The slave trade

by Theodore D. Jervey

“The cities all of them are becoming daily more and more unsound, and all for the same reason. The infusion of Northerners and foreigners amongst them. And their interest is being felt in the interior. The draymen and laborers of New Orleans are all white and foreigners, and they will not let a Negro drive a dray. He would be mobbed or killed. The steamboats all employ white servants, and their captains are mostly Northerners, and the issue of Free Labor against Slave Labor will soon be made at the South. Our own people many of them are desponding. They begin to think that the institution of Slavery is doomed.”[128]

In the light of this letter in 1849, we may well ponder what might not have been accomplished for peace had not what might have become a great artery of trade between Cincinnati and Charleston been so recklessly cut in 1840. It is hardly possible to doubt, that in the cutting, commercial conditions were made absolutely subservient to political in the cultivated growth concerning the Institution in which the disciples were continually forging ahead of the masters and teachers.

In 1846 Calhoun had suggested, to J. H. Hammond, the propriety of eulogizing Rev. Henry Bascomb for his vindication of the South on the occasion of the division of the Methodists, and Hammond had replied at some length with a declination. Calhoun’s rejoinder is of some interest:

“I concur in the opinion that we ought to take the highest ground on the subject of African Slavery, as it exists among us, and have from the first acted accordingly; but we must not break with or throw off those who are not prepared to come up to our standard, especially on the exterior limits of the slave holding States. I look back with pleasure to the progress which sound principles have made within the past ten years in respect to the relations between the two races. All, with a very few exceptions, defended it a short time since on the ground of a necessary evil to be got rid of as soon as possible. South Carolina was not much sounder 20 years ago than Kentucky now is and I cannot but think the course the Western Baptist and Methodists took in reference to the division of their churches has done much to expel C. Clay and correct public opinion in that quarter.”[129]

Now if we go back twenty years from this expression of Calhoun’s, we will be within one year of the date of Hayne’s great speech in the United States Senate of 1827. In the twenty years, as well as can be arrived at, the whites had increased to the extent of about fifty per cent, the Negroes to the extent of about sixty per cent. Apparently he had expected too much. The increase rate of the whites had not been as great as that of the Negroes, no matter what were the causes, and with the increase, the estimate of the Institution increased. In the light of these facts it is scarcely surprising that in 1848, although railroads from Columbia to two points on the North Carolina line, were again under way, and an application for a charter for a third, along Hayne’s route to Spartanburg, pending, the City of Charleston was induced to give $500,000 to complete the railroad from Nashville to Chattanooga, in spite of the protest[130] of some of the citizens of Charleston, that it was not right to use corporate funds for work outside of the State, and even if it was, it was not expedient to do so, as long as Augusta refused, as she was then refusing, to permit a bridge to be built across the Savannah River at the terminus of the Hamburg road, by which alone the South Carolina Railroad could connect with the Georgia system.

Upon Calhoun’s return from the trip to the West which had been urged upon him by the president of the South Carolina Railroad, Gadsden, he expressed himself to his son-in-law, Clemson, as satisfied with his reception in Memphis and elsewhere; but he could hardly have been pleased at the tone taken by Gadsden very shortly after with regard to the tariff.

Mention has previously been made with regard to what is herein considered Calhoun’s failure in 1833 to cope successfully with Clay; but the very slight gains then secured were wiped out in a new tariff in 1842. In 1846, being free from the terrific responsibilities and overshadowing dangers of Nullification, Calhoun secured legislation, which seems in its workings to have balanced very satisfactorily the imports and exports of the country, being apparently passed upon the sound principles of Lowndes’s legislation. But the effort drew from Gadsden’s swollen greatness, this insolent characterization of the main creator of it:

“The passage of the tariff has pleased, but not satisfied us. Perhaps it was the best terms which at this crisis could be got, and doing away with the minimums and the ad valorem duty is a point gained. The valuation is ambiguous. Whether on the foreign or the home we cannot understand. The bill may be construed either way. The Pennsylvanians really seem to control you.”[131]

The conclusion must have been galling, and it was followed in 1847 with another letter in which, with professions of devotion, it was intimated that General Taylor’s candidacy for the Presidency would be a serious impediment to the only kind of candidacy Calhoun could undertake. Whether Mr. Gadsden received the early answer he requested on the ground “that the concert of action may be certain to secure the triumph of one, who will not court our influence to deceive,”[132] does not appear; but the next year there was a strong movement, led by George A. Trenholm of Charleston, to oust Gadsden from the presidency of the railroad, and in the last two years of his life, Calhoun’s intimacy with Gadsden is not evidenced by any correspondence. Rather it was upon Hammond that he leant more and more and it was to him that he addressed the last letter written to any one beyond the immediate circle of his own hearthstone.

To Hammond the dying statesman turned with a confidence calculated to inspire the latter’s belief in himself: