Cotton was indigenous to America; the soil and climate of the South were well adapted to its growth. Its culture from the seed was there very easy, but the separation of the seed from the fibre was so slow that it required an average hand one day to secure one pound.
Whitney"s cotton-gin, however, at once increased the amount from one to fifty pounds.
This invention came at a most opportune time for slavery in the United States, as the cheapness of rice, indigo, and other staples of the South were such as to prevent their large and profitable production even with the labor of slaves. Cotton was not, in 1794, the date of Jay"s treaty with Great Britain, known to him as an article of export. Soon, by the use of the cotton-gin, cotton became the princ.i.p.al article of export from the United States; cotton plantations rapidly increased in size and number, and their owners multiplied their slaves and grew rich. Cotton production increased from 1793 to 1860 one thousand fold.
It is highly probably that Eli Whitney"s cotton-gin operated to prevent the much-hoped-for early emanc.i.p.ation of slaves in America, and that thus the inventive genius of man was instrumental in forging the fetters of man.
Other products, such as rice and sugar, were successfully produced in the South, but the demand for them was limited by compet.i.tion in other countries, in some of which slave labor was employed.
The ease of producing cotton stimulated its common use throughout the world, and it soon became a necessary commodity in all civilized countries. "Cotton is king" was the cry of the slaveholder and the exporter. Southern aristocracy rested on it. In the more northern of the slave States, where cotton, on account of the climate, could not be successfully grown, the breeding of slaves with which to supply the cotton planters with the requisite number of hands became a source of great profit; and the slave trade was revived to aid in supplying the same great demand.
Tobacco and some of the cereals were also produced by slave labor, but they could be produced by free labor North as well as South.
Of the above 3,000,000 slaves in the United States in 1850, it has been estimated that 1,800,000 were employed in the growth and preservation of cotton alone, and its value that year was $105,600,000, while the sugar product was valued, the same year, at only $12,400,000, and rice at $3,000,000. The total domestic exports for the year ending 1850 were $137,000,000, of which cotton reached $72,000,000, and all breadstuffs and provisions only $26,000,000.(29)
(29) DeBow"s _Resource_, etc., vol. iii., p. 388.
VIII FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW--1793
Contemporaneous with the cotton-gin came, in 1793, the first fugitive- slave law.
The Const.i.tution was not self-executing, if it really contained, as we have seen, a clause requiring escaped slaves to be surrendered from one State to their masters in another.
The Governor of the State of Virginia refused the rendition of three kidnappers of a free negro, on the requisition of the Governor of Pennsylvania, from which State he had been kidnapped, on the sole ground that no law required the surrender of fugitive slaves from Virginia. The controversy thus arising was called to the attention of President Washington and by him to Congress, and it ended by the pa.s.sage of the first fugitive-slave act. It was for a time tolerably satisfactory to the different sections of the country, though in itself the most flagrant attempt to violate state-rights, judged from the more modern secession, state-rights standpoint, ever attempted by Federal authority.
It required _state magistrates_, who owed their offices solely to state law, to sit in judgment in fugitive-slave cases, and to aid in returning to slavery negroes claimed as slaves by masters from foreign States. The act provided for the return of fugitive apprentices as well as fugitive slaves.
In time the Northern States became free, and the public conscience in them became so changed that the magistrates were deterred or unwilling to act in execution of the law. Ma.s.sachusetts and Pennsylvania each pa.s.sed a law making it penal for any of their officers to perform any duties or to take cognizance of any case under the fugitive-slave law. Other States, through their judiciary, p.r.o.nounced it unconst.i.tutional, even some of the Federal judges doubted its consonance with the Const.i.tution, but, such as it was, it lasted until 1850. It did not provide for a jury trial. The scenes enacted in its execution shocked the moral sense of mankind, and even the slaveholder often shrank from attempting its execution.
But it was not until about the time of the excitement of the fugitive- slave law of 1850 that the highest excitement prevailed in the North over its enforcement, and of this we shall speak hereafter.
IX SLAVE TRADE: ABOLISHED BY LAW
In the English Parliament, in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, the first motion was made towards the abolition of the slave trade, long theretofore fostered by English kings and queens, but not until 1807 did the British moral sense rise high enough to pa.s.s, at Lord Granville"s instance, the famous act for "the Abolition of the Slave Trade." As early as 1794 the United States prohibited their subjects from trading in slaves to foreign countries; and in 1807, they prohibited the importation of slaves into any of the States, to take effect at the beginning of 1808, the earliest time possible, as we have seen, under the Const.i.tution.
But it was not until 1820 that slave-traders were declared pirates, punishable as such.
The prohibition of the slave trade by law did not effectually end it, nor was the law declaring it piracy wholly effectual, though the latter did much, through the co-operation of other nations, to restrict it.
There were active movements in 1852 and 1858, in the South, to revive the African slave trade, and especially was there fierce opposition to the "piracy act." Jefferson Davis, at a convention in Mississippi, July, 1858, advocated the repeal of the latter act, but doubted the practicability then of abrogating the law prohibiting slave traffic.(30)
It is worthy of mention here that April 20th, eight days after Sumter was fired upon, Commander Alfred Taylor, commanding the United States naval ship _Saratoga_, in the port of Kabenda, Africa, captured the _Nightingale of Boston_, flying American colors, with a cargo of 961 recently captured, stolen, or purchased African negroes, destined to be carried to some American part and there sold into slavery. This human cargo was sent to the humane Rev.
John Seys, at Monrovia, Liberia, to be provided for. One hundred and sixty died on a fourteen-days" sea-voyage, from ship-fever and confinement, though the utmost care was taken by Lieutenant Guthrie and the crew of the slaver for their comfort.(31)
The laws abolishing the foreign slave trade and prohibiting the introduction of African slaves (after 1807) into the United States even helped to rivet slavery more firmly therein. They more than doubled the value of a slave, and, therefore, incited slave-breeding to supply the increasing demand in the cotton States, and in time this proved so profitable that the South sought new territory whence slavery could be extended, and out of which slave States could be formed.
The "_Declaration against the Slave Trade_" of the world, signed by the representatives of the "Powers" at the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, and repeated at the Congress of Paris at the end of the Napoleonic wars, was potential enough to abate but not to end this most inhuman and sinful trade.(32)
Even as late as 1816, English merchants, supported by the corporations of London and Liverpool, through mercantile jealousy, and pretending to believe that the very existence of commerce on the seas and their own existence depended on the continuance of the slave trade, not only opposed the abolition of the black slave traffic, but they opposed the abolition of _white slavery_ in Algiers.(33)
This nefarious traffic did not cease in the United States, although at the Treaty of Ghent (1815) it was declared that: "Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice," and the two countries (Great Britain and the United States) therein stipulated to use their best endeavors to abolish it.
The revival of the slave trade was openly advocated by leading Southern politicians, and the illicit traffic greatly increased immediately after the admission into the Union of Texas as a State and the aggressions on Mexico for more slave territory, and especially just after the discussions over the Compromise measures of 1850 and the Nebraska Act of 1854, followed by the Dred Scott decision in 1857. It was princ.i.p.ally carried on under the United States flag, the ships carrying it denying the right of search to foreign vessels engaged in suppressing the trade. British officials claimed in June, 1850, "that at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade was carried on under the American flag." The fitting out of slavers centred at New York city; Boston and New Orleans being good seconds. Twenty-one of twenty-two slavers taken by British cruisers in 1857-58 were from New York, Boston, and New Orleans.
"During eighteen months of the years 1859-60 eighty-five slavers are reported to have fitted out in New York harbor, and these alone transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually to America."(34)
The greed of man for gain has smothered and will ever smother the human conscience. The slave trade, under the denunciation of piracy, still exists, and will exist until African slavery ceases throughout the world. So long as there is a demand, at good prices, this wicked traffic will go on, and in the jungles of Africa there will be found stealers of human beings.
(30) Rhode"s _Hist. United States_, vol. ii., p. 372.
(31) Official Records, etc., _Navies of the War of the Rebellion_, vol. i., p. 11.
(32) It stands to the eternal credit of Napoleon that on his return from Elba to Paris (1815) he decreed for France the total abolition of the slave-trade. This decree was confirmed by the Bourbon dynasty in 1818. _Suppression of African Slave Trade U. S._ (DuBois), p. 247.
(33) Osler"s _Life of Exmouth_, p. 303; _Slavery, Letters_, etc., Horace Mann, p. 276.
(34) _Sup. of African Slave Trade_ (DuBois) pp. 135, 178-9.
X LOUISIANA PURCHASE
In 1803, Napoleon, fearing that he could not hold his distant American possession, known as the Louisiana Province, acquired from Spain, and which by treaty was to be re-ceded to Spain and not disposed of to any other nation, put aside all scruples and good faith, and for 60,000,000 francs, on April 30th signed a treaty of cession of the vast territory, then mostly uninhabited, to the United States. This was in Jefferson"s administration.
The United States bought this domain and its people just as they might buy unoccupied lands with animals on it.
It was early claimed as slave territory. There were only a few slaves within its limits when purchased, though slavery was recognized there. This purchase was a most important one, although at the time it was not so regarded.
The Louisiana Purchase was much greater, territorially speaking, than all the States then in the Union, with all its other possessions.(35)
It comprised what are now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, nearly all of Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, large parts of Colorado and the Indian Territory, and a portion of Idaho. These States and Territories in 1890 contained 11,804,101 inhabitants.
At the time of this great acquisition a conviction prevailed that slavery was rapidly diminishing. Adams and Jefferson, each, while President, entertained the belief that slavery would, ere long, come to a peaceful end. It might then have been possible, by law of Congress, to devote this new region to freedom, but, as slavery existed at and around New Orleans in 1812 when the State of Louisiana was admitted into the Union, it became a slave State. This fate was largely due to the claim of its original inhabitants that they were secured the right to hold slaves by the treaty of cession from France.
Later on, the provision of this treaty, under which it was claimed slavery was perpetuated, was a subject of much discussion, and on it was founded the most absurd arguments on behalf of the slave power.
Its third article was the sole one referred to as fastening forever the inst.i.tution of slavery on the inhabitants of this vast empire.
There are those yet living who deny that, even under the present Const.i.tution of the United States or the const.i.tutions of the States since erected therein, slavery is _lawfully_ excluded therefrom.
This article reads:
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Const.i.tution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, _property_, and the religion they profess."
Justice Catron, of the United States Supreme Court, speaking in the Dred Scott case, for the majority of the court and of this article, says:
"Louisiana was a province where slavery was not only lawful, but where property in slaves was the most valuable of all personal property. The province was ceded as a _unit_, with an equal right pertaining to all its inhabitants, in every part thereof, to own slaves."
He and others of the concurring justices held that the inhabitants at the time of the purchase, also all immigrants after the cession, were protected in the right to hold slaves in the entire purchase.
Near the close of his opinion, still speaking of this article and the acquired territory, he says: