The school of Georgia politicians in 1852 did not favor Secession.
Their objection to it was that it would so reduce the value of slaves
as to force the owners to emancipate them themselves; while, with the
preservation of the Union, they believed they could force slavery to
the Pacific.
Certainly Georgia was in many respects amply fitted to lead. By the
census of 1850 it was disclosed that in the value of her personal
property, returned for taxation, she led the Union with $213,499,486.
Twelve million more than the old and wealthy State of Massachusetts,
which returned $201,976,892. South Carolina came third with
$178,130,217. Alabama fourth with $162,463,700. New York fifth with
$150,719,379.[143]
In the value of their real estate, which could not be as well concealed
as their personal property, the Northern States stood out richer, so
that in her revenue, Georgia stood not higher than seventh, among the
States of the Union; but, when revenue, expenditure and debt were
considered together, no State in the Union was apparently in such an
eminently sound and healthy condition; for, with her surplus, she could
have extinguished her debt in five years.
Of course that which made the personal property returned for taxation
by the residents of the Southern States, stand out so greatly in excess
of that of the richer States of the North was the fact that the bulk
of it was in slaves. But that fact reveals why the institution of
slavery had such a hold upon the South, when not more than ten per cent
of its inhabitants were slave holders. If the statesmen and politicians
who supported and defended it demanded “a guarantee for property fairly
acquired,” that property bore the bulk of the tax. That was not the
condition of the North, and the vice of the more advanced civilization
of that section was that, by every device which could be conceived,
more and more the burden of taxation was thrown upon the poor.[144]
While not to the swollen condition that is apparent today, the North
was, for thirty years and more prior to the War between the States, the
land of the capitalist, the abode of American capital.
How far the determination of Northern capital to keep the South
financially tributary to it was responsible for the rapid railroad
development of the North and West, it will require much investigation
to disclose. Whether, with a higher and nobler personnel among its
leaders and greater regard for the toiling masses of its white
population, it could have prepared the way so thoroughly for the
conquest of the South is doubtful; but having been stricken a blow,
even if a weak one, by the tariff of 1833, with a home valuation it had
parried the blow and sustained itself on the increased import trade
until it could enact the tariff of 1842; and when that was replaced
by Calhoun’s tariff of 1846, marshalling its industrial dependents,
it reached out with splendid energy, with one hand grasping the South
and the other the West and bound them both to its girdle with bands of
steel.
We have seen what was attempted in the South in the political
commercial effort to stretch from the Atlantic to Arkansas, after the
abandonment of the movement to Cincinnati in 1840. Now reverting to
the West, we find that in Ohio, part of the Cincinnati, Sandusky and
Cleveland Railroad was built in 1837; but it was not until 1848 that it
was completed.[145]
In Kentucky, of the 97 miles projected, by 1839, there were in
operation from Lexington to Frankfort, on one end, 28 miles; from
Louisville to Portland on the other end, 3 miles.[146] But within nine
years from the time at which the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston
Railroad was stopped at Columbia, a railroad extended from Detroit
across lower Michigan, and by 1851, Cleveland and Pittsburgh were
connected by rail; while a second line from Toledo below Detroit,
paralleled the road from Detroit to the lower end of Lake Michigan.
By 1853, down from Lake Michigan to the junction of the Missouri
and Mississippi rivers, a line continued these two from Toledo and
Detroit; while from Cleveland a network of roads reached Indianapolis,
sending out from that city a line West to Terre Haute and one North to
Lake Michigan. By 1857 this had become a perfect mesh of railroads,
crossing and recrossing Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and reaching up
into Wisconsin, while three constituent roads stretched across from the
North Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River opposite Missouri.
The situation with regard to population was about as follows at this
period: The three States mentioned above contained about 4,500,000
white inhabitants, which the population of Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa
raised to about 6,000,000. Behind them were banked some 11,000,000
whites in New York, Pennsylvania and New England.
Meanwhile, to the Nashville Convention of 1850, South Carolina had sent
a representative, who might have been considered a leaf from her great
past, Langdon Cheves and against the independent secession of South
Carolina, he strove successfully.
Mr. G. M. Pinckney, the most sympathetic of all Calhoun’s biographers,
thus sums up the situation in 1850:
“If Mr. Calhoun had lived a little longer, it seems highly probable
that history would have been different. He certainly would have forced
matters to head at this session, and at this time, had the South taken
definite action it seems probable that there was left genuine love
enough for the Union on all sides to save it. To delay ten years was
necessarily fatal. Every moment lost but added fuel to the kindling
flame of sectional hatred. Mr. Calhoun’s death was a stunning blow.
The South fell into confusion. Delay resulted and natural causes
taking their course produced natural results.”[147]
Professor Paxson’s view of the situation for the same time seems
somewhat in accord with the above:
“Had the secession movement of 1850 grown into war, none of these
factors (i. e. railroads) would have been effective, and success for
separation could hardly have been questioned. But in 1860 secession
came too late. The Northwest was crossed and recrossed by an intricate
entanglement of tracks.”[148]
Such a coincidence of view in such widely separated quarters is
entitled to the highest respect; but it is not the view entertained
by the writer of this work, to whom 1850 seems to have been too late
to affect the situation favorably for secession, even if Calhoun had
survived; for, judged by his career, it is exceedingly doubtful if he
would have forced matters to a head. It would not have been in accord
with his past. He was a great parliamentarian and an even greater
debater; but all through his career his hand had been forced. He was
never quite ready for the situation as it developed. It may have been
greatly to his credit and consistent with his views; but he always
consulted and pondered. His political methods so disclose him. McDuffie
forced his hand with regard to Nullification. Clay forced his hand with
regard to the tariff of 1833. For Rhett’s resolution of 1838, he was
not ready, although that was the logical time and the logical course.
Those who feel, that for this great Republic a world task was and is
reserved, may rejoice that no effort to secede was moved in 1838, but
that does not effect the question of its possible success had it been
attempted. Conditions in South Carolina were very much confused by
Calhoun’s death. To supply his place in the United States Senate,
Governor Seabrook first appointed F. H. Elmore and, upon his death
in a month or two, Robert W. Barnwell, but upon the meeting of the
General Assembly of South Carolina, six months later, that body elected
R. Barnwell Rhett, who, for about a year and a quarter, strove for
the accomplishment of the policy of secession and failing, resigned
and gave way to W. F. DeSaussure, apparently in accord with the
Georgia policy of pushing slavery to the Pacific, within the Union,
and in the wake of Georgia, South Carolina moved until 1860, when her
representatives again took the initiative with the full approval of the
leaders of the Empire State of the South.[149]
For the carrying into effect, in 1850, of the Georgia scheme of pushing
slavery to the Pacific there were in Missouri 592,004 whites, in
Arkansas 163,189, and in Kentucky and Tennessee 1,518,247, to which
the entire South remaining could add 3,422,923, and even if Arkansas
had doubled her white population since 1840, the 450,000 whites with
which Ohio’s population had been increased in the same time, put in
that State one-tenth of the total white population of the Union, which,
with that with which Indiana and Illinois disposed of in about the same
space as Kentucky and Tennessee below, furnished fully two and a half
times as many to draw upon. It should have been apparent, therefore,
that it would take all that the South could do to hold Missouri, much
less invade the further Northwest, even if Iowa, at that, time did
not have very many more white inhabitants than Arkansas. There was a
chance to have affected Ohio in 1840; but by 1855 the movement from
the East and the railroads had made it the powerful advanced outpost
of the Abolitionists. The ten years between 1838 and 1848 practically
determined the course of events, making more and more for war between
the slowly separating sections, and for the steadily increasing black
population of slaves in the South.
If it is true that:
“Transportation, after all, has determined both the course and the
period of Western development.”[150]
—the colonizing stream with which the great and populous State of
Ohio, from 1840 fecundated the prairies of the West might have
poured to a considerable extent into the valleys of the Blue Ridge,
the Alleghany and the Cumberland mountains along the lines of the
Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad to meet and mingle with
the stream which had been moving westward from South Carolina, since
1820.[151] In such a case the country might and in all probability
would have developed at a slower pace; but it would have been as a
more homogeneous people. It is idle to declare that there was an
irrepressible conflict. That has always been the claim of those who are
determined to precipitate such and are absolutely dead to—
“the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, in
softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending knowledge and
promoting human happiness.”
FOOTNOTES:
[143] U. S. Census, 1850 p. 190.
[144] McMaster, The people of the United States, between 1854 and 1860,
Vol. VIII. Hanleiter, Speech Robert Harper, 1858.
[145] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 255.
[146] Trotter, Finances of North American States, p. 244.
[147] Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun, p. 212.
[148] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 266.
[149] Stephens, History of the United States, p. 561.
[150] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 247.
[151] McCrady, History of S. C. Vol. I, p. 1.