The Union in 1850--Comparative Population of Cities and Rural Districts
--Agriculture the General Occupation--Commercial and Industrial
Development--Growth of New York and Chicago--The Southern States--
Importance of the Cotton Crop--Why the South Was Sensitive to
Anti-Slavery Agitation--Manufactures--Religion and Education,--The
Cloud on the Horizon.
Approaching that period of civil discord, followed by civil war, which
has left its impress in every corner of the Union, and which was attended
by radical changes in the Constitution and the institutions of our
country, it may be well to review the material condition of the States
when the forces of freedom and slavery began to gather for the great
conflict, first in the forum and later in the field. In 1850 the United
States had a population of 23,191,876, of whom 3,204,313 were slaves.
Only 4,000,000 of the people lived in cities, towns and villages, and of
these but 2,860,000 resided in 140 cities and towns of more than 10,000
inhabitants each. Of the total real and personal property in the United
States more than two-thirds was owned by the rural population, and the
value of manufactures was insignificant, compared with the products of
agriculture. One leading aim of American statesmanship and enterprise had
been, from a very early period, to connect the great lakes and the
fertile valleys of the middle and western States with the cities and
ports along the Atlantic seaboard; to improve navigation of the rivers,
and thus bring into cultivation the valuable tracts of country along
their banks; and, as a part of this great work, to connect with each
other, by railways and canals, the towns and villages in the more
densely-peopled and cultivated districts. To carry out the general
design, vast sums were lavished and expensive works constructed, in many
instances far in advance of any ascertained requirements of the country,
and certainly with little prospect of an early return for the
expenditure. But in the meantime the most apparently hopeless of these
works conferred important benefits upon the mass of the community, by
developing sources of wealth which might otherwise have been closed for
years, and providing new spheres for the restless and indomitable energy
of the American.
While the agricultural portion of the American people were extending the
area of their location, and laying under the Constitution new and vast
sources of wealth, the cities and towns also grew apace under the impulse
of commercial and industrial development. No country in the world, Great
Britain not excepted, succeeded more signally in directing its natural
advantages to the promotion of commerce. The abundance of water power was
utilized for manufactures of every description. Machinery of the most
perfect kind was applied to every process, economizing labor,
facilitating locomotion and aiding in surmounting those difficulties
which had ever impeded the progress of young nations. Nowhere was the
gigantic power of steam more abundantly and usefully employed--in the
mine and in the mill, on the rivers and lakes, the canals and the
railroads, doing the work of millions of hands and of human and animal
sinews, without creating a vacuum in the market for labor, or diminishing
the rewards of industry. From 1830 to 1840, a period of only ten years,
the increase in the population of twenty of the largest cities in the
United States, from New York to St. Louis inclusive, was fifty-five per
cent, and this in face of the most disastrous commercial panic that had
ever visited the country, and this marvelous rate of increase was fully
maintained during the subsequent decade.
It is not remarkable that the cities and States of the Union which first
took steps to connect the fertile regions lying beyond the Allegheny
Mountains with the Atlantic should have made the greatest progress in
importance and prosperity. It was the fortune of the State of New York to
take the earliest step to effect this great desideratum, although
Washington had perhaps first suggested its importance, in agitating a
movement for the purpose of connecting the country adjoining the Great
Lakes with his native Virginia. The construction of the Erie Canal placed
New York in the very front of American communities. Before the canal was
opened the cost of transit from Lake Erie to tidewater was such as to
prohibit the shipment of western produce and merchandise to New York; and
it consequently came only to Baltimore and Philadelphia. "As soon as the
lakes were reached," says a Federal report, "the line of navigable water
was extended through them nearly one thousand miles farther from the
interior. The Western States immediately commenced the construction of
similar works, for the purpose of opening a communication from the more
remote portions of their territories with this great water-line. All
these works took their direction and character from the Erie Canal, which
in this manner became the outlet for the greater part of the produce of
the West. Without such a work the West would have had no attractions for
a settler, and have probably remained a waste up to the present time; and
New York itself could not have progressed as it has done." In addition,
however, to the formation of the Erie Canal, New York originated, in
advance of most other States, lines of railway throughout its territory,
in connection either with the canal, or between its various towns and
settlements. It also connected itself by railroad with Lake Champlain,
and succeeded in diverting a considerable portion of the transit trade of
Canada from the St. Lawrence through these communications to the port of
New York. The effect of this enterprise displayed by the people and by
the State may be estimated by the fact that the population, which was, in
1830, 1,918,608, had increased in 1840 to 2,428,921, and in 1850 was
3,097,394. In 1830, the value of the imports at New York was $38,656,064;
in 1840 it had reached $60,064,942, and in 1851, when the network of
railway communications throughout the State had come into fairly complete
operation, the value of imports was $144,454,616.
Under the influence of railroad and canal Chicago also made swift and
wonderful progress. In May, 1848, a canal one hundred miles in length was
opened to connect Lake Michigan with the Illinois River, and the first
section of a railway from Chicago to the westward was opened in March,
1849. Previously to these works being brought into operation it appears
from the city census of 1847 that the population was 16,859; in 1850, it
had sprung to 29,963, and in August, 1852 it was estimated at nearly, if
not quite, 40,000, having thus considerably more than doubled itself in
five years.
The efforts of the Southern States to attract toward their ports the
produce of the West, by way of the magnificent rivers which empty
themselves into the Gulf of Mexico, rivalled those made by the North. The
prosperity of these States was greatly promoted by the growing demand for
cotton in America and Europe. In the thirty-one years from 1821 to 1852,
there had been an increase of 3,000,000 bales in the growth, which
multiplied itself during that period seven-fold! The importance of this
crop as an element of wealth may be estimated from the fact that the
census value of it in 1849-50 was $112,000,000; that its cultivation and
preparation for market employed upward of 800,000 agricultural laborers,
85 per cent of whom were slaves and the residue (120,000) white citizens;
that upward of 120,000 tons of steam shipping, and at least 7000 persons
were engaged in its transportation from the interior to the southern
ports, and that after remunerating merchants, factors, underwriters and a
host of other persons it furnished profitable freight for 1,100,000 tons
of American shipping, and 55,000 seamen in the Gulf and Atlantic coasting
trade, and for 800,000 tons and 40,000 seamen for its transport to Europe
and elsewhere. As the Southern people generally believed that cotton
could not be cultivated without the labor of slaves it is easy to
understand why they were sensitive to every agitation, however slight,
that seemed to threaten that source of wealth, and how their
sensitiveness grew as cotton's empire extended.
Manufactures were also in a flourishing condition, and it was estimated
in 1852, that the capital embarked in the cotton manufactories of the
United States was at least $80,000,000; that the value of the products
was $70,000,000; that 100,000 male and female operatives were employed,
and that quite 700,000 bales of cotton, worth at least $35,000,000, were
spun and woven. America possessed, also, a number of woolen
manufactories, which employed about the same period 39,252 hands.
The American people, then as now, believed in religion and education as
the corner-stones of liberty's temple. The population of 23,000,000 in
1850 had 36,221 churches and chapels, with accommodation for 13,967,449
persons--a large accommodation for a new country whose population had
spread so rapidly over so extensive an area. Of the youth nearly
4,000,000 were receiving instruction in the various educational
institutions. The teachers numbered 115,000, and colleges and schools
nearly 100,000. America had upward of seventy theological schools;
forty-four medical and surgical schools; nineteen schools of law, and ten
schools of practical science and extensive libraries were attached to
nearly all of these institutions.
Never had the future of our nation seemed more promising than at the very
time when the cloud of slavery began to darken the bright horizon,
gradually overspreading the heavens until it burst in the storm of
secession.
The Slavery Conflict.