CHAPTER XXIX

COTTON CULTURE AND SLAVERY

The trend of development in the North and West, distinctly nationalistic in character, proved to be the one which eventually triumphed throughout the whole United States. While it was going on, from 1815 to 1860, there was to be observed in the South a movement, not exactly in the opposite direction, but rather along the original line of state supremacy, a sort of "particularistic reaction" against the process of consolidation. Or, perhaps more accurately, while a nation of one type was developing in North and West, one of a very different type was being created in the South. For years the two remained under the same central government, but the tension between them was subjected to a heavier and heavier strain, until in 1860 and 1861, it suddenly snapped. Even during colonial days, the plantation colonies of the South had differed from the small farming communities of the North, but for a time it seemed that a common development along the whole western frontier would eventually bring about something like uniformity in the rural life, except of course along the Tidewater, where customs were too firmly fixed to be changed.

COTTON CULTURE

That might have been the outcome, had it not been for an entirely new factor, which profoundly affected the whole course of southern growth. This was the invention, in 1793, of Eli Whitney's "cotton gin." Before this contribution of Yankee ingenuity was available, one of the large items in the cost of producing cotton was that of separating the seeds from the fiber. This expense was so great that there was no profit in raising the short staple or upland cotton. But long staple, or "sea island" cotton could be grown only in specially favored regions in the low lands, so the area open to its culture was discouragingly small. Whitney's invention made possible the profitable cultivation of the upland variety, and therein lay its extraordinary significance. With this machine in general use, it became pos

sible to raise cotton almost anywhere in the South, except actually in the mountains. This invention came just after the introduction of the improved textile machinery, first in England, and then in France and the United States, another revolutionary change, which greatly reduced the cost of cotton fabrics. So it happened that the cotton gin enabled the South to meet the steadily increasing demand for raw cotton, at home and abroad, and as a result practically the whole South was given over to cotton growing. The table given below shows how rapidly the South was given up to cotton.1

These figures go far toward explaining a good deal of southern history. It is plain for one thing that by 1834, the old South had passed its peak of production. Georgia succeeded in holding her own, but South Carolina had begun to fall back. At the same time the newer cotton states in the Southwest were going rapidly ahead, with a tremendous increase in production. The decline in South Carolina was due to the exhaustion of the soil, an inevitable consequence of careless methods of cultivation. By 1834 therefore that particular state was finding it impossible to continue the competition with the others on equal terms. The plantations were less productive than formerly, and the South Carolina planter felt the pinch of hard times. All this naturally bred discontent, and after the manner of

Anglo-Saxons, South Carolina held the government responsible. This situation explains some of the discontent with federal policies which characterized South Carolina politics down to 1861.

In addition to throwing light on the decline of South Carolina, the figures tell an eloquent story of expansion into the Southwest. Nearly three hundred million pounds of cotton meant something in the way of new plantations! It was no mere accident which after 1850 made Jefferson Davis of Alabama the successor of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina as the leading exponent of southern interests at Washington. As the economic balance shifted to the Southwest, political leadership was transferred at the same time.

SLAVERY

The spread of cotton growing was accompanied by a corresponding extension and commercialization of negro slavery. It seemed to the South that slave labor was essential on the cotton plantations. With the increase in the crop, the margin of profit declined, so large scale production became a necessity. White farmers could and did raise cotton, but there was no large supply of white labor available. The small farmer working his own farm could not compete successfully with the big plantation owner, who could afford to provide himself with labor in the form of negro slaves. The plantation therefore became the common cotton growing unit, with slavery for its labor system.

Negro slavery was nothing new in the United States. The first recorded appearance of it was in 1619, in Virginia, and the institution spread to all the colonies. Although slaves were held regularly in New England until the Revolution, the system never took firm root in that section. The slaves were a poor economic investment on the grudging New England farms, so they were to be found only rarely outside the towns. The merchants owned them, and kept them for household servants, stablemen, and gardeners. In the period before the Revolution there was hardly an issue of a Boston newspaper which did not carry advertisements offering rewards for the return of runaway slaves.

Besides, New England merchants were actively interested in the slave trade, and even after they ceased to own negroes themselves, they continued to sell them in the West Indies, and in the South, until Congress prohibited the trade. In the early eighteenth century

there was little if any feeling anywhere that slavery was ethically or morally wrong. People took it as a matter of course, or disregarded it, and their attitude depended solely on their own particular needs. During the Revolution and afterwards feeling against slavery became strong, more so perhaps in Virginia, where people were accustomed to it, than in New England where they saw little of it. But the New England states were the first to provide for abolition, which they could afford very easily to do, because the institution had never really taken hold there.

The question naturally arises as to why slavery should have taken root anywhere in the New World. The system enabled the planters to get a supply of labor, which at that time could not be secured in any other way. Europe wanted from America certain semi-tropical products from the West Indies, notably sugar and cocoa. White labor on the plantations could not be had, and the Indians refused to work. African negroes were found to work well, so they were used, in constantly increasing numbers. The same thing was true on the tobacco and rice plantations in the South. In a new country where land is cheap, free labor is always scarce and high; when there are no scruples against slavery, those in need of labor fall back upon it without question.

The West Indies and the plantation colonies were not the only sections where the prosperity was dependent upon slavery. In these island markets the middle and northern colonies found a steady demand for their foodstuffs: grain, meat, and fish. These latter regions would have been settled without such markets, but the wealth and prosperity which came to them were made possible by slave labor in the West Indies.

Once slavery had been adopted and the ruling class had become accustomed to it, a new factor appeared. Introduced to solve an economic problem, it developed into a social problem. The blacks were there, as subjects of the whites. It was far easier to keep the two races in that relationship than to attempt to work out new arrangements under which they could live in the same community. The white population came to the conclusion that whatever the shortcomings of slavery might be, they were less dangerous than the problem of freed negroes.

There is no doubt that the spread of cotton culture gave a new lease of life to slavery. In Virginia the economic wastefulness of the

institution had long been apparent, and the realization of this weakness can be traced out in the establishment of abolitionist societies. Before 1825 they were more numerous in the South than in the North. But the steadily growing demand for slaves, on the cotton plantations, and the steady rise in the prices of "good field hands," from two hundred dollars in 1792, and two hundred and fifty in 1815, to six hundred dollars in 1836, tended to smother any general abolitionist sentiment which may have existed.

And yet even on the cotton plantations the profitableness of slavery steadily decreased. Slave labor was worth most in opening up new land for cotton culture. Once this land was all taken up, the labor of the slaves would not have been sufficiently valuable to keep the prices of them up to so high a level. By 1840 it was plain that the value of slaves in the border states was maintained solely by the market for them in the new cotton country. Sooner or later, that demand was bound to slacken, and the cost of maintaining slaves would become greater than the return from their labor. Just when that point would be reached was not clear, but there were signs that it might have been by 1880 or 1900. Once the economic basis had gone, and it was certainly destined to go, the institution could not survive. Had it been allowed to die a natural death, the end would probably have come before the close of the nineteenth century.

But slavery was not allowed to die a natural death. On the contrary, the institution became the object of a long series of bitter denunciations by the abolitionists. Gradually those sections which had no slavery, impelled by the desire to make the whole country alike, began to attack those where it lived on. After the establishment of the federal government the first real controversy between the two points of view arose in connection with the admission of Missouri as a state.

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

In 1818 the territory of Missouri asked to be admitted to the union. The following year an enabling act was introduced, to make the territory a state. While it was under consideration, Tallmadge of New York moved two amendments, one to prevent the further introduction of slavery into the state, the other providing that all children born in the state should become free at the age of twenty-five. Why he did this no one knows. It may have been politics, or it may have