[Sidenote: 1808.]
[Sidenote: Compendium, Eighth Census, p. 13.]
This solution of the last problem in cheap cotton-culture made it at once the leading crop of the South. That favored region quickly drove all competitors out of the market; and the rise of English imports of raw cotton, from thirty million pounds, in 1790 to over one thousand million pounds in 1860, shows the development and increase of this special industry, with all its related interests. [Footnote: The Virginia price of a male "field hand" in 1790 was $250; in 1860 his value in the domestic market had risen to $1600.—SHERRARD CLEMENS, speech in H. E. Appendix "Congressional Globe," 1860-1, pp. 104-5.] It was not till fifteen years after the invention of the cotton-gin that the African slave-trade ceased by limitation of law. "Within that period many thousands of negro captives had been added to the population of the South by direct importation, and nearly thirty thousand slave inhabitants added by the acquisition of Louisiana, hastening the formation of new slave States south of the Ohio River in due proportion." [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.]
It is a curious historical fact, that under the very remarkable material growth of the United States which now took place, the political influence remained so evenly balanced between the North and the South for more than a generation. Other grave issues indeed absorbed the public attention, but the abeyance of the slavery question is due rather to the fact that no considerable advantage as yet fell to either side. Eight new States were organized, four north and four south of the Ohio River, and admitted in nearly alternate order: Vermont in 1791, free; Kentucky in 1792, slave; Tennessee in 1796, slave; Ohio in 1802, free; Louisiana in 1812, slave; Indiana in 1816, free; Mississippi in 1817, slave; Illinois in 1818, free. Alabama was already authorized to be admitted with slavery, and this would make the number of free and slave States equal, giving eleven States to the North and eleven to the South.
The Territory of Missouri, containing the old French colonies at and near St. Louis, had attained a population of 60,000, and was eager to be admitted as a State. She had made application in 1817, and now in 1819 it was proposed to authorize her to form a constitution. Arkansas was also being nursed as an applicant, and the prospective loss by the North and gain by the South of the balance of power caused the slavery question suddenly to flare up as a national issue. There were hot debates in Congress, emphatic resolutions by State legislatures, deep agitation among the whole people, and open threats by the South to dissolve the Union. Extreme Northern men insisted upon a restriction of slavery to be applied to both Missouri and Arkansas; radical Southern members contended that Congress had no power to impose any conditions on new States. The North had control of the House, the South of the Senate. A middle party thereupon sprang up, proposing to divide the Louisiana purchase between freedom and slavery by the line of 36 degrees 30', and authorizing the admission of Missouri with slavery out of the northern half. Fastening this proposition upon the bill to admit Maine as a free State, the measure was, after a struggle, carried through Congress (in a separate act approved March 6, 1820), and became the famous Missouri Compromise. Maine and Missouri were both admitted. Each section thereby not only gained two votes in the Senate, but also asserted its right to spread its peculiar polity without question or hindrance within the prescribed limits; and the motto, "No extension of slavery," was postponed forty years, to the Republican campaign of 1860.
From this time forward, the maintenance of this balance of power,—the numerical equality of the slave States with the free,—though not announced in platforms as a party doctrine, was nevertheless steadily followed as a policy by the representatives of the South. In pursuance of this system, Michigan and Arkansas, the former a free and the latter a slave State, were, on the same day, June 15, 1836, authorized to be admitted. These tactics were again repeated in the year 1845, when, on the 3d of March, Iowa, a free State, and Florida, a slave State, were authorized to be admitted by one act of Congress, its approval being the last official act of President Tyler. This tacit compromise, however, was accompanied by another very important victory of the same policy. The Southern politicians saw clearly enough that with the admission of Florida the slave territory was exhausted, while an immense untouched portion of the Louisiana purchase still stretched away to the north-west towards the Pacific above the Missouri Compromise line, which consecrated it to freedom. The North, therefore, still had an imperial area from which to organize future free States, while the South had not a foot more territory from which to create slave States.
Sagaciously anticipating this contingency, the Southern States had been largely instrumental in setting up the independent State of Texas, and were now urgent in their demand for her annexation to the Union. Two days before the signing of the Iowa and Florida bill, Congress passed, and President Tyler signed, a joint resolution, authorizing the acquisition, annexation, and admission of Texas. But even this was not all. The joint resolution contained a guarantee that "new States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas," and to be formed out of her territory, should hereafter be entitled to admission—the Missouri Compromise line to govern the slavery question in them. The State of Texas was, by a later resolution, formally admitted to the Union, December 29, 1845. At this date, therefore, the slave States gained an actual majority of one, there being fourteen free States and fifteen slave States, with at least equal territorial prospects through future annexation.
If the North was alarmed at being thus placed in a minority, there was ample reason for still further disquietude. The annexation of Texas had provoked the Mexican war, and President Polk, in anticipation of further important acquisition of territory to the South and West, asked of Congress an appropriation of two millions to be used in negotiations to that end. An attempt to impose a condition to these negotiations that slavery should never exist in any territory to be thus acquired was the famous Wilmot Proviso. This particular measure failed, but the war ended, and New Mexico and California were added to the Union as unorganized Territories. Meanwhile the admission of Wisconsin in 1848 had once more restored the equilibrium between the free and the slave States, there being now fifteen of each.
It must not be supposed that the important political measures and results thus far summarized were accomplished by quiet and harmonious legislation. Rising steadily after 1820, the controversy over slavery became deep and bitter, both in Congress and the country. Involving not merely a policy of government, but a question of abstract morals, statesmen, philanthropists, divines, the press, societies, churches, and legislative bodies joined in the discussion. Slavery was assailed and defended in behalf of the welfare of the state, and in the name of religion. In Congress especially it had now been a subject of angry contention for a whole generation. It obtruded itself into all manner of questions, and clung obstinately to numberless resolutions and bills. Time and again it had brought members into excited discussion, and to the very verge of personal conflict in the legislative halls. It had occasioned numerous threats to dissolve the Union, and in one or more instances caused members actually to retire from the House of Representatives. It had given rise to resolutions of censure, to resignations, and had been the occasion of some of the greatest legislative debates of the nation. It had virtually created and annexed the largest State in the Union. In several States it had instigated abuse, intolerance, persecutions, trials, mobs, murders, destruction of property, imprisonment of freemen, retaliatory legislation, and one well-defined and formidable attempt at revolution. It originated party factions, political schools, and constitutional doctrines, and made and marred the fame of great statesmen.
New Mexico, when acquired, contained one of the oldest towns on the continent, and a considerable population of Spanish origin. California, almost simultaneously with her acquisition, was peopled in the course of a few months by the world-renowned gold discoveries. Very unexpectedly, therefore, to politicians of all grades and opinions, the slavery question was once more before the nation in the year 1850, over the proposition to admit both to the Union as States. As the result of the long conflict of opinion hitherto maintained, the beliefs and desires of the contending sections had by this time become formulated in distinct political doctrines. The North contended that Congress might and should prohibit slavery in all the territories of the Union, as had been done in the Northern half by the Ordinance of 1787 and by the Missouri Compromise. The South declared that any such exclusion would not only be unjust and impolitic, but absolutely unconstitutional, because property in slaves might enter and must be protected in the territories in common with all other property. To the theoretical dispute was added a practical contest. By the existing Mexican laws slavery was already prohibited in New Mexico, and California promptly formed a free State constitution. Under these circumstances the North sought to organize the former as a Territory, and admit the latter as a State, while the South resisted and endeavored to extend the Missouri Compromise line, which would place New Mexico and the southern half of California under the tutelage and influence of slavery.