Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF THE SLAVE POWER

AT the time of the Declaration of Independence the extension or the limitation of slavery was not an issue in the United States: slavery was dying out at the North and was languishing at the South. All through colonial times the English government encouraged slavery and three hundred. thousand slaves-it has been estimated-were imported from Africa to the colonies from the time the first cargo arrived in 1619 to 1776. The Continental Congress pronounced against the slave trade in 1774; in 1787 the Convention which framed the Constitution was divided in opinion on the subject, a compromise clause being at last agreed on that Congress should not forbid the trade until 1808, but the period of limitation, though seemingly tardy, was at least fixed, and the trade was declared piracy by act of Congress in 1820. At the time of the suppression there were a million and a half slaves in the country. The number and relative increase of the slave population down to 1860 are shown as follows:

[blocks in formation]

The census of 1850 disclosed that one-ninth of the colored population was mulattoes; that of 1860, one-eighth. But the rate of increase of the negro race in America fell behind

that of the white, for which two causes were assigned: climate and the conditions of slave life.

It was early discovered that cotton could be raised at the South, the climatic cotton belt extending as far north as the latitude of Baltimore, but profitable production was limited to the region of the Gulf and the shore line of the Atlantic not far above the latitude of Charleston, South Carolina. The difficulty of separating the fibre from the seeds, a tedious hand process, kept the production of cotton down till 1793, when Eli Whitney, a resident of Georgia, but a native of Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin, a simple but effective device to which is due the sudden and extraordinary impetus given to the production of cotton, and the growth of slavery and the slave power. From the production of a few bags of cotton, prior to the invention, used wholly for domestic supply, the production rose in 1794 so that nearly a million and a half pounds were exported; the domestic use and the exportation of cotton increased until in 1860 the exportation was two thousand million pounds, the production was more than four and onehalf million bales (4,675,770) and the value of the crop was more than two hundred and forty million dollars. The value of the raw cotton consumed in the United States in 1860 was $56,000,000, and of the cotton goods produced in that year alone, $115,000,000, an increase, in the latter, of $50,000,000 since 1850.

But the supply was not equal to the demand; the world seemed determined to dress itself in cotton fabrics and the Gulf States monopolized the production of the staple. The soil of the Cotton States showed no sign of exhaustion under reasonable management; the serious problem was to obtain sufficient labor. In 1821, the crop was 430,000 bales; in 1827, 957,000, or double the amount; in 1840, nearly 2,200,000 bales, or double that of 1827; in 1860, 4,675,000 bales, or more than double that of 1840. But labor in the Cotton States increased less rapidly. In ten years the demand for cotton increased one hundred per cent., but during that

time the indigenous increase of slaves was only ten per cent. The effect on the whole institution of slavery is obvious: the number of slaves in the Cotton States increased 773 per cent. from 1800 to 1850; in the remaining South the increase was about 66 per cent. Where slave labor was most profitable it was most sought; the profit on the labor of a negro in the cotton belt, might, by close management, amount to $350 a year. The profit depended upon the management: the cost of the slave, his working capacity, the economy of administration, and the like. But prospective and probable profit lay at the bottom of the system. The result was a demand for slave labor in the lower South which did not hesitate at times to hint loudly at the reopening of the African slave trade. It was the law of the land and not the will of slavocracy which kept the trade closed. Because of the law prohibiting the African slave trade, the cotton planters were compelled to turn to the upper South for additional slave labor. Their steady and imperative demand for slaves caused a steady flow of fresh labor from the upper into the lower South: that is from a poorer to a better market; from a relatively unprofitable to a profitable labor region. The effect of all this redistribution of slave population disclosed itself not alone in the actual number of slaves in the several States of the South, but also in the increase of slave population: the rate in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina being from two to six per cent. (18401850), but in the Gulf States, from thirty-five to fifty-eight

per cent.

There were other staples at the South: rice, tobacco, and sugar being the chief. The production of sugar, valued at nearly $21,000,000 in 1860, involved the same elements as the production of cotton, as, also, though in less degree, did the production of rice, the value of which in that year was $7,242,000. They were products of the lower, the subtropical South and the demand for labor to grow them was a steady and profitable drain on slavery in the border States. In these, tobacco, corn, and general farm products, though

aggregating many millions of dollars in annual value, fell far below the value of the great staple, cotton. The demand for slaves at the lower South made slave breeding profitable in the border States, and creating an ever-increasing market for slaves, operated as the primary force of slavocracy in its constant demand for more slave territory: it was heard in 1820; again in 1845; again in 1850 and in 1854-and at last seemed to have received its sufficient answer in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

The supremacy of cotton as a world power seemed complete and indisputable to slavocracy and its friends. That the Cotton States were the richest in the world and that they had the world at their feet were common assertions by slaveholders during the years when Kansas-Nebraska Bills were opening up new regions for slavery, and Dred Scott decisions were pronouncing unconstitutional all legislation to limit slavery.

And cotton could be grown, though with decreasing profit, as fields were planted nearer the latitude of Baltimore, in all the Southern States which touched tide water. The more slaves, the more cotton; the more cotton, the more wealth and power: this was the belief of slavocracy. The invention of a single machine, and its later improvement, had transformed the South into a cotton kingdom. The relative cheapness and efficacy of a slave and a machine. might seem clearly demonstrated by Whitney's invention. The power of King Cotton depended upon two forces, the slave and the operation of the cotton-gin, but the South steadily discouraged mechanical invention and the use of machinery. The culture of cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar-cane, and other crops might have been made many fold more effective and productive had the master used machinery; but he rejected the idea and clung with the tenacity of barbarism to the hand labor of slaves. Ancient Egypt presented an equal indifference to labor-saving machinery. The effect throughout the South was the decay of the power of invention; the entire South was deficient in skilled labor of every

« AnteriorContinuar »