[98] British officers attested this: Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 285.
[99] Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1866; House Exec. Doc., 39 Cong. 2 sess. IV. p. 12.
[100] There were some later attempts to legislate. Sumner tried to repeal the Act of 1803: Congressional Globe, 41 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 2894, 2932, 4953, 5594. Banks introduced a bill to prohibit Americans owning or dealing in slaves abroad: House Journal, 42 Cong. 2 sess. p. 48. For the legislation of the Confederate States, cf. Mason, Veto Power, 2d ed., Appendix C, No. 1.
Chapter XII
THE ESSENTIALS IN THE STRUGGLE.
| 92. How the Question Arose. |
| 93. The Moral Movement. |
| 94. The Political Movement. |
| 95. The Economic Movement. |
| 96. The Lesson for Americans. |
92. How the Question Arose. We have followed a chapter of history which is of peculiar interest to the sociologist. Here was a rich new land, the wealth of which was to be had in return for ordinary manual labor. Had the country been conceived of as existing primarily for the benefit of its actual inhabitants, it might have waited for natural increase or immigration to supply the needed hands; but both Europe and the earlier colonists themselves regarded this land as existing chiefly for the benefit of Europe, and as designed to be exploited, as rapidly and ruthlessly as possible, of the boundless wealth of its resources. This was the primary excuse for the rise of the African slave-trade to America.
Every experiment of such a kind, however, where the moral standard of a people is lowered for the sake of a material advantage, is dangerous in just such proportion as that advantage is great. In this case it was great. For at least a century, in the West Indies and the southern United States, agriculture flourished, trade increased, and English manufactures were nourished, in just such proportion as Americans stole Negroes and worked them to death. This advantage, to be sure, became much smaller in later times, and at one critical period was, at least in the Southern States, almost nil; but energetic efforts were wanting, and, before the nation was aware, slavery had seized a new and well-nigh immovable footing in the Cotton Kingdom.