just as violent as northern, so that it was more and more difficult for either side to listen to reason.

Perfectly simple ideas, baldly stated and constantly reiterated, if given a sufficiently wide circulation, no matter whether they are truth or falsehood, have a powerful fascination for the majority of mankind. They take hold of the individual easily, with no effort on his part, and they work directly upon his feelings. Given an issue which can be reduced to the most elementary terms, a real agitator can stir up a mob at any time. Between 1830 and 1860, the mob spirit was made to prevail in whole groups of the population.

The Civil War was not the result solely of secession. That was the immediate occasion, but it was the product of the irrational feeling which had been accumulating for years. Responsibility for the final break rests largely upon agitators like Garrison, Phillips, Quitman, and Yancey. Because of their work the problem of handling slavery was left to the emotions, rather than to reason.

In The Mind in the Making, Professor James Harvey Robinson gives a vivid explanation of the dangers in cutting loose from the restraints of reason. Civilization is a very recent acquirement of mankind, so new that it has not by any means superseded the traits and temperament which are almost infinitely older. These come to the surface, on various occasions, especially under conditions of emotional excitement.

To contemporaries the difference between the genuine reformer and the dangerous agitator is not always evident, nor is it for that matter to historians. The agitator is ordinarily sincere, full of the seriousness of his mission, and determined to make the evil he fights as vivid to others as it is to himself, but devoid of ability to judge calmly and dispassionately. With all of their zeal, it must be admitted that many of the abolitionists, including Garrison himself, were not any too well informed regarding the nature of society, or of the laws governing it. Because of their obvious shortcomings in this respect, it is at least possible that they were mistaken in their approach to the problem of slavery. That they hastened abolition is clear; it is equally evident that the work of all the agitators together, northern and southern, brought on the Civil War. According to various authorities in economics, slavery would have come to an end in a short time anyway. If that is true, the abolitionists and their southern counterparts drove the country into a useless war,

using the most expensive method of settling a question which might have solved itself. The expenses of the Civil War are still being paid, in the form of interest and pensions, and while the war abolished slavery, it did little to solve the negro problem. That still persists, in an acute form.

"If an ignoramus plays about in a chemical laboratory, we keep our distance, for we expect trouble as a result of ignorance of chemical substances and laws. Knowledge of the experimenter's good intentions or orthodoxy does not reassure us at all. But we easily permit the uninformed meddler to prowl about the structure of society, poking and tinkering, apparently in the belief that, provided his intentions are good, nothing but human weal can result. We are bound to learn, sometime, that powerful forces are at work within the societal range, and that ignorant tampering is even more dangerous here than elsewhere because so many more people have to endure the consequences." Professor Keller's dictum from an essay on "Societal Evolution" applies with peculiar significance to the period before the Civil War when the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists were busy.

In order to make their work more effective, the abolitionists had a network of societies all over the North and West, with speakers and writers constantly at work, driving home in the minds of the people their own intense feelings regarding slavery. Reason had no chance against this torrent, and the whole country had to suffer the results of it.

There were many abolitionists, known as Non-Garrisonian, who did not agree with the famed leader in refusing to participate in national elections. These moderates were willing to accept small gains, hoping to work gradually toward complete emancipation. They also differed from the Garrisonians in having a comprehension of the difficulties in the way of any sudden overthrow of the southern labor and social system, and in the dangers of too much agitation. In Congress, southern leaders demanded laws to prohibit the circulation of abolitionist pamphlets, newspapers, and books. Failing in this, they acted upon their own impulses, supported by the advice of Postmaster-General Kendall, and destroyed mail matter which seemed to them pernicious or dangerous. Congress became the center of lively contests between the antislavery and the proslavery forces. Petitions demanding abolition literally poured in. At one

time John Quincy Adams presented over five hundred. In 1836 the House adopted a rule to the effect that all petitions relating to slavery be laid on the table, without being printed or referred to committees. In 1837 a new rule was adopted, stating that petitions relating to slavery should not even be received. Deeming this a violation of the Constitution, which guaranteed the right of petition, John Quincy Adams led the fight to repeal the "gag rule." In 1844 he was successful, and it was rescinded.

With this sort of contest raging year after year the consideration of any question on its own intrinsic merits was virtually impossible. That was especially true in matters of national policy. The motives of every member of Congress were questioned by one side or the other, and every new issue had to be examined against the background of proslavery and abolitionist agitation. This worked with special effect when the possibility of annexing new territory appeared.

CHAPTER XXXVII

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

From the signing of the Florida treaty in 1819 to the end of the War with Mexico in 1848 the problem of Texas was almost constantly before Congress, the various administrations, and the country at large. After that time it became fashionable for historians to subject the Texas policy of the United States to the severest criticism. Both the annexation of the province itself, and the war which followed were denounced as high crimes, committed by a great nation upon weak, unoffending, and defenseless Mexico. For a more reasonable interpretation of the dealing of the United States with Texas and Mexico scholars are deeply indebted to the researches of the late Professor George Pierce Garrison, and of Justin H. Smith.

TEXAS

Geographically, Texas is an integral part of the great central plain of the United States, and of the southern cotton belt. Historically it may have been a part of the Louisiana Purchase. No one ever knew definitely whether the United States acquired title to it in 1803 or not, because no boundary had been agreed upon. In 1819, in return for Florida, the United States relinquished all claim to Texas, and John Quincy Adams promptly tried to buy the country back. American interest in Texas was a product of the widening field of cotton culture. As the Southwest gradually filled up, pioneer planters began to try their fortunes beyond the Sabine River. The fact that there was an international boundary to be crossed did not bother them; indeed for a time it was a distinct advantage. Neither Spain nor Mexico had ever occupied Texas, and the Mexican government seemed anxious to have the soil cultivated. Large land grants were promised to promoters who would bring in a certain number of settlers. Moses Austin for example received a grant for a colony, under which each head of a family would receive approximately four thousand five hundred acres of land. The same liberal terms were included in grants to other empresarios. In addition to the hundreds of thou

sands of acres given away, the Mexican government was prepared to sell some of the best cotton land in Texas for twelve and a half cents an acre, as compared with a dollar and a quarter for similar land in the United States.

The Austin grant, with Stephen Austin in charge, was settled in 1822. In less than seven years twelve thousand colonists came into Texas from the United States, and by 1844 over fifty thousand had settled there. For this heavy immigration the spendthrift land policy of the Mexican government was primarily responsible. Just as the Devil entered the Ark in Kipling's Legend of Evil, the Americans went to Texas, on the owner's invitation, and from the Mexican standpoint, once in, they proved just as embarrassing to the host. It was impossible for any large group of Americans from the United States to live comfortably under Mexican control, because the two types of civilization were hopelessly dissimilar.

The history of Mexico as an independent nation is a story of successive revolutions, of which there were eight distinct ones in eighteen years. In 1824 the Mexicans had adopted a federal constitution, based in large measure upon that of the United States. Under this Texas and Coahuila formed a single state. The first president by some miracle managed to remain in office for the full term of four years. There were revolutions in 1828, 1829, and again in 1832, the last of which brought Santa Anna into power. It was apparent to any observer that the government was at the mercy of almost any revolutionary leader, and that it could neither maintain order at home nor fulfill its obligations abroad.

By 1827, following a small insurrection of some of the American colonists in Mexico, the Mexican government issued orders prohibiting any further American immigration. This order was not enforced. In 1829, the government of Mexico declared slavery abolished, but because of Austin's protest, the state of Texas was exempted from the operation of the order. Because of the conviction that cotton could not be grown profitably without slave labor, the inauguration of this new policy created additional ill-feeling between the two groups. In 1830, a more determined effort was made to prevent any further American immigration. Mexican decrees forbade any person to enter the country from the north, without a Mexican passport, and prohibited any importation of slaves into any part of Mexico, Texas included. Another order specifically prohibited any more