer might sue for the lease before known Protestants, making the defendant answer all interrogations on oath; so that the Catholic farmer dared not drain his fields, nor inclose them, nor build solid houses on them." "Even if a Catholic owned a horse worth more than five pounds, any Protestant might take it away," on payment of that sum. "To the native Irish, the English oligarchy appeared as men of a different race and creed, who had acquired the island by force of arms, rapine, and chicane, and derived revenues from it by the employment of extortionate underlings or overseers."[2]
The same disposition to invade and exterminate showed itself on this side of the ocean.
In America, the Frenchman and the Spaniard came in contact with the red man ; they converted him to what they called Christianity, and then associated with him on equal terms. The pale-face and the red-skin hunted in company; they fished from the same canoe in the Bay of Fundy and Lake Superior; they lodged in the same tent, slept on the same bear-skin; nay, they knelt together before the same God, who was "no respecter of persons," and had made of one blood all nations of men! The white man married the Indian's daughter; the red man wooed and won the pale child of the Caucasian. This took place in Canada, and in Mexico, in Peru, and Equador. In Brazil, the negro graduates at the college; he becomes a general in the army. But the Anglo-Saxon disdains to mingle his proud blood in wedlock with the "inferior races of men." He puts away the savage—black, yellow, red. In New England, the Puritan converted the Indians to Christianity, as far as they could accept the theology of John Calvin ; but made a careful separation between white and red, "my people and thy people." They must dwell in separate villages, worship in separate houses; they must not intermarry. The general court of Massachusetts once forbade all extra-matrimonial connection of white and red, on pain of death! The Anglo-Saxon has carefully sought to exterminate the savages from his territory. The Briton does so in Africa, in Van Diemen's Land, in New Zealand, in New Holland—wherever he meets them. The American does the same in the western world. In New England the Puritan found the wild woods, the wild beasts, and the wild men; he undertook to eradicate them all, and has succeeded best with the wild men. There are more bears than Indians in New England. The United States pursues the same destructive policy. In two hundred years more there wiU be few Indians left between the Lake of the "Woods and the Gulf of Mexico, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Yet the Anglo-Saxons are not cruel ; they are simply destructive. The Dutch, in New York, perpetrated the most wanton. cruelties: the savages themselves shuddered at the white man's atrocity: "Our gods would be offended at such things," said they ; *^ the white man's God must be different !" The cruelties of the French, and, still more, of the Spaniards in Mexico, in the West Indies, and South America, are too terrible to repeat, but too well known to need relating. The Spaniard put men to death with refinements of cruelty, luxuriating in destructiveness. The Anglo-Saxon simply shot down his foe, offered a reward for homicide, so much for a scalp, but tolerated no needless cruelty. If the problem is to destroy a race of men with the least expenditure of destructive force on one side, and the least suffering on the other> the Anglo-Saxon, Briton, or American, is the fittest instrument to be found on the whole globe.
So much for the Anglo-Saxon character in general, as introductory to an examination of America in special. It is well to know the anthropology of the stock before attempting to appreciate the character of the special people. America has the general chcuracteristics of this powerful tribe, but modified by her peculiar geographical and historical position. Our fathers emigrated from their home in a time of great ferment, and brought with them ideas which could not then be organized into institutions at home. This was obviously the case with the theological ideas of the Puritans, who, with their descendants, have given to America most of what is new and peculiar in her institutions. Still more, the early settlers of the North brought with them sentiments not ripened yet, which, in due time, developed themselves into ideas, and then into institutions.
At first necessity, or love of change, drove the wanderers to the wilderness ; they had no thought of separating from England. The fugitive pilgrims in the Mayflower, who subscribed the compact, which so many Americans erroneously regard as the "seed-com of the republican tree, under which millions of her men now stand," called themselves "loyal subjects of our dread sovereign. King James," undertaking to plant a colony "for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country." In due time, as the colonists developed themselves in one, and the English at home in a different direction, there came to be a great diversity of ideas, and an opposition of interests. When mutuality of ideas and of interests, as the indispensable condition of national unity of action, failed, the colony fell off from its parent: the separation was unavoidable. Before many years, we doubt not, Australia will thus separate from the mother country, to the advantage of both parties.
In America, two generations of men have passed away since the last battle of the Revolution. The hostility of that contest is only a matter of history to the mass of Britons or Americans, not of daily consciousness; and as this disturbing force is withdrawn, the two nations see and feel more distinctly their points of agreement, and become conscious that they are both but one people.
The transfer of the colonists of England to the western world was an event of great importance to mankind; they found a virgin continent, on which to set up and organize their ideas, and develop their faculties. They had no enemies but the wilderness and its savage occupants. I doubt not that, if the emigrant had remained at home, it would have taken a thousand years to attain the same general development now reached by the free States of North America* The settlers carried with them the best ideas and the best institutions of their native land— the arts and sciences of England, the forms of a representative government, the trial by jury, the common law, the ideas of Christianity, and the traditions of the human race. In the woods, far from help, they were forced to become self-reliant and thrifty men. It is instructive to see what has come of the experiment. It is but two hundred and forty-six years since the settlement of Jamestown—not two hundred and thirty-four years since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth ; what a development since that time—of numbers, of riches, of material and spiritual power!
In the ninth century. Kerb Flokki, a half-mythical person, "let loose his three crows," it is said, seeking land to the west and north of the Orkneys, and went to Iceland. In the tenth century, Gunnbjiom, and Eirek the Red, discovered Greenland, an " ugly and right hateful country," as Paul Egede calls it. In the eleventh century, Leife, son of Eirek, with Tyrker the Southerner, discovered Vinland, some part of North America, but whether Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or New England, I shall leave others to determine. It is not yet four hundred years since Columbus first dropped his anchor at San Salvador, and Cabot discovered the continent of America, and cruised along its shores from Hudson's Bay to Florida, seeking for a passage to the East Indies. In 1608 the first permanent British settlement was made in America, at Jamestown; in 1620 the Pilgrims began their far-famed experiment at Plymouth. What a change from 1608 to 1854! It is not in my power to determine the number of immigrants before the Revolution. There was a great variety of nationalities—Dutch in New York, Germans in Pennsylvania and Georgia, Swedes and Finns in Delaware, Scotch in New England and North Carolina, Swiss in Georgia; Acadians from Nova Scotia; and Huguenots from France.
America has now a stable form of government. Her pyramid is not yet high. It is only humble powers that she develops, no great creative spirit here as yet enchants men with the wonders of literature and art;—but her foundation is wide and deeply laid. It is now easy to see the conditions and the causes of her success. The conditions are, the new continent, a virgin soil to receive the seed of liberty; the causes were, first, the character of the tribe, and next, the liberal institutions founded thereby.
The rapid increase of America in most of the elements of national power, is a remarkable fact in the history of mankind.
Look at the increase of numbers. In 1689, the entire population of the English colonies, exclusive of the Indians, amounted to about 200,000. Twenty-five years later there were 434,000, now 24,000,000.[3] The present population of the United States consists of the following ingredients. The numbers are conjectural and approximate:—
| White Immigrants since 1790, and their white descendants | 4,350,934 |
| Africans, and their decendants | 3,626,585 |
| White Immigrantas previous to 1790, and their white descendants | 15,279,804 |
This does not include the Indians living within the territories and States of the Union. These facts show that a remarkable mingling of families of the Caucasian stock is taking place. The exact statistics would disclose a yet more remarkable mingling of the Caucasian and the Æthiopian races going on. The Africans are rapidly "bleaching" under the influence of democratic chemistry. If only one-tenth of the "coloured population" has Caucasian blood in its veins, then there are 362,698 descendants of this "amalgamation;" but if you estimate these hybrids as one in five, which is not at all excessive, we have then 725,397.
The thirty-one States now organized have a surface of 1,485,870 square miles, while the total area of the United States, so far as I have information, on the 17th of May, 1853, was 3,220,000 square miles. In the States, on an average, there are not sixteen persons to the square mile; in the whole territory, not eight to a mile. Massachusetts, the most densely peopled State, has more than one hundred and twenty-six to the mile, while Texas has but eighty-nine men for a hundred miles of land, more than eight hundred acres to each human soul.
In 1840, there were ten States, whose united populations exceeded 4,000,000, which yet had no town with 10,000 inhabitants.[4]
Look next at the products of industry in the United States.[5]
| Agriculture | $654,387,597 | |
| Manufactures | 236,836,224 | |
| Commerce | 79,721,086 | |
| Mining | 42,358,761 | |
| The Forest | 16,835,060 | |
| The Ocean | 11,996,108 | |
| Total | $1,063,134,736 |
In 1850, the iron-crop in the United States amounted to 564,755 tons. The ship-crop was 1360 vessels, with a measurement of 272,218 tons. The increase of American shipping is worth notice, and is shown in the following
| Years. | Tons. |
| 1815 | 1,368,127 |
| 1820 | 1,280,165 |
| 1825 | 1,423,110 |
| 1830 | 1,181,986 |
| 1835 | 1,824,939 |
| 1840 | 2,180,763 |
| 1845 | 2,417,001 |
| 1850 | 3,535,454 |
The tonnage is still on the increase. In 1851 it amounted to 3,772,439, and at this moment must be considerably more than 4,000,000. The first ship built in New England was the "Blessing of the Bay," a "bark of thirty tons," launched in 1634. Nor far from the spot where her keel was laid, a ship has recently been built, three hundred and ten feet long, and more than six thousand tons burden.
On the 30th September, 1851, there were, if the accounts are reliable, 12,805 miles of railroad in the United States. At present, there are probably about 15,000 miles.
To show the increase of American commerce, consider the following
| Years. | Imports. | Exports. |
| 1800 | $91,252,768 | $70,971,780 |
| 1805 | 120,000,000 | 95,566,021 |
| 1810 | 85,400,000 | 66,757,974 |
| 1815 | 113,041,274 | 52,557,753 |
| 1820 | 74,450,000 | 69,691,669 |
| 1825 | 96,340,075 | 99,535,388 |
| 1830 | 70,876,920 | 73,849,508 |
| 1835 | 149,895,742 | 121,693,577 |
| 1840 | 107,141,519 | 132,085,946 |
| 1845 | 117,254,564 | 114,646,606 |
| 1850 | 178,138,318 | 161,898,720 |
| 1852 | 212,613,282 | 209,641,625 |
The contrast between the Spanish and the Anglo-Saxon settlements in America is amazing. A hundred years ago, Spain, the discoverer of America, had undisputed sway over all South America, except Brazil and the Guianas. All Mexico was hers—all Central America, California unbounded on the north, extending indefinitely, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, Porto Rico, and part of Hayti. She ruled a population of twenty million men. Now Cuba trembles in her faltering hand; all the rest has dropped from the arms of that feeble mother of feeble sons. In 1750 her American colonies extended from Patagonia to Oregon. The La Plata was too far north for her southern limit, the Columbia too far south for her northern bound. The Mississippi and the Amazon were Spanish rivers, and emptied the waters of a continent into the lap of America, the Mexique Gulf, which was also a Spanish sea. But Spain allowed only eight-and-thirty vessels to ply between the mother country and the family of American daughters on both sides of the continent. The empire of Spain, mother country and colonies, extending from Barcelona to Manilla, with more sea-coast than the whole continent of Africa, employed but sixteen thousand sailors in her commercial marine. Portugal forbade Brazil to cultivate any of the products of the Indies.
Look at this day at Anglo-Saxon, and then at Spanish America. In 1606 there was not an English settlement
in America, In 1627 only two, Jamestown and Plymouth. But the Spanish colonies date back to 1493. Compare the history of the basin of the Amazon with the valley of the Mississippi. The Amazon, with its affluents, commands seventy thousand miles' of internal navigation, draining more arable land than all Europe contains, the largest, the most fertile valley in the wond. It includes 1,796,000 square miles. Everything which £nds a home on earth will flourish in the basin of the Amazon, between the level of the Atlantic and the top of the Andes. But the tonnage on the Amazon does not probably equal the tonnage on Lake Champlain. Only an Anglo-Saxon steamer ruffles the waters of the Amazon. Parsi, at its mouth, more than three hundred years old, contains less than 20,000 inhabitants.
The Mississippi with its tributaries drains 982,000 square miles, and affords 16,694 miles of steam navigation. In 1851 there were 1190 steamboats on its bosom, measuring 249,054 tons, running at an annual cost of $39,774,194; the value of the merchandise carried on the river in 1862 was estimated at $432,651,240, more than double the whole foreign trade of the United States for that year. New Orleans, at the mouth of the Mississippi, was founded in 1719, and in 1850 contained 119,461 inhabitants: in 1810 it had not 18,000!
The Anglo-Saxon colonists brought with them the vigorous bodies and sturdy intellect of their race; the forms of representative and constitutional government; publicity of political transactions; trial by jury; a fondness for local self-government; an aversion to centralization ; the Protestant form of religion; the Bible; the right of private judgment; their national administrative power; and that stalwart self-reKance and thrift which mark the Englishman and American wherever they go. New Spain had priests and soldiers; New England ministers and schoolmasters. In two centuries, behold what consequences come of such causes! No Chilian vessel ever went to Spain!
But America itself is not unitary; there is a Spanish America in the United States. Unity of idea and interest by no means prevails here.
America was settled by two very different classes of men, one animated by moral or religious motives, coming to realize an idea; the other animated by only commercial ideas, pushing forth to make a fortune or to escape from gaol. Some men brought religion, others only ambition; the consequence is, two antagonistic ideas, with institutions which correspond, antagonistic institutions.
First there is the Democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in all men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable, and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed; and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.
Next there is the Oligarchic idea, just the opposite of this ; that there is no such thing as natural, unalienable, and equal rights, but accidental, alienable, and unequal powers; that government is to organize the might of all, for the good of the governing party; is to be a government of all, by a part, and for the sake of a part. The governing power may be one man. King Monarch; a few men. King Noble; or the majority, King Many. In all these cases, the motive, the purpose, and the means, are still the same, and government is exploitation of the governed, not the development thereof. So far as the people are developed by the government, it is that they may be thereby exploitered.
Neither the Democratic nor the Oligarchic idea is perfectly developed as yet: but the first preponderates most at the north, the latter at the south—one in the free, the other in the slave States.
The settlers did not bring to America the Democratic idea fully grown. It is the child of time. In all great movements there are three periods—first, that of Sentiment—there is only a feeling of the new thing; next of Idea—the feeling has become a thought; finally of Action—the thought becomes a thing. It is pleasant to trace the growth of the Democratic sentiment and idea in the human race, to watch the efforts to make the thought a thing, and found domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political institutions, corresponding thereto. Perhaps it is easier to trace this here than elsewhere. It has sometimes been claimed that the Puritans came to America to found such institu tions. But they had no fondness for a Democracy; the thought did not enter their heads that the substance of man is superior to the accidents of men, his nature more than his history. New England men on the 4th of July claim the compact on board the Mayflower, as the foundation of Democracy in America, and of the Declaration of Independence. But the signers of that famous document had no design to found a Democracy. Much of the liberality of the settlers at Plymouth seems to have been acquired by their residence in Holland, where they saw the noblest example of religious toleration then in the world.
The Democratic idea has had but a slow and gradual growth, even in New England. The first form of government was a theocracy, an intense tyranny in the name of God. The next world was for the " Elect" said Puritan theology; "let us also have this," said the Elect. The distinction between clerical and laical was nowhere more prominent than in Puritan New England. The road to the ballot-box lay imder the pulpit ; only church-members could vote, and u a man's politics were not marked with the proper stripe it was not easy for him to become a church-member. The "Lords Brethren" were as tyrannical in the new world as the "Lords Bishops" in the old.
There was a distinction between "gentlemen," with the title of Mr.y and men, with only the name, John, Peter, and Bartholomew, or the title "Goodman."
Slavery was established in the new world; there were two forms of it:—absolute bondage of the Africans and the Indians; the conditional bondage of white men, called "servants," slaves for a limited period. Before the Revolution the latter were numerous, even in the north.
The Puritan had little religious objection to the establishment of Slavery. But the red man would fight, and would not work. It was not possible to make useful slaves of Indians: the experiment was tried; it failed, and the savage was simply destroyed.
In theocratic and colonial times at the north, the Democratic idea contended against the church; and gradually weakened and overcame the power of the clergy and of all ecclesiastical corporations. At length all churches stand on the same level. The persecuted Quaker has vindicated his right to free inspiration by the Holy Ghost; the Baptist enjoys the natural right to be baptized after the apostolic fashion; the Unitarian to deny the Holy Trinity; the Universalist to affirm the eternal blessedness of all men; and the philosophical critic to examine the claims of Christianity as of all religions, to sweep the whole ocean of religious consciousness, draw his net to land, gather the good into vessels, and cast the bad away.
The spirit of freedom contended against the claims of ancestral gentility. In the woods of New England it was soon found that a pair of arms was worth more than a "coat of arms," never so old and horrid with griffins. A man who could outwit the Indians, " whip his weight in wild cats," hew down tress, build ships, make wise laws, and organize a river into a mill, or men into towns and states, was a valuable person ; and if born at all was well born. " Men of no family" grew up in the new soil, and often overtopped the twigs cut from some famous tree. In the humblest callings of life, I have found men of the most eminent European stocks. But it was rare that men of celebrated families settled in America: monarchy, nobility, prelacy did not emigrate, it was the people who came over. And in 1780, the Convention of Massachusetts put this in the first Article of the Constitution of the State: "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights." All distinction of gentle and simple, bond and free, perished out of Massachusetts. The same thought is repeated in the constitutions of many Northern States.
This spirit of freedom contended against the claims of England. "Local self-government" was the aim of the colonies. Opposition to centralization of authority is very old in America. I hope it will be always young. England was a hard master to her western children ; she left them to fight their own battles against the Indians, against the French; and this circumstance made all men soldiers. In King Philip's war every man capable of bearing arms took the field, first or last. The frontier was a school for soldiers. The day after the battle of Lexington, a hundred and fifty men, in a large farming town of New Hampshire, shouldered their muskets and marched for Boston, to look after their brethren.
It was long before there was a clear and distinct expres sion of the Democratic idea in America. The Old Testament helped it to forms of denunciatory speech. The works of Milton, Sidney, Locke, and the writers on the law of nature and of nations, were of great service. Rousseau came at the right time, and aided the good cause. Calvin and Rousseau, strange to say, fought side by side in the battle for freedom. It was a great thing for America and the world, that this idea was so clearly set forth in the Declaration of Independence, announced as a self-evident truth. A young man's hand came out of the wall, and wrote words which still make many tremble as they read. The battle for human freedom yet goes on ; its victory is never complete. But now in the free States of the North the fight is against all traditional forms of evil. The domestic question relates to the equal rights of men and women in the family and out of it; there is a great Social question,—"Shall money prevail over man, and the rich and crafty exploiter the poor and the simple?" In the church, men ask—"Shall authority—a book or an institution, each an accident of human history — ^prevail over reason, conscience, the affections, and the soul—the human substance?" In the State, the minority looks for the eternal principles of Right ; and will not heed the bidding of famous men, of conventions, and majorities; appeals to the still, small voice within, which proclaims the Higher Law of God. Even in the North a great contest goes on.
The Democratic idea seems likely to triumph in the North, and build up its appropriate institutions—a family without a slave, a family of equals; a community without a lord, a community of co-operators; a church without a bishop, a church of brethren; a State without a king, a State of citizens.
The institutions of the free States are admirably suited to produce a rapid development of the understanding. The State guarantees the opportunity of education to all children. The free schools of the north are her most original institution, quite imperfect as yet. The attempts to promote the public education of the people have already produced most gratifying results.
More than half of the newspaper editors in the United States have received aU their academical education in the common school. Many a Methodist and Universalist minister, many a member of Congress, has been graduated at that beneficent institution. The intelligence and riches of the North are due to the common schools. In the free States books are ubundant; newspapers in all hands; skilled labour abounds. Body runs to brain, and work to thought. The head saves the hands. Under the benignant influence of public education, the children of the Irish emigrant, poor and despised, grow up to equality with the descendants of the rich; two generations will efface the difference between them. I have seen, of a Sunday afternoon, a thousand young Irish women, coming out of a Catholic church, all well dressed, with ribbons and cheap ornaments, to help elevate their self-respect; and when remembering the condition of these same women in their native land, barefoot, dirty, mendicant, perhaps thievish, glad of a place to serve at two pounds a year, I have begun to see the importance of America to the world; and have felt as John Adams, when he wrote in his diary, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design of Providence, for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind, all over the earth."
The educational value of American institutions, in the free States is seldom appreciated. The schools open to all, where all classes of the people freely mingle, and the son of a rude man is brought into contact with the good manners and self-respectful. deportment of children from more fortunate homes;[6] the churches, where everybody is welcome (if not black); the business which demands intelligence, and educates the great mass of the people; the public lectures, delivered in all the considerable towns of New England, the winter through; the newspapers abundant, cheap, discussing everything with as little reserve as the summer wind ; the various social meetings of incorporated companies to discuss their affairs ; the constitution of the towns, with their meetings, two or three times a year, when officers are chosen, and taxes voted, and all municipal affairs abundantly discussed; the public pro ceedings of the courts of law, so instructive to jurors and spectators; the local legislatures of the States—each consisting of from two to four hundred members, and in session four or five months of the year; the politics of the nation brought home to every voter in the land,—all these things form an educational power of immense value, for such a development of the lower intellectual faculties, as men esteem most in these days.
But, the Oligarchic idea is also at work. You meet this in all parts of the land, diligently seeking to organize itself. It takes no new forms, however, which are peculiar to America. It re-enacts the old statutes which have oppressed mankind in the eastern world: it attempts to revive the institutions that have cursed other lands in darker days. Now the few tyrannize over the many, and devise machinery to oppress their fellow-mortals; then the majority thus tyrannize over the few, over the minority. There are two forms of Democracy—the Satanic and the Celestial: one is Selfishness, which knows no higher law; the other Philanthropy, that bows to the justice of the infinite God, with a "Thy will be done." In America we find both—the democratic Devil and the democratic Angel.
The idea of the North is preponderatingly democratic in the better sense of the word ; new justice is organized in the laws ; government becomes more and more of aU, by all, and for all. You trace the progress of humanity, of liberty, equality, and fraternity in the constitution of the free States from Massachusetts to "Wisconsin.
But in the Southern States the Oligarchic idea prevails to a much greater extent, and becomes more and more apparent and powerful. The South has adopted the institution of slavery, elsewhere discarded, and clmgs to it with strange tenacity. In South Carolina, the possession of slaves is made the condition, sine qua non, of eligibility to certain offices. The constitution provides that a citizen shall not "be eligible to a seat in the House of Representatives, unless legally seized and possessed in his own right of a settled freehold estate of five hundred acres of land, and ten negroes.[7] The Puritans of New England made no very strong objection to Slavery. It was established in all the colonies of the North and South. White servitude continued till the Revolution. As late as 1767, white men were kidnapped, " spirited away," as it was called in Scotland, and sold in the colonies.
Negro slavery began early. Even the gentler Puritans at Plymouth had the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to the coloured race. The black man must sit .aloof from the whites in the meeting-house, in a "negro pew;" he must "not be joined unto them in burial;" a place was set apart, in the graveyard at Plymouth, for coloured people, and still remains as "from time immemorial." In 1851, an Abolitionist, before his death, insisted on being buried with the objects of his tender solicitude. The request was complied with.
After the Revolution, the Northern States gradually abolished slavery, though not without violent opposition in some places. In 1788 three coloured persons were kidnapped at Boston and carried to the West Indies; the crime produced a great excitement, and led to executive and legislative action. The same year, the General Presbyterian Assembly of America issued a pastoral letter, recommending "the abolition of Slavery, and the instruction of the negroes in letters and religion." In 1790, Dr. Franklin, president of the "Pennsylvanian Society for the Abolition of Slavery," signed a memorial to Congress, asking that body "to countenance the restoration of liberty to the unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amid the general joy of surrounding provinces, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will permit mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."
The memorial excited a storm of debate. Slavery was defended as a measure of political economy, and a principle of humanity, South Carolina leading in the defence of her favourite institution. Yet many eminent Southern men were profoundly convinced of tte injustice of slavery; others saw it was a bad tool to work with.
Since that time the Southern idea of Slavery appears to have changed. Formerly, it was granted by the defenders of slavery that it was wtong ; but they maintained:— 1. That Americans were not responsible for the wrong, as England had imposed it upon the colonies. 2. That it was profitable to the owners of slaves. 3. That it was impossible to get rid of it. Now the ground is taken that slavery is not a wrong to the slave, but that the negro is fit for a slave, and a slave only.
I pass by the arguments of the Southern clergy and the Northern clergy — whose conduct is yet more contemptible—to cite the language of the prominent secular organs of the South. The Richmond Examiner y one of the most able journals of the South, declares:—
"When we deprive the negro of that exercise of his will which the white calls liberty, we deprive him of nothing ; on the contrary, when we give him the guidance and protection of a master, we confer on him a great blessing." [8]
"To treat two creatures so utterly different as the white man and the negro man on the same system, is an effort to violate elementary laws." "The aphorisms of the Declaration of Independence" are illogical when applied to the negro. "They involve the assumption that the negro is the white man, only a little different in external appearance and education. But this assumption cannot be supported." "A law rendering perpetual the relation between the negro and his master is no wrong, but a right." "Negroes are not men, in the meaning of the Declaration of Independence."
"’Haven't negroes got souls?' asks some sepulchral voice. 'Have they no souls?' That question we never answer; we know nothing about it. Non mi ricordo; they may have souls, for aught we know to the contrary; so may horses and hogs."
"We expect the institution of Slavery to exist for ever." "The production of cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco, demand that which Slavery only can supply. And in all portions of this Union where these staples are produced, it will be retained. And when we get Hayti, Mexico, and Jamaica, common sense will doubtless extend it, or rather, re-establish it there too."[9]
I will now quote a little from the Mr. De Bow's large work:—[10]
"No amount of education or training can ever render the negro equal in intellect with the white." "'You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's lug,' is an old and homely adage, but not the less true; so you cannot make anything from a negro but negroism, which means barbarism and inferiority." "As God made them so they have been, and so they will be; the white man, the negro, and the jackass; each to his land, and each to his nature; true to the finger of destiny (which is the finger of God), and undeviatingly pursuing the track which that finger as undeviatingly points out." [11]
"Is the negro made for slavery? God in heaven! what are we, that because we cannot understand the mystery of this Thy will, we should dare rise in rebellion, and call it wrong, unjust, and evil? The kindness of nature fits each creature to fulfil its destiny. The very virtues of the negro fit him for slavery, and his vices cry aloud for the shackles of bondage!" "It is the destiny of the negro, if by himself, to be a savage; if by the white, to be a serf." "They may be styled human beings, though of an inherently degraded species. To attempt to relieve them from their natural inferiority is idle in itself, and may be mischievous in its results."[12]
"Equality is no thought nor creation of God. Slavery, under one name or another, will exist as long as man exists; and abolition is a dream whose execution is an impossibility. Intellect is the only divine right. The negro cannot be schooled, nor argued, nor driven into a love of freedom."[13]
"Alas for their folly! (the abolitionists.) But woe! woe ! a woe of darkness and of deatli, a woe of hell and perdition to those who, better knowing, goad folly on to such an extreme. This is, indeed, the sin not to be forgiven; the sin against the Holy Ghost, and against the Spirit of God! The beautiful order of creation breathed down from Almighty intelligence, is to be moulded and wrought by fanatic intelligence, until dragged down, at last, to negro intelligence!"[14]
Chancellor Harper, of South Carolina, in an address delivered before "the Society for the Advancement of Learning," at Charleston, makes some statements a little remarkable:—
"The institution of Slavery is a principle cause of civilization." "It is as much the order of nature that men should enslave each other, as that other animals should prey upon each other." "The savage can only be tamed by being enslaved or by having slaves." "The African slave-trade has given and will give the boon of existence to millions and millions in our country who would otherwise never have enjoyed it."[15]
He quotes the Bible to justify Slavery:—
"’They shall be your bondmen for ever.'" "Servitude is the condition of civilization. It was decreed when the command was given, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it;' and when it was added ’In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' Slavery was "forced on us by necessity, and further forced upon us by the superior authority of the mother country. I, for one, neither deprecate nor resent the gift." "I am by no means sure that the cause of humanity has been served by the change in jurisprudence which has placed their murder on the same footing with that of a freeman." "The relation of master and slave is naturally one of kindness." "It is true that the slave is driven to his labour by stripes; such punishment would be diBgrading to a freeman, who had the thoughts and aspirations of a freeman. In general, it is not degrading to a slave, nor is it felt to be so."[16]
It is alleged that "the slave is cut off from the means of intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and in consequence his moral character becomes depraved, and he addicted to degrading vices." To this the democratic Chancellor of South Carolina replies:—
"The Creator did not intend that every individual human being should be highly cultivated, morally and intellectually." "It is better that a part should be highly cultivated, and the rest utterly ignorant." "Odium has been cast upon our legislation on account of its forbidding the elements of education to be communicated to slaves. But, in truth, what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands does not read in intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement of his mind." "Of the many slaves whom I have known capable of reading, I have never known one to read anything but the Bible, and this task they imposed on themselves as matter of duty." "Their minds generally show a strong religious tendency,… and perhaps their religious notions are not much more extravagant than those of a large portion of the free population of our country." "It is certainly the master's interest that they should have proper religious sentiments."
"A knowledge of reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, is convenient and important to the free labourer … but of what use would they be to the slave?" "Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings?"[17]
"The law has not provided for making those marriages [of slaves] indissoluble ; nor could it do so." "It may perhaps be said, 'that the chastity of wives is not protected by law from the outrages of violence.'" "Who ever heard of such outrages being offered? … One reason, doubtless, may be, that often there is no disposition to resist, … there is little temptation to this violence as there is so large a population of this class of females [slave wives] who set little value on chastity." "It is true that in this respect the morals of this class are very loose, … and that the passions of the men of the superior caste tempt and find gratification in the easy chastity of the females. This is evil,… but evil is incident to every condition of society."
"The female slave [who yields to these temptations] is not a less useful member of society than before. … She has done no great injury to herself or any other human being ; her offspring is not a burden but an acquisition to her owner; his support is provided for, and he is brought up to usefuhiess; if the fruit of intercourse with a free man, his condition is perhaps raised somewhat aboye that of his mother."
"I do not hesitate to say, that the intercourse which takes place with enslaved females is less debasing in its effects [on man] than when it is carried on with females of their own caste, … the attraction is less, … the intercourse is generally casual, … he is less liable to those extraordinary fascinations."
" He [the slave husband] is also liable to be separated from wife or child,… but from native character and temperament, the separation is much less severely felt."[18]
"The love of liberty is a noble passion. But, alas! it is one in which we know that a large portion of the human race can never be gratified." "If some superior power should impose on the laborious poor of this, or any other country, this [’a condition which is a very near approach to that of our slaves'] as their undeniable condition,… how inappreciable would the boon be thought." "The evils of their situation they [the slaves] but slightly feel, and would hardly feel at all if they were not sedulously instructed into sensibility." "Is it not desirable that the inferior labouring class should be made up of such who will conform to their condition without painful aspirations and vain struggles?"[19]
"I am aware that, however often assumed, it is likely to be repeated again and again:—How can that institution be tolerable, by which a large class of society is cut off from the hope of improvement and knowledge; to whom blows are not degrading, theft no more than a fault, falsehood and the want of chastity almost venial; and in which a husband or parent looks with comparative indifference on that which to a free man would be the dishonour of a wife or child? But why not, if it produce the greatest aggregate of good? Sin and ignorance are only evils because they lead to misery." [20]
"The African negro is an inferior variety of the human race, … and his distingaishing characteristics are such as peculiarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies among us; …. the most remarkable is their indifference to personal liberty." "Let me ask if this people do not present the very material out of which slaves ought to be made?" "I do not mean to say that there may not be found among them some of superior capacity to many white persons…. And why should it not be so? We have many domestic animals— infinite varieties, distinguished by various degrees of sagacity, courage, strength, swiftness, and other qualities."
" Slavery has done more to elevate a degraded race in the scale of humanity; to tame the savage, to civilize the barbarous, to soften the ferocious, to enlighten the ignorant, and to spread the blessing of Christianity among the heathen, than all the missionaries that philanthropy and religion have ever put forth." "The tendency of Slavery is to elevate the character of the master," "to elevate the female character." "There does not now exist a people in a tropical climate, or even approaching to it, where Slavery does not exist that is in a state of high civilization. Mexico and the South American republics, having gone through the farce of abolishing slavery, are rapidly degenerating." "Cuba is daily and rapidly advancing in industry and civilization; and it is owing exclusively to her slaves. St Domingo is struck out of the map of civilized existence, and the British West Indies shortly will be so." "Greece is still barbarous, and scantily peopled." "Such is the picture of Italy—nothing has dealt upon it more heavily than the loss of domestic Slavery. Is not this evident?"[21]
A writer in the same work, speaking of the future of the South, refers to the British and French West Indies as follows:—
"The mind of the devout person who contemplates the condition of the ci-devant slave-colonies of these two powers, must become impressed with the fact, that Providence must have raised up those two examples of human folly for the express purpose of a lesson to these States, to save which from human errors it has, on more than one occasion, manifestly and directly interposed." "England itself … is in some sort the slave of Southern blacks."
" The few articles which are most necessary to modern civilization — suffar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco — are products of compulsory black labour."[22]
Another writer, whom I take to be a clergyman and a Jesuityf ^oes so far as to forbid all sympathy for the sufferings of slaves:—
"Sympathy for them could do them no good, because a relief from slavery could not elevate them—could do them no good, but an injury. Hence such sympathy is forbidden;" meaning it is forbidden by God, in such passages as this: "Thine eye shall not pity him" (Deut. xix. 13). He maintains that African slavery is a punishment divinely inflicted on the descendants of Ham for his offence. Ham, he thinks, married a descendant of Cain, and his children inherited the " mark" set upon the first murderer!
Let us now look at some facts connected with Slavery in America.
No nation has, on the whole, treated its African slaves so gently as the Americans. This is proved by the rapid increase of the slave population. Compare America in this respect with some of the British West Indies. In seventy-three years, from 1702 to 1776, the increase of the coloured popidation of Jamaica was 158,614; but in that period there were imported and retained in the island, 360,622 ; so the slave-owners in seventy-three years must have used up and destroyed about 300,000 human beings. This dreadful exploitation continued a long time. From 1775 to 1794, about 113,000 more were imported ;
i" "John Fletcher of Louisiana," in his 8i/vtMes on SUwery wi (119)
Easy Lessons. Natchez, 1852. 8vo. pp. xiv. and 637. The author luxu-
riates in the idea of Slavery, and gives the public a paradigm of the
Hebrew verb ^?y, to slave, in Teal, nvphal, pihel, puhol, hvphil hophaZ^
hitlvpael ; and a declension of the ^* facUtiotbs euphonic segholaU^* noun,
•TO, a slcwe.
I In 1658 there
were in
Jamaica
1,400 slaves.
1670
»
)>
8,000 „
1673
»i
n
9,504 „
1702
9»
it
36,000 „
1734
»»
n
86,546 „ [persons.
1775
»
n
194,614 „ and firee coloured but in 1791 there were only 260,000 coloured persons in Jamaica. In sixteen years, the loss was more than 47,000 greater than the entire importation. To say it all in a word: in 1702, Jamaica started with 36,000 slaves; up to 1791, she had imported and retained in bondage 473,000 more; making a total of 509,000 souls, and in 1791, she had only 260,000 to show as the result of her traffic in human souls. There was a waste of 249,000 lives![23]
About 760,000 slaves were imported into Jamaica between 1650 and 1808. If that nimiber seems excessive, diminish it to 700,000, which is certainly below the fact; then add all the children born in the one hundred and eighty-four years which elapsed before the day of emancipation came. Remember that only 311,000 were there to be emancipated in 1834, and it is plain what a dreadful massacre of human lifd had been going on in that garden of the western world,[24]
About 1,700,000 slaves have been imported into the British West Indies. Of all this number, and the vast families of children born thereof, in 1834 there were only 780,993 to be emancipated.
Look at the course of things in the United States. In 1714, the number of coloured persons was 58,850; in 1850, 3,626,985.[25]
The United States can show ten Africans now living for every one brought into the country, while the British West Indies, in 1834, could not show one living man for each two brought thither as slaves.[26] A Texan newspaper, the Columbian Planter, of April 5, 1863, deprecates all discussion of Slavery, and thus speaks of the slave code of that State:—"We consider it the duty of the County Court to have these local laws compiled and printed in a cheap form, and a copy placed on each plantation in the county. But we cannot, with what we consider the true policy and interest of the South, open the columns of the Planter for their publication."
"We regard the institution of domestic slavery as purely a local subject, which should lie at the feet of the Southern press with deathlike silence; for its great importance will not admit of its discussion."
I will mention three cases of cruelty which have lately come to my knowledge. A black free man, in a city of Kentucky, had a wife who was a slave. One evening her master, who had a grudge against the husband, found him in the kitchen with her, and ordered him out of the house. He went, but left the gate of the back yard open as he passed out. The white man ordered him to return and shut it; the black man grumbled and refused; whereupon the white man shot him dead! The murderer was a "class leader" in the church, and attended a meeting shortly after this transaction. He was asked to "comfort the souls of the meeting, and improve his gift" by some words of exhortation. He declined on the ground that he felt dissatisfied with himself, that he himself "needed to be strengthened, and wished for the prayers of the brethren." They appointed a committee to look into the matter, who reported that he had done nothing wrong. The affair was also brought before a magistrate, who dismissed the case!
Here is another, yet more atrocious. A slave-holder in South Carolina had inflicted a brutal and odious mutilation, which cannot be named, on two male slaves for some offence. Last year the master attempted to inflict the same barbarity upon a third slave. He ordered another black man to help bind the victim. The slave, struggling against them both, seized a knife, killed the master, and then took his own life. The neighbours came together, ascertained the facts, and hung up the slave's dead body at the next four corners, as a terror to the coloured people of the place! No account of it was published in the newspapers. Slavery "should lie at the feet of the Southern press with deathlike silence!"
While writing this address I receive intelligence of a slave woman recently whipped to death in Missouri. An incautious German, who had not been long enough in the country to become converted to " American Christianity," and so callous to such things, published an account of the transaction in a German newspaper. The murderers were not punished.
The following advertisement is taken from a newspaper published in Wilmington (North Carolina), in March, 1863. Nothing in Mrs. Stowe's work is so atrocious; for American fiction halts this side of the American fact:—
225 Dollars Reward.—State of North Carolina, New Hanover Connly.—Whereas, complaint upon oath has this day been made to ns, two of the Justices of the Peace for the State and connty aforesaid, by Benjamin Hallett, of the said county, that two certain male slaves belonging to him, named Lott, aged about twenty- two years, five feet four or five inches high, and black, formerly belonging to Lott Williams, of Onslow Co.; and Bob, aged about sixteen years, five feet high, and black, have absented themselves firom their said master's service, and supposed to be lurking about this county, committing acts of felony and other misdeeds. These are, therefore, in the name of the State aforesaid, to command the said slaves forthwith to return home to their masters ; and we do hereby, by virtue of the Act of the Greneral Assembly in such cases made and provided, intimate and declare, that if the said Lott and Bob do not return home and surrender themselves, any person may kill and destroy the said slaves, by such means as he or they may think of, without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so doing, and with out incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby.
Given under our hands and seals, this 28th day of February, 1853.
225 Dollars Reward.—Two hundred dollars will be given for negro Lott, either dead or alive ; and twenty-five dollars for Bob's head, delivered to the subscriber in the town of Wilmington.
March 2, 1853.
I will next proceed to show some of the effects of democracy at the North, and despotism at the South.
First notice the effect on the increase of population. In 1790, the entire population of the territory now occupied by the slave States was 1,961,372 exclusive of Indians; that of the free States was 1,968,455.
In 1850, with an addition of immense territories—Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico— the population of the slave States amounted to 9,719,779 ; the free States and territories, not including Oregon and California, had 13,348,371 souls. The population of the free States has increased about six hundred per cent., that of the slave only about four hundred per cent.
Let us compare a free and a slave State which lie side by side. In soil and climate, Kentucky is superior to Ohio—only the stream separates them. Slavery is on one side, freedom on the other; and what a difference!
Kentucky contains 37,680 square miles. It is well watered with navigable rivers—the Ohio, Cumberland, Kentucky, Green, and Salt. The soil is admirable, producing abundantly; the climate mild and salubrious. It abounds in minerals—coal, iron, lead. The salt springs were famous even with the French and Indians. Rice, cotton, and the sugar-cane grow in Kentucky.
Ohio contains 39,964 square miles of land, no better watered, with a soil not superior, less favoured with mineral riches, yet also abounding in iron and coal ; the climate is sterner, the water power less copious.
In 1790, Kentucky had 73,077 inhabitants; Ohio not a white man. In 1800, Kentucky had 220,959; Ohio only 45,365. But in 1850, Kentucky had only 982,405; while Ohio had grown to 1,980,427 souls. To-day, Kentucky has not 775,000 freemen, while Ohio has more than 2,000,000.
In 1810, Louisville, the capital of Kentucky, numbered 4,012 persons; Cincinnati, the chief town of Ohio, contained 9,644. Now Louisville has less than 50,000, and Cincinnati more than 150,000; while Cleveland and Columbus, in the same State, have risen from nothing to cities each containing 20,000 inhabitants.
Look next at the effect of these different institutions on the productive industry, of the different sections of the land. In the North, labour is respected. In 1845, there were in Boston 19,037 private families ; there were 15,744 who kept no servant, and only 1,069 who had more than one. Is Boston poor? In 1854, the property of her citizens, taxable on the spot, is more than $225,000,000.
In 1847, the real property in Boston was valued at $97,764,500,— $45,271,120 more than the value of all the real estate of South Carolina, with her 24,500 square miles of land. South Carolina "owns" 384,984 slaves; at $400 a head, they would come to $153,993,600. The actual property of the inhabitants of Boston, in 1854, is sufficient to buy all those slaves, and then leave a balance sufficient to pay the market value of all the houses and land in that proud State.
In 1839, the census value of the annual agricultural products of the entire South was $312,380,151; that of the free States, $342,007,446. Yet the South had an advantage by nature, and 249,780 more persons engaged in agriculture.
The manufactures of the South for that year were worth $42,178,184; of the North, $197,658,040.
The aggregate earnings of all the South were $403,429,718, of the North, $658,705,108. The entire earnings of the two Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, amounted to $189,321,719; those of New York to $193,806,433.
Omitting the territories and California from the estimate, in 1850, the fifteen slave States contained 190,297,188 acres of land in farms ; the fifteen Northern States only 97,087,778 acres. But the Northern farms were worth $283,023,483, while the Southern were valued at only $253,583,234. The South has 93,000,000 acres the most land, and it is worth $30,000,000 the least.
The South has invested $95,918,842 in manufacturing establishments which give an annual return of $167,906,350: while the North has $431,290,351 in manufactures, with a yearly earning of $845,430,428. In 1853, the South had 438,297 tons of shipping; at $40 a ton it was worth $17,331,880. The North had 3,831,047 tons, worth $153,241,880.
On the 1st of September, 1852, the South had 2,144 miles of railroad; the North 9,661 miles. The cost of 1,140 miles of railroad in Massachusetts with its equipment was $56,559,982.
In 1850, the aggregate value of aU the property real and personal of the fifteen slave States was $2,755,411,554; that of fifteen free States—omitting California—was $3,186,683,924. But in the Southern estimate the value of the working men is included ; appraising the 3,200,412 at $400 apiece, they come to $1,280,164,800; deduct this from the gross sum, and there remains $1,476,246,754 as the worth of all the material property of all the persons in the fifteen slave States; while the inhabitants of the free States have material property amounting to $3,186,683,924.
The different effects of democracy and despotism appear in the higher forms of industry—the inventions which perform the work of human hands. From 1790 to 1849, there were 16,514 patents granted for inventions made in the free States, and only 2,202 in the slave States. I omit patents granted to citizens of the district of Columbia, and to foreigners. In 1851, 64 patents were granted to citizens of the slave States ; 656 to those of the free States. Besides, many of the Southern patents are granted to men born and bred at the North.
It is not too much to say, that the machinery of Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, driven by water and steam, earns every year more than all the 3,000,000 slaves of the entire South. Even Chancellor Harper confesses that "free labour is cheaper than the labour of slaves." The South kidnaps men, breeds them as cattle, brands them as cattle, beats them as cattle, sells them as cattle—does not know "whether they have a soul or not;" declares them cursed by God, not fit for human sympathy, incapable of development, indifferent to liberty, to chastity, without natural affection ; breaks up their marriages, forbids them to be taught reading and writing—behold the practical results!
Look at the effect of these two institutions, the democratic and the despotic, on the intellectual education of the people, in the North and South.
In 1839, there were in the slave States, at schools and colleges, 301,172 pupils; in the free States, 2,212,444 pupils at school and college. New York sends, to school and college, more than twice as many young persons as all the slave States.
At that time there were in Connecticut 163,843 free persons over twenty years of age ; of these only 526 were unable to read and write. In South Carolina, there were 111,663 free persons over twenty, and of these 20,615 were reported as unable to write or read. The ignorant men of Connecticut were almost all foreigners, those of South Carolina natives of that soil. A sixth part of the voters of South Carolina are unable to read the ballot they east. According to the census of 1850, in the year 1849, the South paid $2,717,771 for public schools; the North $6,834,388. The South had 976,966 children at school; the North, 3,106,961.
The South had 2,867,567 native whites over twenty years of age; of these 532,605 were unable even to read—more than eighteen per cent. In the North there were 6,649,001 native whites over twenty, and only 278,575 thus illiterate—not four and one-fourth per cent. In 1850, there were in the United States 2,800 newspapers and other periodicals, from the daily to the quarterly, issuing annually about 422,700,000 copies, to about 5,000,000 subscribers. Of these journals, 716 were in the slave States—including those printed in the capital of America— and 2,084 in the free States. The circulation of Southern periodicals, however, is limited: their average is not more than one-half or two-thirds that of the northern journals.
Almost all who are eminent in science, literature, or art—naturalists, historians, poets, preachers—are Northern men. The Southern pulpit produces nothing remarkable but evidences of the Divinity of Slavery.
The respective military power of the democratic and despotic institutions was abundantly tested in the revolutionary war. From 1775 to 1783, the free population of the slave States was 1,307,549; there were also 657,527 slaves. New England contained 673,215 free persons, and 3,886 slaves. During the nine years of that war, the slave States furnished the continental army with 58,421 regular soldiers; New England alone furnished 118,380 regulars. The slave States had also 12,719 militia-men, and New England 46,048 militia-men.
After the battle of Bunker Hill, when the States in Congress were called on to furnish soldiers. South Carolina, in consequence of her "peculiar institutions," asked that hers might remain at home. In 1779 (March 29th) a committee of Congress reported that "the State of South Carolina is unable to make any effectual effort, with militia, by reason of the great proportion of the citizens necessary to remain at home, to prevent insurrection among the negroes, and prevent the desertion of them to the enemy." From 1775 to 1783, South Carolina contained 166,018 free persons, Connecticut only 158,760. During the nine years of the war. South Carolina sent 5,508 soldiers to the army, and Connecticut 39,831. While the six slave States could raise only 58,421 soldiers, and 12,779 militia-men, Massachusetts alone contributed 67,937 soldiers to the continental army, and 15,155 militia-men—in all 83,092!
The demoralizing influence of American despotism is fearfully obvious in the conduct of the general Government. It debases the legislative and the executive power; the Supreme Court is its venal prostitute. You remember the Inaugural of Mr. Pierce:—
"I believe that involuntary servitude is recognised by the Constitution. I believe that it stands like any other admitted right. I hold that the laws of 1850 [the Fugitive Slave Act] commonly called the 'compromise measures,' are strictly constitutional, and to be unhesitatingly carried out." "The laws to enforce these [rights to property in the body and soul of men] should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully, and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs."
The effect of Slavery on the morality of the North is painful to reflect upon. Northern merchants engage in the internal slave trade ; in the foreign slave trade; they own plantations at the South ; they lend money to the South, and take slaves as security. The Northern church is red with the guilt of bondage; most of its eminent preachers are deadly enemies to the freedom of the African. How many clerical defenders has the Fugitive Slave Act found in the North? The court-house furnished kidnappers at Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; the church justified them in the name of God. I know of no church which has ever showed itself more cowardly than the American. Since 1849, the Bible Society dares not distribute the Scriptures to slaves. The American Tract Society adapts its publications to the Southern market, by expunging every word hostile to the patriarchal institution. Mr. Gurney says, "If this love had always prevailed among professing Christians, where would have been the sword of the crusader? Where the African slave-trade? Where the odious system which permits to man a property in his fellow-man, and converts rational beings into marketable chattels?" The American Tract Society alters the text, and instead of what I have italicized, it prints: "Where the tortures of the Inquisition? Where every system of oppression and wrong by which he who has the power revels in luxury and ease at the expense of his fellow-men!"
In 1850 and 1851, the most prominent preachers in the North came out in public and justified the kidnapping of men in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It is true some noble mimsters lifted up their voices against it; but the theological leaders went for man-steabng, and knew no higher law.
Commercial and political journals denounced every minister who appUed the golden rule of the Gospel to the poor fugitives from Slavery. Several clergymen were driven from their parishes in Massachusetts, because they preached against kidnapping. Metropolitan newspapers invited merchants to refuse to trade with towns where the Fugitive Slave Bill was unpopular; lawyers and doctors opposed to Slavery must not be employed.
Anti-Slavery sentiments are carefully excluded from school-books : the writers want a Southern market. The principal men in the Northern colleges appear to be on the side of oppression. The political and commercial press of the North is mainly on the side of the slave-holder. While preparing this paper I find in a Northern newspaper (the Boston Courier, of April 26, 1853) an advertisement as follows : —
"A RARE CHANCE FOR CAPITALISTS!
"FOR SALE.
"The Pulaski Honse, at Savannah, and Fnmitnre, and a number of PRIME NEGROES, accustomed to hotel business," etc.
The advertisement is dated "Savannah, 19th April."
On that day, 1851, Boston landed at Savannah a man whom she had kidnapped in her own streets; on that day, in 1775, a few miles from Boston, a handful of farmers and mechanics first drew the sword of America against the oppressions of her parent, "in the sacred cause of God and their country." Nemesis is never asleep! If men are to be advertised for sale in a Boston newspaper, it is well that the advertisement should date from the Battle of Lexington, or the Declaration of Independence.
Last year the State of Illinois passed "An Act to prevent the immigration of free negroes" into that State. A man who brings a free negro or mulatto into the State is to be fined not less than $100, nor more than $500, and to be imprisoned not more than a year. Every negro thus coming, shall be fined fifty dollars, and, if unable to pay, shall be sold to any person "who will pay said fine and costs, for the shortest time." "Every person who shall have one-fourth negro blood shaU be deemed a mulatto." Delaware has just passed a similar law, though with penalties less severe.
In the commercial journals of the free and the slave States, the most scandalous abuse has been poured out upon Mrs. Stowe for her Uncle Tom^ Cabin, and its Key. "Priestess of Darkness" is one of the pleasant epithets applied to her. The Duchess of Sutherland receives, also, a large share of abuse from the same quarter. When the kidnapper is honoured; when "prime negroes" are advertised for sale; when clergymen recommend manstealing in the name of Christ and of God, it is very proper that ladies of genius and philanthropy should be held up as objects of scorn and contempt! Men who know no law higher than the Fugitive Slave Bill, must work after their kind.
It is a strange spectacle which America just now offers. Exiles flee hither, four hundred thousand in a year, and are welcome; while Americans born take their lives in their hand, and fly to Canada, to Nova Scotia, for an asylum. Unsuccessful "rebels," who have committed "treason" at home, find a shelter in America, a welcome, and the protection of the democratic government; while 3,300,000 men, guilty of no crime, are kept in a bondage worse than Siberian. The "chief judicial officer" of South Carolina tliinks of all "distinguishing characteristics" of the negroes "the most remarkable is their indifference to personal liberty." But democratic Calhoun, with Clay, Webster, and aU the leaders of the South, must unite to make the Fugitive Slave Bill, and hinder those men who are indifferent to personal Hberty from running away! After all the tumult, fifteen hundred fugitives got safely out of the slave soil of the Unit^ States in the year 1853. Alas, they must escape to the territories of a monarch! Of all the ground covered by the Declaration of Independence, not an inch is free soil, except the five thousand miles which Britain regained by the Ashburton treaty. Every foot of monarchic British soil can change a slave to a free man ; while in all the three million square miles of democratic America, there is not an inch of land where he can claim the natural and unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. English is the only tongue for liberty ; it is also the only speech in which kidnapping is justified by the clergy in the name of God. The despots of the European continent point with, delight to the American democrats enslaving one another, and declaring there is no higher law.
There can be no lasting peace between the two conflicting ideas I have named above. One wants a Democracy, the other a Despotism; each is incursive, aggressive, exterminating. Which shall yield? The answer is plain: Slavery is to perish out of America; Democracy is to triumph. Every census makes the result of the two ideas more apparent. The North increases in numbers, in riches, in the intellectual development of the great mass of its people—out of all proportion to the South. Slavery is a bad tool to work with. In the South, there is little skilled labour, little variety of industry; rude farm labour, rearing com, coffee, tobacco, sugar, cotton, that is all. At Boston, at New York, on the Kennebec, and the Penobscot, Northern men build ships of oak from Virginia, and hard pine from Georgia; they get the pitch and tar from Carolina, the hemp from Kentucky—that State which has no shipping. Labour is cheap on the fair land of the Carolinas, the best in the world for red wheat; labour is dear in Pennsylvania, but she undersells the Carolinas in the wheat market. Tennessee has rich mines of iron ore—the fine bloomer iron; slave labour is cheap, coal abundant. "Work is dear in Pennsylvania; but there free labour makes better iron at cheaper rates. The South is full of water power; within six miles of the President's house there is force enough to turn all the mills of British Manchester; it runs by as idle as a cloud. The Southerner draws water in a Northern bucket, drinks from a Northern cup; with a Northern fork and spoon he eats from a Northern dish, set on a Northern table. He wears Northern shoes !made from Southern hides; Northern coats, hats, shirts ; he keeps time with a Northern watch; his wife wears Northern jewels, plays on a Northern pianoforte; he sleeps in a Northern bed ; reads (if read he can) a Northern book; and writes (if writing be not a figure of speech) on Northern paper, with a pen from, the North. The laws of Mississippi must be printed in a Northern town! The Southerner has no market near at hand, no variety of labour, little that is educational in toil; industry is dishonourable. It is the curse of Slavery which makes it so!
Three forces now work against this institution: Political Economy, showing that it does not pay; the Public Opinion of England, France, Germany, of all Christendom, heaping shame on the "model republic"—"the first and most enlightened nation in the world;" the still small voice of Conscience in all men. The Political Economist scoffs at the absolute Right; the Partisan Politician mocks at the Higher Law; the Pharisee in the pulpit makes mouths at the invisible Spirit, which silently touches the hearts of women and of men. But he who knows the world because he knows man, and man's God, understands very well, that though Justice has feet of wool, her hands are of iron. These three forces—it is plain what they will do with American Slavery.
This institution of Slavery has brought us into most deadly peril. A story is told of some Italian youths, of famous family, in the Middle Ages. Borgia and his comrades sat riotously feasting, long past midnight, hot with young blood, giddy with passion, crazed with fiery wine. In their intemperate laughter they hear the hoarse voice of monks in the street, coming romid the comer, chanting the Miserere as service for the dying, " Have mercy upon me, God, according to thy loving-kindness!" "What is that?" cries one. " Oh," answers another, "it is only some poor soul going to hell, and the priests are trying to cheat the devil of his due ! Push round the wine." Again comes the chant, "For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me!" "How near it is; under the windows," says a reveller, turning pale. "What if it should be meant for one of us; let me look." He opens the window, the torches flash in from the dark street, and the chant pours on them, " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!" They all spring to their feet. "Whom is it for?" they cry out. "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, God, thou God of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness," is the answer. They throw open the door—the mother of Borgia rushes in: "You are all dead men," she cries; "I poisoned the wine myself. Confess, and make your peace with God; here are His ministers." The white-robed priests fill up the room, chanting, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt not despise!" "But here is an antidote for my son," cries the mother of Borgia. "Take it!" He dashes the cup on the ground—and the gay company lies there, pale-blue, poisoned, and dead! Shall that be the fate of America? Yes; if she cast the cup of healing to the ground! Other admonitions must come, yet more terrible, before we learn for whom the Miserere is now wailing forth.
If America were to keep this shameftd pest in the land, then ruin is sure to follow,—ruin of all the dear-bought institutions of our fathers. The slaves double in about twenty-five years; so in A.D. 1930, there would be 27,000,000 of slaves! What a thought ! The question is not merely, shall we have Slavery and Freedom, but Slavery or Freedom. The two cannot long continue side by side.
When this hinderance is taken away, there is a noble career open before this young giant. There is a new con
tinent, now for the first time married to the civilized world. Various races of men mingle their blood—Indians, Africans, Caucasians ; various tribes—Celtic Irish, Welsh, Scotch, Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, Polish, Swiss, French, Spanish; all these are here. Each will contribute its best to the general stock. Democratic institutions and Democratic education will give an intellectual development to the mass of men such as the world never saw. There is no fear of war; the army and the navy do not number thirty thousand men. The energies of the nation will be directed to their natural work—subduing material Nature, and developing human Nature into its higher forms. Now we are excessively material in our tastes—one day if this great obstacle be overcome, America will be eminent also for science, letters, art, and for the noblest virtues which adorn mankind. No nation had ever so fair an opportunity—shall we be false to our origin, and the heart's high hope P Humanity says, "No!"
- ↑ Bancroft, History of United States, vol. v. p. 66, et seq.
- ↑ Bancroft, ubi sup. p. 67, et seq.
- ↑
Table of Population in 1715. Colonies. Whites. Negroes. Total. New Hampshire 9,500 150 9,650 Massachusetts 94,000 2,000 96,000 Rhode Island 8,500 500 9,000 Connecticut 46,000 1,500 47,500 New York 27,000 4,000 31,000 New Jersey 21,000 1,500 22,500 Pennsylvania and Delaware 43,300 2,500 45,800 Maryland 40,700 9,500 50,200 Virginia 72,000 23,000 95,000 North Carolina 7,500 3,700 11,200 South Carolina 6,250 10,500 16,750 375,750 58,850 134,600 In 1754, another return was made to the Board of Trade, in the following
Table of Population in 1754.
Whites.
1,192,896Blacks.
292,738Total.
1,485,634We will now give the population at seven successive periods, as indicated by the returns of the official census of the United States.
Table of Population from 1790 to 1850.
Years. Whites. Free Coloured. Slaves. Total. 1790 3,172,464 59,466 697,897 3,929,827 1800 4,304,489 108,395 893,041 5,305,925 1810 5,862,004 186,446 1,191,864 7,239,814 1820 7,872,711 238,197 1,543,688 9,654,596 1830 10,537,378 319,599 2,009,043 12,866,020 1840 14,189,555 386,348 2,487,355 17,069,453 1850 19,630,738 428,661 3,198,324 23,257,723 The following is the official report of Immigration from 1790 to 1850. Much of it is conjectural and approximate.
Table of Immigration from 1790 to 1850.
From 1790 to 1800 120,000 From„ 1810 to 1820 114,000 From„ 1820 to 1830 203,979 From„ 1830 to 1840 778,500 From„ 1840 to 1850 1,542,840
2,759,329 The immigrants are thus conjecturally distributed among the nations of the earth. The estimate is a rough one.
Table of Nationality.
Celtic—Irish (one-half ) 1,350,000 Teutonic — Germans, Danes, Swedes, etc. (one-fourth) 675,000 Miscellaneous — All other nations 734,329
The following statement exhibits the nationality of the immigration to the United States for the calendar year, 1851 (Dec. 31, 1850, to Dec. 31, 1851):—
Nationality of Immigrants in 1851.
From Great Britain and Ireland 264,222 „ Germany 72,283 „ France 20,107 Of these there were Males 245,017 „ „ Females 163,745 „ „ Unknown 66 Table of Immigration for the first four months of 1853. From the British Islands 15,023 „ French Ports 8,768 „ German Ports 3,511 „ Belgian and Dutch . . . 2,747 „ Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian 135
- ↑ The following table shows the occupation of 4,798,870 persons in 1840, ascertained by the census:—
Table of Occupation. Engaged in Mining 15,211 „ Agriculture 3,719,951 „ Commerce 117,607 „ Manufactures 791,749 „ Navigation (Ocean) 56,021 „ Navigation„ (Inland Waters) 33,076 „ Learned Professions 65,255 - ↑ I take these results of the census of 1840, as deduced by Professor Tucker, in his admirable book, Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years. New York, 1843. 1 vol. 8vo.
- ↑ In the large towns of the north—even of Massachusetts—the coloured children are not allowed in the common schools.
- ↑ Art. I. § 6.
- ↑ See above, vol. i. p. 394, et seq.
- ↑ Richmond (Va.) Semi-weekly Examiner, January 4, 1863.
- ↑ "The Industrial Resources, etc., of the Southern and Western States: embracing a View of their Commerce, Agriculture, Manufactures, Internal Improvements; Slave and Free Labour, Slavery Institutions, Products, etc., of the South, etc., with an Appendix." By J. D. B. de Bow, etc. In 8 vols. 8vo. New Orleans, 1852.
- ↑ De Bow, vol. ii. p. 199.
- ↑ Id. p. 203.
- ↑ Id. p. 204.
- ↑ De Bow, vol. ii. p. 197.
- ↑ Id. pp. 206—210.
- ↑ Id. pp. 214—217.
- ↑ De Bow, vol. ii. p. 217, et seq.
- ↑ De Bow, vol. ii. p. 219, et seq.
- ↑ Id. p. 222.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ e Bow, voL ii. pp. 222— 229
- ↑ De Bow, vol. iii. pp. 39, 40.
- ↑ From 1791 to 1808, about 150,000 more were imported, and the slave population in 1808 was only 323,827, showing a waste of more than 86,000 lives in eighteen years! Importation was illegal, but still carried on after the latter date; at least 80,000 must have been smuggled in, in the next nine years.
In 1817 the number of slaves was 346,150 In 1826 it had fallen to 331,119 In 1833 {{{1}}}„ {{{1}}}„ 311,692 After the importation ceased, more pains were taken to preserve the Africans; but the table shows how mortality went on with increased velocity.
Years. Registered Births. Registered Deaths. From 1817 to 1820 24,348 25,104 from„ 1823 to 1826 23,026 25,171 from„ 1826 to 1829 21,728 25,137 - ↑ The same thing took place in all the British West Indies. Look at the following
Table of Slave Population of British Guiana. Number in 1820 77,376 Number in„ 1826 71,382 Number in„ 1832 65,517 Loss in twelve years 11,859 Table of Births and Deaths. Years. Registered Births. Registered Deaths. 1817 to 1820 4868 7140 1820 to 1823 4512 7188 1823 to 1826 4494 7634 1826 to 1829 4684 5731 1829 to 1832 4086 7016 - ↑ Here is a conjectural and approximate
Table of Importation of African Slaves to the United States.
Before 1714 30,000 From 1715 to 1750 90,000 From„ 1750 to 1760 35,000 From„ 1760 to 1770 74,000 From„ 1770 to 1790 34,000 After 1790 70,000 Total 333,500 - ↑ The above facts, and the authorities for them, are taken from a valuable and readable book, by H. C. Carey, The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign; why it exists, and how it may be extinguished. Philadelphia, 1853. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 426. Another work, by M. Charles Comte, contains much information relative to slavery, and its effects in ancient and modern times:—Traité de Législation ou Exposition det Lois Générales suivant lesquelles les Peuples protpérent, deperissent, ou restent stationaires, etc. (3me Edition, Bruxelles, 1837.) Livre v.
In De Bow, vol. ii. p. 340, et seq., is a statement of the importation of Slaves to Charleston, from 1804 to 1807, whence I construct the following
Table of South Carolina Slave-Trade 1804-1807.
70 vessels owned in England brought 19,649 slaves. 3 vessels„ owned in„ France brought„ 1,078 slaves„ 61 vessels„ owned in„ Charleston brought„ 7,723 slaves„ 59 vessels„ owned in„ Rhode Island brought„ 8,238 slaves„ 4 vessels„ owned in„ Baltimore brought„ 750 slaves„ 3 vessels„ owned in„ other Southern Ports brought„ 787 slaves„ 3 vessels„ owned in„ other„ Northern Ports brought„ 650 slaves„ 39,075 slaves„ Of these, 3433 were imported on account of citizens of the slave-holding States, and 35,642 on account of capitalists in countries where Slavery was prohibited! Newport, in Rhode Island, was famous for the slave-trade, and its prosperity fell with that business. The cost of paving the only street in the town paved with stone was defrayed by a tax of ten dollars on each slave brought into the harbour. So late as 1850, Boston vessels were engaged in the African slave-trade. The domestic slave-trade still employs many northern vessels,—1033 slaves were shipped at Baltimore, for various southern ports, in 1851.
The most important articles of export for five-and twenty years appear in the following
| Years. | Cotton. | Breadstuffs and Provisions. | Tobacco. |
| 1825 | $36,846,649 | $11,634,449 | $6,115,623 |
| 1830 | 29,674,883 | 12,075,430 | 5,586,365 |
| 1835 | 64,961,302 | 12,009,399 | 8,250,577 |
| 1840 | 63,870,307 | 19,067,535 | 9,883,957 |
| 1845 | 51,739,643 | 16,743,421 | 7,469,819 |
| 1850 | 71,484,616 | 26,051,373 | 9,951,023 |
| 1852 | 87,965,732 | 25,857,177 | 10,031,283 |
The greatest amount of cotton was exported in 1852, —1,093,230,639 pounds; but the greatest value of cotton was in 1851, amounting to $112,351,317. In 1847, the value of breadstuffs and provisions exported was $68,701,921.
The government revenues for the fiscal year 1852 were $49,728,386.89, there was a balance in the treasury of $10,911,645.68; making the total means for that year $60,640,032.57. On the 1st January, 1853, the national debt amounted to $65,131,692.