RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH.
In the spring of 1860, a passenger left Massachusetts for the sunny South. As he passed slowly down to the Battery to embark from New York, the sun shone brightly on acres of drays awaiting their turn to approach the Southern steamers. Some of them had waited patiently from early morn for an opportunity to discharge, and it was a current rumor that twenty dollars had been paid for a chance to reach the steamers. The previous season had been a good one, and Cotton wore its robes of royalty. Southern credit stood at the highest point, while the West was out of favor; and doubtless many of the keen traders of the South, having some inkling of coming events, were preparing for future emergencies.
In the spring of 1860, the South was literally overrun with goods. Some sixteen powerful steamers were running between Savannah and New York; an equal number were on the line to Charleston; steamers and flat-boats in countless numbers were bearing down the Mississippi their tribute of flour, lard, and corn. The Northern and Western merchants were counting down their money for rice, cotton, and sugar, and giving long credits on the produce of the North and West.
Before hostilities began, the South was allowed to supply itself freely with powder and arms, and for months after they had begun, large supplies of fire-arms were drawn through Kentucky. Down to a recent period the South has continued to receive supplies from Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee. With these resources, and with a capital drawn from a debt of two hundred millions to the North and West, it has been able to support, for the first fifteen months at least, three hundred thousand men in the field, and successfully to resist, in some cases, the advance of the Federal Army. While these resources lasted, while the blockade was ineffective, while the Confederacy could produce men to replace all who fell, while a paper currency and scrip could be floated, and while the nation hesitated to put forth its strength, the South was able to maintain a strong front, although driven successively from Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Western Virginia, and Tennessee, and thus deprived of nearly half the population and resources on which it originally relied.
The enlarged canal of New York, and the great railways which furnish direct routes from the West to the Atlantic, have of late years diverted from the Father of Waters a very large proportion of the exports of the West, but the steamers and flat-boats which floated down the Mississippi literally fed the Cotton States. Laden with corn, flour, and lard, with ploughs, glass, and nails, with horses and mules, and live stock of every description, they distributed their cargoes from Memphis to New Orleans, and came back freighted with sugar and cotton.
At length this great commerce has been interrupted, and the South, cut off from this almost indispensable supply of the necessaries of life, is now struggling for existence, and diverts its negroes from the remunerative culture of sugar and cotton to the cultivation of grain and corn.
There are few at the North who appreciate the sacrifice which attends this diversion, or the extent of the pressure which led to this disastrous change.
In Illinois, Iowa, or Indiana, the farmer can grow rich while selling his corn for ten cents per bushel, and it is now common for a man and a boy to cultivate a hundred acres and to gather five thousand bushels in a single season. The South does not possess the rich and exhaustless soil of the prairies, which for half a century will yield without return successive and luxuriant crops of corn. Its soil is generally light and easily exhausted, and is tilled by the rude and unwilling labor of the slave. The census apprises us that its average crop of corn is but fifteen bushels to the acre, in place of fifty to sixty in Illinois, and even this depends in part on guano or artificial stimulants. The average yield of wheat south of Tennessee is but six bushels to the acre, in place of twenty to forty in Ohio. The Southern planters, who can sell cotton with profit at ten cents per pound, cannot produce corn for less than one dollar per bushel, or tenfold the cost in the West, and in past years a dollar has been the customary price from North Carolina to Texas.
Before the war, the cotton-crop of the South had risen to five millions of bales; but now four-fifths of the land in cultivation is devoted to corn and grain. In place of five millions of bales, worth at former prices two hundred millions of dollars, and at present rates at least eight hundred millions, the South, in its folly, to the injury of the world, and the ruin of most of its planters, is now producing, in place of its cotton, less corn than could be furnished in Illinois in ordinary seasons for twenty millions of dollars. But even this is inadequate to the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the able-bodied white men into the army.
The States from Tennessee and North Carolina to Texas have neither pasture nor mowing; their feeble stock gains but a precarious livelihood from the cane-brakes or weeds of the forests and Northern hay. Corn and grain were transported by railway more than three hundred miles into the interior. The writer has stood beside a yoke of Georgia oxen in Atlanta so small that they might well pass for calves at the North. Two Illinois steers would weigh down a half-dozen such animals. But, diminutive as they are, they, as well as the people of the South, require Northern supplies. And at this moment their last dependence is placed upon the valley of Virginia and the valleys of East Tennessee. Let us hope that the Union armies which now possess Nashville, Memphis, and Cumberland Gap may soon occupy Knoxville.
In the language of the "Richmond Examiner," "the possession of the lead, copper, and salt mines, and the pork, corn, and hay-crop of these countries, Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, is now vital to the existence of the Confederacy. This section of the country is the keystone of the Southern arch. It is now in great peril, as is the great artery through which the life-blood of the South now circulates. Whether the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad is to be surrendered, whether the only adequate supply of salt is to be lost, whether the only hay-crop of the South is to be surrendered, are questions of vast and pressing importance."
The wall of fire to which allusion has sometimes been made in debate is now closing in around the Southern Confederacy. The Mississippi is closed. But a single point of contact, at Vicksburg, remains between the States west of the Mississippi and the Atlantic States. Texas is insulated. The blockade is daily becoming more stringent upon the seaboard. One effort more, soon to be made, must sever the rich valleys, mines, and furnaces of Tennessee from the cotton districts, and the exhaustion of supplies of every description will soon become more and more apparent.
It is undoubtedly true that an occasional cargo escapes the blockade, that a few boat-loads of supplies are ferried by treason at the midnight hour across the Chesapeake, and sold at extravagant prices; but what does this amount to? What a contrast this trade presents to the millions of tons which used to reach the South from the Free States and Europe before it was crushed by the rebellion! And what a contrast does it present to-day to the commerce of the North,—to the barks and propellers which float down the Lakes deeply laden with grain,—to the weekly exports of New York, (twelve millions for the last three weeks,)—to its vast income from duties,—to the ships of the North visiting every ocean, earning more freight than for years past, although deprived of the carrying-trade of the South, and contending successfully with the marine of Great Britain for the supremacy on the ocean! How signal has thus far been the failure of the Southern prophecies made before the outbreak!
New York, we were told, was dependent on Southern commerce, and was to be ruined by the war; there were to be riots in the streets, and its palaces were to fall in ruins: but the riots and the ruins are to be found only in Southern latitudes.
The manufacturers of Massachusetts were to be broken down: but the woollen trade and the shoe-trade have received a new impetus,—are highly prosperous; and the cotton-spinners, with more than a year's supply of cotton, have by the rise of prices enjoyed a profit unprecedented. Having used their cotton with moderation, they have at the close of each six months seen their stocks of raw material and goods, by the rise of prices, undiminished in value, and blessed like the widow's cruse of oil. Nearly all have paid large dividends, many have earned dividends for the year to come, and are now sending their male operatives to the war, and their females to their rural homes, where they expect to perform some of the duties of brothers who have volunteered for the war. The ruin predicted falls not upon the spinner, but upon the authors of Secession.
Let us glance for a moment at the present condition of the South. General Butler found at New Orleans proof of its exhaustion in the prices of food,—with corn, for instance, at three dollars per bushel, flour twenty to thirty dollars per barrel, and hay at one hundred dollars per ton.
If we pass on to Mobile, we hear of similar prices, and learn that not a carpet can be found on the floor of any resident: they have all been cut into blankets for the army. White curtains and drapery have been converted into shirts; for cotton cloth cannot be had for a dollar a yard.
As we come on toward the North, we find the shops of Savannah nearly empty, with shoes and boots quoted at thirty dollars per pair. At such rates, what must it cost to put an army in condition to move?
At Charleston, the stores which two years since were overflowing with merchandise, and the daily recipients, of entire cargoes, are utterly empty; and when we reach Richmond, we see sugar quoted at three-fourths of a dollar, coffee at two dollars, and tea at sixteen dollars per pound, broadcloth at fifty dollars per yard, while whiskey, worth at Cincinnati twenty cents per gallon, commands at Richmond six dollars.
Such is the condition of affairs, while the South still has access to Virginia and East Tennessee, and after it has received a year's supply of Northern productions for which no payment has been made.
Having thus pictured the physical resources of the enemy, let us inquire what is the force which he can bring into the field, and his means of maintaining it.
There is conclusive evidence that at no period during the war has the Confederacy had more than three hundred and fifty thousand effective men in the field, and it has no power to carry that number beyond four hundred thousand. The population of the Union, by the census of 1860, was thirty-two millions. At the usual rate of increase it now amounts to thirty-four millions; of these, four millions are blacks, and of the residue, twenty-six millions are in the loyal districts, and but four millions in the Confederacy, if we exclude New Orleans and those portions of Virginia and Tennessee which have been subdued by the Federal arms.
In our Northern States the militia has rarely exceeded ten per cent. of the population. At least one-half of the population is composed of females; one-half of the residue is below the age of sixteen. If we deduct from the remainder three-twentieths for those below eighteen, those above forty-five, and those exempted by law or infirmity, one-tenth alone will remain.
It is said that the Confederacy has called out all the white males between sixteen and thirty-five, and proposes to summon all those between thirty-five and fifty. If it does so, we may well expect such forces to break down in heavy marches or suffer from exposure. But let us assume that it can bring into the field fourteen per cent. of its entire population—(and we must not forget that this is a high estimate, as all the able-bodied men of Massachusetts are but twelve per cent. of her population, or one hundred and fifty-five thousand): upon this assumption, the effective force of the Confederacy at the start was but five hundred and sixty thousand, and if to this we add forty thousand more for volunteers and conscripts from Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and East Tennessee, we have a capacity for six hundred thousand only. Of these there has been a continual waste from the outset by sickness, desertions, capture, and the casualties of war. The Union army has lost at least one-third, and been reduced from six hundred thousand to four hundred thousand by such depletion; and in the same ratio, the South, with inferior supplies and stores, and with greater exposure, must have lost at least an equal number.
In estimating its present capacity at four hundred thousand men, we undoubtedly exceed the actual resources of the South. To meet this we have at least four hundred thousand effective men now in the field, to be increased to a million by the new levies, and soon to be aided by thirty mail-clad steamers added to our present fleet on the ocean and the Mississippi,—a naval force equivalent to at least two hundred thousand more.
To sustain such forces in the field and on the water will doubtless tax all the energies of the Union; but how is the inferior force of four hundred thousand to be clad, fed, and paid by the exhausted Confederacy, with a white population less than one-sixth of that opposed to them, without commerce and the mechanic arts, and with no productive agriculture?
The pecuniary resources of the South for carrying on this war have thus far consisted principally of a paper currency and bonds, with a forced circulation. It has drawn little from taxes or forfeiture, although it has been aided by the appropriation of both public and private property of the United States.
We have no record of the currency issued, but we know that both prices and pay have been higher in Southern than in Northern armies; and if with us it has cost a thousand dollars per annum to sustain a soldier in the field, it has cost at that rate four hundred and sixty-seven millions to maintain three hundred and fifty thousand men for the last sixteen months in the Southern army, and of this at least four hundred millions has been met by the issue of paper.
Such an issue would be equivalent to an issue of seven times that amount, or of twenty-eight hundred millions, to be borne by the whites who now recognize the Union. How long can the South continue to float such a currency? Does it not already equal or exceed the paper currency of our Revolution, which became utterly worthless, notwithstanding our nation achieved its independence?
Our fathers, long before the surrender at Yorktown, resorted to specie, to the bank of Morris, and to French and Dutch subsidies: but how is the South to command bank-notes or specie, or to buy arms, powder, or provisions, or to satisfy soldiers with a currency such as has been described, or to make new issues at the rate of twenty-five millions per month?
At Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, gold ranges from 125 to 150 per cent. premium. Must not this advance require a double or triple issue of currency, namely, fifty to seventy-five millions per month, to accomplish as much as has already been effected? And how as has already been effected? and how long can such a currency be floated within a contracting circle, and in the face of our new levies and our unbounded national credit? If the war should last another year, and this depreciating currency can be floated at all, it is safe to infer from the history of the past that the debt of the South must increase at least one thousand millions. Under the pressure of such growing weight its end may be safely predicted.
Thus far in the contest the South has possessed one great advantage. The planter's son, reared to no profession, in a region where the pursuits of trade and the mechanic arts have little honor, has been accustomed from childhood to the use of the horse and rifle. In most of the towns of the South you will find a military academy, and here the young cadet has been trained to arms and qualified for office: we have no such class in the Free States, except a few graduates from West Point. Under such officers, a motley army has been collected, composed of foreigners who have toiled in Southern cities as draymen and porters, of Northern clerks driven by coercion or sheer necessity to enlist, the poor whites, the outcasts of the South, a class the most degraded in public estimate,—a class which has the respect of neither the white man nor the negro. These people inhabit to a great extent the scrub-oak or black-jack forests, the second growth which has sprung up on exhausted plantations. Destitute of schools, churches, and newspapers, unable to read or write, without culture, generally steeped in whiskey, their sole property a cabin, and perhaps a few swine, which roam through the forests, these Pariahs of society gain a precarious subsistence by hunting, fishing, and occasional depredations upon the property of the planters. During a brief visit to Columbia, in 1860, one of these outcasts was arraigned before the Court of Sessions for stealing black-jack from a plantation and selling it in the streets of Columbia; and the judge in his flowing robes, while enlarging upon the offence, facetiously remarked, that the prisoner had doubtless swallowed the black-jack,—an allusion to the habits of the class which seemed well understood by the bar.
The position of this class has thus far been improved by the war. In the army the poor white has associated with the officer, far above him in social life. His aid has been courted, he has received high wages in Confederate notes, he has found better fare and clothing than he could procure at home, and has been lured to the contest by the eloquent appeals of the planter, by bitter attacks upon the North, and glowing pictures of the ruin which the abolitionists would bring upon the South. The Confederate notes have until recently proved sufficient for his purposes, while other classes have supplied the means to prosecute the war. But as the circle contracts and these notes prove worthless, food and clothing, tobacco and whiskey will cease to be attainable; and when the provost marshal has swept the plantation, and comes to the poor man's cabin to take his last bushel of meal and to shoot down his swine for the subsistence of the army, he will at length ask what he has to gain from the further prosecution of the war.
When this crisis arrives, and it must be approaching, how can the Southern army retain in its ranks either the poor white, the foreigner, or the Northern clerk, whose sympathies have never been with the Confederacy?
It may be said, that the Confederacy can continue the war by wealth accumulated in former years. But that wealth vested in land, slaves, or railways, now unproductive, or in banks whose funds have been advanced to planters still under protest. This wealth will not suffice to prosecute the war. Thus far it has been sustained by funds on hand, the seizure of national forts, arms, and arsenals, by the appropriation of debts due to Northern merchants, by supplies from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and by the issue of paper already greatly depreciated. With these resources it has conducted a losing warfare while we were creating an army and a navy, and during this contest has lost three of the most important border States, nearly half of a fourth, several of its chief seaports, nearly all its shipping, and the navigation of the Mississippi.
But it may be urged, Has not McClellan retired from his intrenchments before Richmond? Have we not fought with varying results successive battles around Manassas? Are not our troops retiring to their old lines before Washington? Have not the enemy again broken into Kentucky? and do they not menace the banks of the Potomac and the Ohio? Let us concede all this. Let us admit that our new levies are for the moment inert,—that we are now marshalling, arming, and drilling our raw recruits; let us concede that the giant of the North has not yet put forth his energies,—that, although roused from his torpor, one of his arms is still benumbed, and that his lithe and active opponent is for the moment pommelling him on every side, and has a momentary advantage; let us admit that our go-ahead nation is indignant at the idea of one step backward in this great contest: still it is safe to predict that within sixty days our new army of superior men will be ready to take the field and advance upon the foe in overwhelming force,—that soon our iron fleet will be ready to batter down the fortresses of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Vicksburg, and Galveston, the last strongholds of the enemy. And when his army of conscripts shall have wasted away, after their last flurry and struggle, where is he to recruit or procure a new army for resistance or offence? The South is now taking the field with all its strength; but when that strength is broken, what power will remain to confront the forces of the Union?
The South has driven to the war its whole white population able to bear arms, and when that force is exhausted, at least two-thirds of the adult males of the North and the whole black population will still remain to sustain the Government, and births and emigration will soon fill the vacuum.
Let us place at the helm men of character and tried activity,—men of intelligence and forecast,—men who can appreciate the leaders of the South, reckless alike of property, character, and life, and the result cannot be doubtful.
The South is now commencing a new campaign, and is to confront a navy hourly improving, and an invulnerable fleet, armed with cannon more effective than any yet used in naval warfare. It is to encounter, with conscripts, a million of hardy volunteers, and to do this with its supplies reduced and its credit broken. It has but one reliance: a slave population of four millions, competent to maintain themselves, but incompetent to furnish to their masters a full supply of the coarsest food. While it furnishes a scanty supply, while it toils in the trenches, and feeds the horses of the cavalry, or drives the army-wagons, it is still an element of strength to the masters, and the question occurs, Shall the nation, now so severely taxed by the slaveholder, and compelled to pour forth its best blood like water to preserve its existence, remove this element of present and future strength by liberating the slave?
Can the slaveholder claim the preservation of slavery, when he relies upon it and uses it to aid him in destroying the Government? And if one-half of the population of the South is ready to sustain the Government, and to withdraw its aid from the foe, shall not the loyalist, whether white or black, be accepted and allowed the privileges of a citizen when he takes refuge under the national flag?
Can we expect future peace, unless we reduce to order lawless men, unless we draw them from the war-path by making labor and the arts of peace respected?
This is a momentous question which addresses itself to our nation at the present juncture. There are some who imagine that the negro, if liberated, would renew the scenes of San Domingo, and massacre the people of the South. But such has not been the case in the French and British Isles of the West Indies, although in those islands the proportion of the white population is far below that at the South. In the Cotton States the whites and the negroes are nearly equal in numbers; and if, in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, and Martinique, the slaves, when liberated, have respected the rights of the masters, and recognized their title to the land, and have submitted to toil for moderate wages, where a handful of whites monopolized the soil, and demanded for it prices far beyond the value of the slave and land together, may we not well anticipate that the slave population, barely equal in number to the white population, trained to submission in a region where land is of little value, will, if liberated, continue to be a quiet and peaceful population?
There are some who predict that the negroes, if emancipated, will overrun the North and West. But why should they fly from the South to the cold winters and less genial climate of the North or West? It is servitude which degrades the negro; and if the stigma which he now bears is removed, why should he not cling to the region in which he was born and bred, and to which he is adapted by nature?
Should the institution of slavery survive the war into which we have been plunged by its adherents and propagators, we might well fear that our Northern and Western States would be overrun by the fugitives, who, having escaped during the war, would be disposed to place distance between themselves and their late masters, and to fly from the borders of States which would not hesitate to reduce them again to servitude; but if the institution itself should be terminated by the war, why should the free man be a fugitive from his home?
Our Western States are desirous to perpetuate in its purity the Anglo-Saxon blood, and would colonize the West with men raised under free institutions. They shrink from all contact with a race of bondmen. Our President, himself a Western man, proposes to colonize the free negro in Central America, and thriving colonies already exist on the coast of Africa. But why should we send from this country her millions of laborers? Is our land exhausted? Is there no room for the negro in the region where he lives? Has not the demand for sugar and cotton, for naval stores and timber, overtaken the supply? and has not the frank and truthful Mr. Spratt, of South Carolina, announced in the councils of that State, that the South must import more savages from Africa, to reclaim and improve its soil? Why, then, banish the well-trained laborer now on the spot?
Does not history apprise us how Spain suffered in her agriculture, and the arts of life declined, when the Moriscos were driven from her soil? how Belgium, the garden of Europe, decayed when Spanish intolerance banished to England the Protestant weavers and spinners, who laid the foundation of English opulence? how France retrograded when superstition exiled from her shores the industrious Huguenots? And are we to draw no light from history? Would we, at this moment, when our cotton-mills are closing their gates,—when the cotton-spinner of England appeals to the British minister for intervention,—when the weaver of Rouen demands the raw material of Louis Napoleon,—shall we, at a time when a single crop of cotton is worth, at current prices, nearly a thousand millions, or twice the debt contracted for the war,—impair our national strength by destroying the sources of supply? At least one crop has been lost, and this will for a term of years insure high prices. Are we to deprive our nation of these prices, and of the freights which would attend the shipments to Europe? Shall not cotton contribute to make good our losses, and to the progress of the nation?
Why is colonization necessary?
There is a belt of territory, now sparsely populated, and inhabited chiefly by negroes, extending from the Dismal Swamp to the Capes of Florida, and from these Capes to the Brazos,—generally level, and free from rocks and stones,—of the average width of nearly one hundred miles,—its area at least two hundred millions of acres,—competent to sustain forty millions of negroes, or ten times the number which now exist within the United States. Here are vast forests, unctuous with turpentine, annually producing pitch, tar, rosin, and ship-timber, with material for houses, boats, fuel, and lightwood, while the mossy drapery of the trees in suitable for pillows and cushions. Here is a soil which, with proper cultivation, can produce rice, corn, cotton, tobacco, and indigo, and is admirably adapted to the culture of the ground-nut and sweet potato. Here are rivers and inlets abounding in fish and shell-fish. Here is a climate, often fatal to the white, but suited to the negro. Here are no harsh winters or chilling snows. Along the coast we may rear black seamen for our Southern steamers,—cooks, stewards, and mariners for our West India voyages.
Has not Nature designed a black fringe for this coast? Has not the importation of the negro been designed by Providence to reclaim this coast, and to give his progeny permanent and appropriate homes? And, to use a favorite phrase of the South, does not Manifest Destiny point to this consummation? and why should the negro be exiled from these shores? Does he not cling like the white man to his native land? and are not his tastes, wishes, and attachments to be consulted,—a question so important to his race?
But it may be urged, that this is not public domain,—that it has been already appropriated, and is now the property of the Southern planter. But here is a public exigency, and the remedy should be proportioned to the exigency. The right of eminent domain should be exercised by the nation either directly after conquest, or through the States or Territories it may establish. By that right, in England and in most of our States, private property is taken for highways or railways. In New York it is thus appropriated for markets, hospitals, and other public purposes.
The land in question, if we deduct the sites of towns and villages and cities, as should be done, will not average in value three dollars per acre. Let it be valued at twice that price, and be charged with the interest of that price as a ground-rent to be paid by the settler. And if, in Barbadoes, the free negro has raised the value of land to three hundred dollars per acre, surely on this coast he can prosper upon land costing one-fiftieth part of the average price of that of Barbadoes.
If six dollars would not suffice, the land might be rated at an average value of ten dollars, and the settler charged with a quit-rent of half a dollar per acre, and allowed to convert his tenure into a fee-simple by the payment of the principal. The planter whose land should be appropriated would thus realize more than its value, and in great part the value of his slaves,—while the negro would secure at once a settled home, with an interest in the soil and the means of subsistence.
Is not this the true solution of the great problem?
If we can give to the negro a fixed tenure in the soil under the tutelage of the nation, he will soon have every incentive to exertion. With peace must come a continuous demand for all the produce of the South,—for cotton, tobacco, timber, and naval stores,—in exchange for which the negro would require at least threefold the amount of boots, shoes, clothing, and utensils which he at present consumes. Labor would then become honored and respected. Upon the uplands of the South the white man can toil effectively in the open air. In the warehouse and the workshop he can actually toil more hours during the year than in New York or New England, for his fingers will not there be benumbed by the intense cold of the North. When labor ceases to be degrading, the military school will give place to the academy, commerce will be honored, and a check be given to military aspirations; and should an insurrection again occur, the loyal population bordering the coast may be armed to resist alike insurrection at home and intervention from abroad, and unite with our navy in preserving the peace of the country.