The South American states
That did not imply that she herself would seek to upset arrangements already made. What did happen in that South American section was that it was divided into a number of States, which never became united, as did the States of the North. Most of them, very soon after their settlement, had become self-governing, their mother countries in Europe being too war-weary to make very serious efforts to retain them. Spanish was the language of the majority, but in the State which had by far the largest territory of all, that of Brazil, which had rather unexpectedly fallen to the share of Portugal under the dispensation sanctioned by the famous Bull of Pope Alexander, the common language was Portuguese. The population in all of them varied from pure European to pure Indian, with every possible degree of mixture between. Side by side, on the north-east shoulder of the Continent, were, and are, the three Guianas, the British, French, and Dutch.
But whereas these three still are European possessions, over all the rest of the Continent the settlers soon threw off all allegiance to their mother lands, as also did Mexico, once known as New Spain, at the southern end of the Northern Continent.
Both Mexico and Brazil started their independent careers with governors of the style of Emperor, but in Mexico he was very soon ousted and a republican government instituted. In all the Spanish States of South America, too, the form of government was republican; but there was an Emperor of Brazil, of the royal family of Portugal, though quite independent of the Portuguese Government, throughout most of the century, until she too elected to become republican. The Continent is for the greater part exceedingly rich and fertile, and supplies to Europe a great deal of its surplus products of very many kinds. Were it not for the frequent revolutions and changes of government, which make property insecure and distract the people from productive work, all these States might be far more prosperous even than they are. Naturally enough they always have had many immigrants of the Latin race. Italians especially have been going out to the States of that Southern Continent in very large numbers. The United States have attracted the peoples of more Northern Europe, the Germans and Scandinavia. Of Canada the population has been swelled by English, Irish and, largely, by Scottish immigration. The French have not gone there in great numbers, but we must always remember that there is a considerable population, in certain parts of Canada, that is French in race and in speech—the descendants of the original French settlers.
Even after they had acquired Louisiana, the people of the United States did not find themselves with an entirely unimpeded course to the West, for Mexico, independent since 1822, possessed all or most of that territory which you may now see marked on the map as Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, all of which passed, by conquest or by arrangement, into the hands of the United States shortly before the middle of the century. The transfer of California was immediately followed by a violent rush of Eastern Americans to the West, where gold, in great quantities, had just been found.
Thus, or somewhat thus, the general political boundaries of the United States and of the other countries of the two American Continents came to be as they are; but there was at least one moment when the Union of the States itself was in grievous danger of breaking up.
The slavery question
Between the States in the North and those in the South there were certain differences in interests and outlook which were very likely to lead to a quarrel. There had been some difference even in their original settlers. As already noticed, those who went to New England and the Northern States generally were for the most part of the Puritan persuasion, of a humbler social rank, and with more rigid religious views than those who settled in Virginia and other States of the South. The latter were largely of the landowning class at home, and when they came to America formed large estates and worked them by slave labour—negro slaves brought from America, or the descendants of those Africans.
When Louisiana was taken over from the French, slavery was in use all over its then vast extent. In the Northern section, soon to be known as the State of Missouri, slavery was abolished. It was retained in the South.
The idea of the slavery of the black races was not repugnant to the conscience of men of that day. It was not until later, and only after the great English philanthropist Wilberforce had devoted his whole life to the cause, that slavery was abolished in the British and French West Indies. The condition of the slaves, once they had arrived, was not, generally, so very bad, but the horrors that they suffered in the passage from Africa to America were unspeakable; the death-rate was terribly heavy; and the slave raids in Africa itself made the lives of the wretched negroes in their native country miserably anxious even if they evaded capture.