day. Whitney perfected a gin (1793) which could clean fifty pounds of lint a day. The invention at once made possible an immense cotton empire. Cotton could now Whitney's be profitably grown on land lying as high as five cotton gin hundred feet above sea level. Such was the de mand for the new appliance that Whitney could not keep up with his orders and country blacksmiths began to make these simple but exceedingly valuable machines. A gin was merely a wooden cylinder encircled by rows of slender spikes set half an inch apart, which extended between the bars of a grid set so closely together that the seed could not pass-the lint being pulled through by the spikes. A brush cleaned the spikes. Fugitive With millions of new acres which hitherto had been useless to planters now open to cotton, the price of slaves at once advanced, and in this same year (1793) Congress passed a Fugitive Slave Act which made it possible for masters to reclaim runaway slaves by proving their property before a Federal judge. While, on the one hand, Southern states were forbidding the freeing of slaves, on the other hand the last Northern states to abolish slavery were doing so. These acts show the sudden difference of opinion on this subject in the two sections, and how the South was becoming "solid" from an economic standpoint. Curiously enough the North, while freeing its slaves, was going through an industrial revolution which helped to fasten slavery upon the South. Every mill and factory built in this new era in the North Influence of made cotton raising more profitable on the Southern plantations; we shall see, a little later, that on slavery efforts to unsettle the slave system in the South met with no small opposition in the commercial centers of the North (map following p. 426). Northern industrialism Whitney's cotton gin gave the Louisiana Purchase a new meaning. That invention opened a new section of the country to the cotton plant in a climate in which it would thrive and a new world to the plantation system and slavery. Northerners had objected to the Purchase, in part, because the Government was pledged to admit the states created from any west ern territory on the same terms as the original states. This objection was not echoed in the South. With satisfaction The cotton its farsighted statesmen saw great states coming into existence in that region which would favor slavery; states which, once admitted to the Union, would help the South keep up in the race with the North so far as votes in Congress were concerned. States had, since 1802, been admitted to the Union in pairs, a Southern as against a Northern; Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois on the one hand balanced Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama on the other. At the same time the agitation against slavery in England on moral grounds spread to the United States. In 1808 the foreign slave trade was abolished by act of Congress; and in 1816 the American Colonization Society was form The Missouri ed to solve the negro problem by emigration to Africa. Now, when it came to this matter of crossing the Mississippi into the new purchase and admitting Missouri in 1821, the question of the legal expansion of slavery into the entire West came squarely before the nation ringing, in Jefferson's graphic words, "like a fire-bell in the night." The discussion over this question was the most heated Congress had heard since our government was formed. The majority in the House attempted to bar the expansion of slavery under the guise of admitting Missouri with the "restriction" that slavery should not exist in the new state. The Senate opposed the theory that the Government could place any restrictions on a state. The debate alarmed the North by proving that JAMES MONROE slavery, instead of being on the road to extinction, was becoming stronger every day. No American cotton was exported in 1791;. now twenty million dollars' worth were being exported, which explains slavery's growing power. The matter was settled by a compromise to admit Maine as a free state and admit Missouri as a slave state, but to limit, throughout the territory of Louisiana, the northward expansion of slavery to the parallel of 36°30'. The compromise staved off the day when the problem of slavery should become the burning national question. On March 4, 1817, James Monroe, another Virginian, was made President to succeed James Madison; he served two terms, or until 1825. While the Missouri question was the important issue of this time, two other matters attracted wide attention. Advancing President American settlements brought on the usual fric Monroe elected tion with Indians in Alabama and Florida. The first of two Seminole wars was now fought-important, principally, because of the international questions which it raised. General Jackson invaded Florida, which still belonged to Spain, in pursuit of the Seminoles. While the government was compelled to rebuke him, the nation generally applauded.1 As a result Spain came to realize that it was hopeless for her to attempt to protect that peninsula against the steady pressure of American advance. She therefore sold Florida to us in 1819 for five million dollars. But in drawing the new boundary line (map following p. 266) seeds of much future trouble were sown. This line ran irregularly by way of the Sabine and the Arkansas rivers to the 42nd parallel and followed that line to the Pacific. While the fixing of this line was noteworthy (because by it we inherited the Spanish claim to "Oregon") it shut us off colonized from the part of the Louisiana Purchase south of The Florida Texas the Sabine now occupied by the State of Texas. Already 1John C. Calhoun was the author of a motion in Congress, at this time, to censure Jackson for invading Florida. In later years, as we shall see, Jackson learned of this motion for the first time. It added fuel to the quarrel between these men which played a very important part in the history of Jackson's career as President. (1820) a Connecticut Yankee, Moses Austin, was seeking from Mexico a grant of land in that region and two years later his son, Stephen, led thither the first colony of Americans to occupy it. The purchase of Florida, therefore, settled one source of trouble in the East but it opened the way to another in the West-in Texas. In both cases the fundamental cause was the uncontrollable advance of American population-lured on to good lands where tobacco and cotton and cane would grow. Russians in the North In other directions, too, arose clouds which hinted of danger. Russia had acquired a right to the north Pacific coast of America above the 51st parallel. She had no settlements as far south as that but, in 1821, the Czar of Russia issued a proclamation forbidding peo- Pacific ple of other nations to come within a hundred miles of that northland above the 51st parallel. This created a province on our continent which could be colonized only by Russians and made Bering Sea a Russian inland sea in which fishing was prohibited to all but Russians (map p. 236). This proclamation of the Czar's was the more alarming in American eyes because that potentate was now at the head of the "Holy Alliance."1 The world's attention had "Holy been turned to the South these days by the Alliance" valiant struggle which had been made by the Spanish colonists of South America to throw off Spain's yoke as we had thrown off England's. One by one the South American republics were established and, in 1822, the United States officially recognized their independence. Signs were not wanting that this Holy Alliance might attempt to aid Spain to reconquer these lost provinces. England wished them to remain free because they would offer England's her a better market if free. But when she coöperation suggested that we unite with her to protect them against any foe of "self-determination" our govern offer of The Holy Alliance was a league formed by European sovereigns in 1815 to protect themselves against revolutions-to uphold monarchical institutions. Russia had already announced that she would not recognize the independence of the South American republics. |