position in front of the infantry. More than twenty thousand balls were
exchanged during two hours from one hundred twenty guns, which thundered
from the sides of the opposite hills, as though they strove to batter a
breach in the mountains. The Prussians, more exposed than the French,
suffered more severely, and their fire began to slacken. Kellermann, who
narrowly watched the enemy's movements, fancied he saw some confusion in
their ranks, and charged at the head of a column to carry the guns. A
Prussian battery, masked by an inequality in the ground, suddenly opened
its fire on them, and Kellermann's horse, struck by a ball in the chest,
fell on its rider. His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Lormier, was
killed, and the head of the column, exposed on three sides to a
withering fire, fell back in disorder, while Kellermann, disengaged and
carried off by his troops, sought for a fresh charger. The Prussians,
witnessing his fall and the retreat of his column, redoubled their fire,
and a well-directed volley of shells silenced the French artillery.
The Duc de Chartres, who for three hours had supported the fire of the
Prussians at the decisive post of Valmy, without drawing a trigger, saw
the danger of his general. He hastened to the second line, put himself
at the head of the reserve of artillery, advanced to the plateau by the
mill, covered the disorder of the centre, rallied the flying caissons,
supported the fire, and checked the enemy's onset.
The Duke of Brunswick would not give the French time to strengthen their
position, but formed three formidable columns of attack, supported by
two wings of cavalry. These columns advanced in spite of the fire of the
French batteries, and were about to crush beneath their masses the
division of the Duc de Chartres, who at the mill of Valmy awaited the
onset. Kellermann, who had renewed the line, formed his army into
columns by battalions, sprang from his horse, and casting the bridle to
his orderly, bade him lead it behind the ranks, showing the soldiers
that he was resolved to conquer or die. "Comrades," cried Kellermann, in
a voice of thunder, "the moment of victory is at hand. Let us suffer the
enemy to advance, and then charge with the bayonet." Then waving his hat
on the top of his sword, "_Vive la nation!_" cried he more
enthusiastically than before; "let us conquer for her."
This cry of the general, repeated by the nearest battalions, and taken
up successively by the rest, created an immense clamor like the country
herself encouraging her defenders. This shout of the whole army,
resounding from one hill to another, and heard above the cannon's roar,
reassured the troops, and made the Duke of Brunswick pause, for such
hearts promised equally terrible hands. Kellermann still advanced at the
head of his column. The Duc de Chartres, his sword in one hand and a
tricolored flag in the other, followed the horse artillery with the
cavalry. The Duke of Brunswick, with the quick eye of a veteran soldier,
and that economy of human life that characterizes an able general, saw
that this attack would fail when opposed to such enthusiasm; and he
re-formed the head of his columns, sounded the retreat, and slowly
retired to his positions unpursued.
The fire ceased on both sides and the battle was as it were suspended
until four in the evening, when the King of Prussia, indignant at the
hesitation of his army, formed in person, and with the flower of his
infantry and cavalry, three formidable columns of attack; then riding
down the line, he bitterly reproached them with suffering the standard
of the monarch to be thus humiliated. At the voice of their sovereign
the troops marched to the conflict, and the King, surrounded by the Duke
of Brunswick and his principal officers, marched in the first rank,
exposed to the fire of the French, which mowed down his staff around
him. Intrepid as the blood of Frederick, he commanded as a king jealous
of the honor of his nation, and exposed himself like a soldier who holds
his life but lightly compared to victory. All was in vain; the Prussian
columns, assailed by the fire of twenty-four pieces of cannon, in
position on the heights of Valmy, retreated at nightfall, leaving behind
them eight hundred dead. Not to have been defeated was to the French
army a victory. Kellermann felt this so fully that he assumed the name
of Valmy in after-years,[39] and in his will bequeathed his heart to the
village of that name, in order that it might repose on the theatre of
his greatest renown, and sleep amid the companions of his first field.
While the French army fought and triumphed at Valmy, the Convention
decreed the Republic at Paris.
Dumouriez returned to his camp amid the roar of Kellermann's cannon; but
while he congratulated himself on the success of a day that strengthened
the patriotic feelings of the army, and that rendered the first attack
on the country fatal to her enemies, he was too clear-sighted not to
perceive the faults of Kellermann and the temerity of his position. The
Duke of Brunswick was on the morrow the same as he was the previous
evening, and had, moreover, extended his right wing beyond Gizaucourt
and cut off the route to Chalons.
Early on the morning of the 21st Dumouriez went to the camp of his
colleague, and ordered him to pass the river Auve, and fall back on the
camp of Dampierre, in the position previously assigned him. This
position, less brilliant, yet more secure, strengthened and united the
French army. Kellermann felt this and obeyed without a murmur.
The Prussians had lost so much time that they had no longer any to
spare. The rainy season had already affected them, and the winter would
be sufficient in itself to force them to retreat. The Duke of Brunswick
lost ten days in observing the French army; and the rain and fever
season surprised him, while yet undecided. The rains cut up the roads
from Argonne, by which his convoys arrived from Verdun, while his
soldiers, destitute of shelter and provisions, wandered about in the
fields, the orchards and vineyards, plucking the unripe grapes which
these inhabitants of the North tasted for the first time. Their
stomachs, already weakened by bad living, were soon disordered, and they
were attacked by that dysentery which is so fatal to the soldier; the
contagion spread rapidly through the camp, and thinned the corps.
The situation of Dumouriez did not appear, however, less perilous to
those who were not in the secret of his intentions. Hemmed in on the one
side of Les Eveches by the Prince de Hohenlohe; on the Paris side by the
King of Prussia, the Prussians were within six leagues of Chalons, the
emigres still nearer. The Uhlans, the light cavalry of the Prussians,
pillaged at the gates of Rheims, and between Chalons and the capital
there was not a position or an army. Paris dreaded to find itself thus
exposed. Kellermann, a brave, but susceptible general, shaken by the
opinion in Paris, threatened to quit the camp and abandon his colleague
to his fate. Dumouriez, employing alternately the ascendency of his rank
and the seduction of his genius, passed, in order to detain him, from
menace to entreaty, and thus gained day by day his victory of patience.
Sometimes he threatened to deprive of their uniform and arms those who
complained of the want of provisions, and drive them from the camp as
cowards who were unworthy to suffer privations for their country. Eight
battalions of federes, recently arrived from the camp at Chalons, and
intoxicated with massacre and sedition, were those who most threatened
the subordination of the camp, saying openly that the ancient officers
were traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had
Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from
the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces
of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at
the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff and an escort of one
hundred hussars. "Fellows," said he--"for I will not call you either
citizens or soldiers--you see before you this artillery, behind you this
cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here
assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels among you
charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from among you, or denounce
them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct." The
battalions trembled and at once assumed the same spirit that pervaded
the army.
The ancient feelings of honor were associated in the camps with
patriotism, and Dumouriez encouraged it among his troops. Every day he
received from Paris threats of dismissal, to which he replied in terms
of defiance. "I will conceal my dismissal," he wrote, "until the day
when I behold the flight of the enemy: I will then show it to my
soldiers, and return to Paris, to suffer the punishment my country
inflicts on me for having saved her in spite of herself."
Three commissioners of the Convention, Sillery, Carra, and Prieur,
arrived at the camp on the 24th, to proclaim the Republic, and Dumouriez
did not hesitate. Although a royalist, he yet felt that at present it
was not a question of government, but of the safety of the country; and
besides, his ambition was vast as his genius, vague as the future. A
republic agitated at home, threatened from abroad, could not but be
favorable to an ambitious soldier at the head of an army who adored him;
for when royalty was abolished, there was no one of higher rank in the
nation than its generalissimo. The commissioners had also instructions
to order the retreat of the army behind the Marne. Dumouriez asked and
obtained from them six days' delay; on the seventh, at sunrise, the
French videttes beheld the heights of La Lune deserted, and the columns
of the Duke of Brunswick slowly defiling between the hills of Champagne,
and taking the direction of Grandpre. Fortune had justified
perseverance, and genius had baffled numbers. Dumouriez was triumphant,
and France was saved.
At this intelligence, one general shout of "Vive la nation!" burst from
the French army. The commissioners, the generals Beurnonville, Miranda,
even Kellermann, threw themselves into the arms of Dumouriez, and
acknowledged the superiority of his judgment and the accuracy of his
perception--while the soldiers proclaimed him the Fabius of his country.
But this name, which he accepted for a day, but ill responded to the
ardor of his soul; and he already meditated playing the part of
Hannibal, which was more consonant with the activity of his character
and the determination of his genius. At home, that of Caesar might one
day tempt him. This ambition of Dumouriez explains the unmolested
retreat of the Prussians through an enemy's country, and through defiles
which might easily have been converted into Caudine Forks, and under the
cannon of seventy thousand French, before which the weakened and
enervated army of the Duke of Brunswick had to make a flank movement.
While the military genius of Dumouriez triumphed over the Prussian army,
his political genius was not asleep; for his camp, during the last days
of the campaign, was at once the head-quarters of an army and the centre
of diplomatic negotiations. Dumouriez had created a connection, half
apparent, half secret, with the Duke of Brunswick and those officers and
ministers who had most influence over the King of Prussia. Danton, the
only minister who possessed any authority over Dumouriez, was in the
secret of these negotiations.
The Duke of Brunswick was no less desirous than Dumouriez to negotiate,
while fighting at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia were two
parties, one of whom wished to retain the King with the army, and the
other to remove him from it. The Count de Schulemberg, the King's
confidential agent, was the leader of the first, the Duke of Brunswick
of the second; Haugwitz, Lucchesini, Lombard, the King's secretary,
Kalkreuth, and the Prince de Hohenlohe were of the party of the latter.
The King resisted with the firmness of a man who has engaged his honor
in a great cause in the eyes of the world, and who wished to come off
with credit, or at least without loss of reputation. He remained with
the army, and sent the Count de Schulemberg to direct the operations in
Poland. From this day the Prince was exposed in his camp to an influence
whose interest it was to slacken his march and enervate his resolutions;
and from this day everything tended to a retreat.
The Duke of Brunswick only sought a pretext for opening negotiations
with the French at head-quarters. So long as he was behind the Argonne,
within ten leagues of Grandpre, this pretext did not offer itself, for
the King of Prussia would look on these advances as a proof of treason
or cowardice. The combat of Valmy, in the idea of the Duke of Brunswick,
was but a negotiation carried on by the mouth of the cannon. Dumouriez
held the fate of the French Revolution in his hands, and he could not
believe that this general would become the mere tool of anarchical
democracy. "He will cast the weight of his sword," said he, "to weigh
down the scale in favor of a constitutional monarchy; he will turn upon
the jailers of the King and the murderers of September. Guardian of the
frontiers, he has only to threaten to open them to the coalition, to
insure obedience from the National Assembly. An arrangement between
monarchical France and Prussia, under the auspices of Dumouriez, is a
thousand times preferable to a war in which Prussia stakes her army
against the despair of a nation."
FOOTNOTES:
[36] The royalists who left Paris or France in 1789 and after, on
account of the Revolution.--ED.
[37] The National Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly,
actually opened September 21st.--ED.
[38] This was Louis Philippe, afterward known as "the Citizen-King." He
was the son of Philippe Egalite, Duc d'Orleans, and was at this time
about twenty years old.--ED.
[39] Kellermann was created Duc de Valmy by Napoleon.--ED.
INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN
GROWTH OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN AMERICA
A.D. 1793
CHARLES W. DABNEY R. B. HANDY DENISON OLMSTED
Lord Macaulay declared that "what Peter the Great did to
make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the
cotton-gin has more than equalled in its relation to the
power and progress of the United States." When Macaulay
delivered this opinion, "King Cotton" was more absolute in
the United States than to-day, for the cultivation of cotton
has since been supplemented in this country by other
industries of equal importance. Yet, what cotton had done
for the United States in Macaulay's day has been far
surpassed by its record since, as one of the great
industrial and commercial interests of the land; and judged
by export values, as estimated by the specialist Dabney, at
one time Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, cotton is still
king of the American market.
The growth of the cotton industry in the United States,
traced so minutely by Handy, witnesses from one decade to
another to the supreme achievement of the American inventor
so highly estimated by Macaulay. Eli Whitney was born at
Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765, and died in 1825. In 1792
he was graduated at Yale College, and that year became a
teacher in Georgia, where he invented the cotton-gin. Before
he could secure a patent his machine was stolen from his
workshop, and others reaped the profits of his ingenuity. It
is pleasing to know that he afterward made a fortune by
other uses of his inventive skill. His service to the cotton
industry in all its departments has not only been vastly
influential in the development of his own country, but has
also greatly affected the relations of the United States
with other industrial nations, especially with Great
Britain, the leading cotton-manufacturing country of the
world.
CHARLES W. DABNEY
Cotton is the principal product of eight great States of the American
Union, and the most valuable "money crop" of the entire country.
Climatic conditions practically restrict its cultivation to a group of
States constituting less than one-fourth of the total area of the
country, and yet the value of the annual crop is exceeded among
cultivated products only by corn, which is grown in every State of the
Union, and occasionally by wheat. Cotton furnishes the raw material for
one of our most important manufacturing industries and from one-fourth
to one-third of our total exports.
Considered without reference to any particular country, its economic
importance is far beyond numerical expression; for while the total crop
of the world is approximately ascertainable, the effect of cotton upon
the commercial and social relations of mankind is too far-reaching for
estimation. Of the four great staples that provide man with
clothing--cotton, silk, wool, and flax--cotton, by reason of its
cheapness and its many excellencies, is rapidly superseding its several
rivals. Sixty years ago only about two million five hundred thousand
bales of cotton, or less than the present production of Texas, were
annually converted into clothing; the spindles of the world now use over
thirteen million bales per annum. Yet less than half the people of the
world are supplied with cotton goods made by modern machinery, and it
has been estimated that it would require annually a crop of forty-two
million bales of five hundred pounds each to raise the world's standard
of consumption to that of the principal nations.
Cotton stands preeminent among farm crops in the ease and cheapness of
its production, as compared with the variety and value of its products.
No crop makes so slight a drain upon the fertility of the soil, and for
none has modern enterprise found so many uses for its several parts. The
cotton plant yields, in fact, a double crop--a most beautiful fibre and
a seed yielding both oil and feed, which, although neglected for a long
time, is now esteemed worth one-sixth as much as the fibre. In addition
to this, the stems can be made to yield a fibre which waits only for a
machine to work it, and the roots yield a drug. It is entirely possible,
therefore, that cotton may ultimately be grown as much for these parts
as for the lint.
The history of cotton production in the United States differs from that
of almost every other agricultural product in several important
particulars. For nearly three-quarters of a century slave labor was
almost exclusively employed in this branch of agricultural industry, and
an immense majority of the colored people of to-day look to it for their
chief support. Cotton was also the great pioneer crop in the new
Southwestern States. Not only has the westward movement of the industry
been more rapid than that of any other crop, but the centre of
production has always been farther in advance of the centre of
population. As long ago as 1839 Mississippi was producing almost
one-fourth of the entire crop of the country. Recent years have
witnessed an enormous development in the regions to the west, which
would have carried the centre of production across the Mississippi River
if the cultivation of cotton, unlike that of wheat and corn and other
products, had not taken a new lease of life in the older States along
the Atlantic seaboard, where the use of manures has both extended the
area and increased the production.
Probably no equally great industry was ever more completely paralyzed or
had its future placed in greater jeopardy than cotton growing in the
United States during the war of 1861-1865. So great was the decrease in
production which followed the effectual closing of the ports that only
one bale of cotton was grown in 1864-1865 for every fifteen bales raised
in 1861-1862. The chief menace to the future of cotton production lay in
the efforts that were put forth by other cotton-growing countries at
this time to produce those particular varieties which had for so long
given the United States the monopoly of the European markets; and
nothing could more completely demonstrate the remarkable adaptation of
our Southern States to the growing of varieties which the experience of
generations has proved to be the best for manufacturing purposes than
the fact that it took them only thirteen years from the end of the war
to regain the primacy of position which they held at its commencement.
ROBERT B. HANDY
When cotton manufacture was introduced into England is not definitely
settled. There is no mention of the manufacture or use of cotton in the
celebrated poor-law of Elizabeth (1601), though hemp, flax, and wool are
expressly named. The first authentic record is in Roberts' _Treasure of
Traffic_, published in 1641; but it is possible, and even probable, that
the art was imported from Flanders by the artisans who fled from that
country to England in the latter part of the sixteenth century, as it is
probable that the manufacture had established itself more or less
firmly before it attracted the attention of the author of the
above-named pamphlet. We may presume, then, that it was well established
in England by 1641, but after that date the spread was not rapid. The
crudeness of the machinery for spinning was such that fine yarn could
not be made. Both spinning and weaving were done by individuals and
families in their own houses on clumsy and heavy machines. These
implements were but little better than those in use two thousand years
before. The distaff, the earliest of spinning-machines, was still in
use, and the best to be had was the one-thread spinning-wheel. The loom
used was scarcely an improvement on that which the East Indian had used
centuries before, though it was constructed with greater firmness and
compactness. Owing to imperfections in their machines, it was impossible
for the Europeans to make cotton yarn combining strength and firmness.
The yarn when spun was loose and flimsy; to make it strong it had to be
heavy.
The finished web had often to be carried a long distance to market. It
was only in 1760 that Manchester merchants began to furnish the weavers
in the neighboring villages with linen yarn and raw cotton and to pay a
fixed price for the perfected web, thus relieving the weavers of the
necessity of providing themselves with material and seeking a market for
their cloth, and enabling them to prosecute their employment with
greater regularity.
It was also about that time that England began to export her cotton
goods, for until then her weavers had not been able to do more than
supply the home demand. This foreign trade at once increased the demand
for cotton goods, and the increased demand presented a problem which the
manufacturers at first found difficult of solution. The procuring of
supplies of linen yarn needed for the warp of these textiles was not
difficult, but where was the cotton yarn to come from? The spinners were
producing already as much as their rude machines would permit, and
additional spinners were not to be had. The demand for cotton thread
exceeded the supply; the price of yarn rose with the demands of trade
and the extension of the manufacture and operated as a check to the
further increase of the exports. The trade had reached the point where
hand carders, single-thread spinning-wheels, and the hand-loom,
requiring a man to each machine, were clearly inadequate to the
service, and the cotton trade of Great Britain in the middle of the
eighteenth century seemed to have reached its limit. About this time
Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and Watt, men either
directly or indirectly engaged in and familiar with the needs of the
cotton manufacture, invented machines which raised the trade from an
experimental or at least a struggling industry into the most important
manufacture of the world. The carding-engine, the spinning-jenny, the
spinning-frame, the stocking-frame, the power-loom, and the adaptation
of the steam-engine to the propulsion of these machines, at once
supplied the means of producing an immense amount of yarn and cloth.
These inventions, it is true, were not in themselves perfect, but the
principles on which they were built are those on which the most
complicated textile machines of this day are based.
The supply of raw material to meet the demands of the trade was limited.
The West Indies, the Levant, and India were the countries from which
this supply was drawn, but they were unable to furnish enough raw cotton
to keep the new machines in operation, and it was necessary to look
elsewhere.
America was the only hope of the cotton manufacturer; but as at that
time the United States produced little or no cotton, for a few years all
the increased supply came from Brazil.