American Eloquence, Volume II | Page 2

the two
sections, North and South, was to be altogether divergent. In the colder
North, the dominant race found it easier to work than to compel
negroes to work: in the warmer South, the case was exactly reversed.
At the close of the Revolution, Massachusetts led the way in an
abolition of slavery, which was followed gradually by the other States
north of Virginia; and in 1787 the ordinance of Congress organizing the
Northwest Territory made all the future States north of the Ohio free
States. "Mason and Dixon's line" and the Ohio River thus seemed, in
1790, to be the natural boundary between the free and the slave States.
Up to this point the white race in the two sections had dealt with
slavery by methods which were simply divergent, not antagonistic. It
was true that the percentage of slaves in the total population had been
very rapidly decreasing in the North and not in the South, and that the
gradual abolition of slavery was proceeding in the North alone, and that
with increasing rapidity. But there was no positive evidence that the
South was bulwarked in favor of slavery; there was no certainty but
that the South would in its turn and in due time come to the point which
the North had already reached, and begin its own abolition of slavery.
The language of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and Mason,
in regard to the evils or the wickedness of the system of slavery, was
too strong to be heard with patience in the South of after years; and in
this section it seems to have been true, that those who thought at all
upon the subject hoped sincerely for the gradual abolition of slavery in
the South. The hope, indeed, was rather a sentiment than a purpose, but
there seems to have been no good reason, before 1793, why the
sentiment should not finally develop into a purpose.
All this was permanently changed, and the slavery policy of the South
was made antagonistic to, and not merely divergent from, that of the
North, by the invention of Whitney's saw gin for cleansing cotton in
1793. It had been known, before that year, that cotton could be
cultivated in the South, but its cultivation was made unprofitable, and
checked by the labor required to separate the seeds from the cotton.
Whitney's invention increased the efficiency of this labor hundreds of
times, and it became evident at once that the South enjoyed a practical
monopoly of the production of cotton. The effect on the slavery policy

of the South was immediate and unhappy. Since 1865, it has been
found that the cotton monopoly of the South is even more complete
under a free than under a slave labor system, but mere theory could
never have convinced the Southern people that such would be the case.
Their whole prosperity hinged on one product; they began its
cultivation under slave labor; and the belief that labor and prosperity
were equally dependent on the enslavement of the laboring race very
soon made the dominant race active defenders of slavery. From that
time the system in the South was one of slowly but steadily increasing
rigor, until, just before 1860, its last development took the form of legal
enactments for the re-enslavement of free negroes, in default of their
leaving the State in which they resided. Parallel with this increase of
rigor, there was a steady change in the character of the system. It
tended very steadily to lose its original patriarchal character, and take
the aspect of a purely commercial speculation. After 1850, the
commercial aspect began to be the rule in the black belt of the Gulf
States. The plantation knew only the overseer; so many slaves died to
so many bales of cotton; and the slave population began to lose all
human connection with the dominant race.
The acquisition of Louisiana in 1803 more than doubled the area of the
United States, and far more than doubled the area of the slave system.
Slavery had been introduced into Louisiana, as usual, by custom, and
had then been sanctioned by Spanish and French law. It is true that
Congress did not forbid slavery in the new territory of Louisiana; but
Congress did even worse than this; under the guise of forbidding the
importation of slaves into Louisiana, by the act of March 26, 1804,
organizing the territory, the phrase "except by a citizen of the United
States, removing into said territory for actual settlement, and being at
the time of such removal bona fide owner of such slave or slaves,"
impliedly legitimated the domestic slave trade to Louisiana, and
legalized slavery wherever population should extend between the
Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The Congress of 1803-05, which
passed the act, should rightfully