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us in believing that they were by no | live stock, and nearly two hundred

means intolerable. It is not too much to assume that the men by whose valor and virtue American independence was achieved, and who lived to enjoy, for half a century thereafter, the gratitude of their country, and the honest pride of their children, saw wealth as fairly distributed, and the labor of freemen as adequately rewarded, as those of almost any other country or of any previous generation.

Eighty years had not passed since the acknowledgment of our independence, when the returns of the Eighth Decennial Census afforded us the means of measuring our country's growth and physical progress during nearly its whole national history. The retrospect and the prospect might well minister to the pride (though that were needless) of a patriotic apostle of 'manifest destiny.' During those eighty years, or within the memory of many still living, the area of our country had been expanded, by successive and, in good part, peaceful acquisitions, from Eight Hundred Thousand to about Three Millions of square miles. Its population, excluding the Aboriginal savages, had increased from Three to more than Thirty Millions. Of its two thousand millions of acres of dry land, about five hundred millions had been divided into farms; leaving three-fourths of its surface as yet unimproved, though but in part unappropriated. Its farms were officially estimated as worth six thousand six hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and were doubtless actually worth not less than Ten Thousand Millions of dollars. On these farms were over eleven hundred millions' worth of

Of

and fifty millions' worth of implements and machinery. The value of animals annually slaughtered was returned at over two hundred millions of dollars. The annual product of Wheat was more than one hundred and seventy millions of bushels, with an equal quantity of Oats, and more than eight hundred millions of bushels of Indian Corn. Of Tobacco, our annual product was more than four hundred millions of pounds; and of Rice, nearly two millions. Of Wool, our annual clip was over sixty millions of pounds, and our consumption probably double that amount. ginned Cotton, ready for market, our product was about one million of tuns, or more than Five Millions of bales of four hundred pounds each. Four hundred and sixty millions of pounds of Butter, and one hundred and five millions of pounds of Cheese, were likewise returned as our aggregate product for the year 1859. We made in that year three hundred and forty millions of pounds of Sugar, and more than twenty-five millions of gallons of Molasses. And, beside consuming all this, with twenty-five millions of pounds of home-made Honey, we imported from abroad to the value of over thirty-six millions of dollars. We dragged from our forests, not including fuel, Timber valued at more than Ninety-three Millions of dollars. We made Flour to the value of Two Hundred Millions. We manufactured over fiftyfive millions' worth of Cotton into one hundred and fabrics, worth fifteen millions of dollars, beside importing largely from abroad. We fabricated over eighty millions of pounds of Wool, costing forty mil

seventeen

OUR COUNTRY IN 1859-60.

23

lions of dollars, into sixty-eight mil- | with twelve thousand two hundred lions' worth of goods, though import- and sixty teachers and two hundred ing nearly all our finer woolen and sixty-three thousand and ninetyfabrics. We produced sixty-three six pupils; eighty thousand nine millions' worth of Leather; eight hundred and seventy-eight Common hundred and seventy-five thousand Schools, with three millions three tuns of Pig Iron, worth twenty mil- hundred and fifty-four thousand and lions of dollars; four hundred thou- eleven pupils; three hundred and sand tuns of Wrought Iron, worth eighty-six Daily Newspapers, circulattwenty-one millions; and Agricul- ing in the aggregate one million four tural Implements to the value of hundred and seventy-eight thousand millions. The grand four hundred and thirty-five copies; total of Manufactures, returned by one hundred and forty-six Trithis Census, amounted in value to Weekly and Semi-Weekly, and three One Thousand Nine Hundred Mil- thousand one hundred and fifty-three lions—an increase of forty-five per Weekly journals, circulating seven cent. within ten years. Our Exports, millions five hundred and sixty-four for the year ending in 1860, amounted thousand three hundred and fourto a little more than Four Hundred teen copies; with nineteen QuarterMillions of dollars, whereof all but lies, five hundred and twenty-one Twenty-seven Millions were of do- Literary, and two hundred and sevenmestic production. Our Imports ty-one Religious periodicals, mainly were a little over Three Hundred issued weekly, sufficiently attest that and Sixty Millions. Of Gold and our progress had not been purely Silver, we exported, in that year, physical, but intellectual and moral nearly fifty-seven millions of dollars, as well. and imported about eight millions and a half; indicating that ours had become one of the great gold-producing countries on earth, if not the very greatest. The number of ocean voyages terminating in our ports during the year ending June 30, 1861, was Twenty-two Thousand, less forty; their aggregate tunnage a little more than seven millions two hundred and forty thousand-more than two-thirds of it American. About fifty thousand churches, with forty thousand clergymen; two hundred and thirty-nine Colleges, having one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight teachers and twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and twentyone pupils; six thousand and eightyfive Academies and Private Schools,

The temptation to increase these citations from the Census is one hard to resist. Yet any multiplication of details would tend rather to confuse than to deepen their impression on the mind of the general reader. Let it suffice, then, in conclusion, that the Real and Personal Estate of our people, which in 1850 was returned as of the aggregate value of a little over Seven Thousand Millions of dollars, was, in 1860, returned as worth over Sixteen Thousand Millions-an increase in ten years of more than one hundred and twentyfive per cent. It is quite probable that both these aggregates are largely under the truth; but, conceding their accuracy, it is perfectly safe to assume that Fifteen of the Six

teen Thousand Millions of property | world by the industry, enterprise, returned in 1860 had been created and thrift of our people during the and added to the wealth of the eighty preceding years.

II.

SLAVERY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.

VICE, whether individual or general, is ever conceived in darkness and cradled in obscurity. It challenges observation only in its hardy maturity and conscious strength. Slavery is older than Civilization-older than History. Its origin is commonly referred to war-to the captivity of the vanquished, and to the thrift and clemency of the victor, who learns by experience that the gratification of killing his prisoner is transient, while the profit of sparing him for servitude is enduring; and thus, in rude ages, not merely the vanquished warriors, but their wives and children, their dependents and subjects, were accounted legitimate "spoils of victory," along with the lands, houses, flocks and herds, the goods and chattels of the conquered people. "Woe to the conquered!" is the primary rule of savage and of barbarian warfare; and the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, the destruction by Rome of Capua, of Carthage, and of other cities and peoples which had provoked her special enmity, prove that nations which regarded themselves as far advanced in civilization, were hardly more merciful than savages, when maddened by fear and hate. War wastes and devastates. The earth, plowed however deeply with cannon-wheels, yields uncertain

harvests; yet armies and their dependents must be fed. Rapacity, as well as destruction, seems almost inseparable from war. The soldier, impelled to destroy for his chief's or his country's sake, soon learns to save The and appropriate for his own. natural and necessary distinction between 'mine' and 'thine' becomes in his mind confused, if not obliterated. The right of every one to the product of his own labor is one which his vocation incites, and even compels, him to disregard. To enslave those whom, whether combatants or otherwise, he might justifiably kill, appears to him rather an act of humanity than of injustice and wrong. Hence, the warlike, conquering, dominating races of antiquity almost universally rejoiced, when at their acme of power and greatness, in the possession of innumerable slaves.

Slavery of a mild and gentle type may very well have grown up insensibly, even in the absence of war. The patriarch has shelter and food, with employment for various capacities; and his stronghold, if he be stationary, or his tents, if he be nomadic, become the refuge of the unfortunate and the destitute from the region around him. The abandoned wife, the unwedded mother, the crippled or infirm of either sex,

SLAVERY AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

25

hend that it was cheaper to buy the beef he required in the grass-market at Glasgow than to obtain it without price, by harrying the lowland farms. So the first man who ever imbibed or conceived the fatal delusion that it was more advantageous to him, or to any human being, to procure whatever his necessities or his appetites required by address and scheming than by honest work-by the unrequited rather than the fairly and faithfully recompensed toil of his fellow-creatures-was, in essence and in heart, a slaveholder, and only awaited opportunity to become one in deed and practice. And this sin

the tender orphan, and the out-worn, seedy prodigal, betake themselves to his lodge, and humbly solicit his permission to earn bread and shelter by tending his flocks and herds, or by any other service to which their capacities are adequate. Some are accepted from motives of thrift; others under the impulse of charity; and the greater portion of either class, exulting in their escape from hunger, cold, and nakedness, gladly remain through life. Marriages are formed among them and children are born, who grow up adepts in the labor the patriarch requires of them, contented with their station, and ignorant of the world outside of his posses-gle truth, operating upon the infinite sions. If his circumstances require a military force, he organizes it of servants born in his household.' His possessions steadily increase, and he becomes in time a feudal chieftain, ruling over vassals proud of his eminence and docile to his will. Thus it has been justly remarked that the condition of Slavery has ever preceded the laws by which it is ultimately regulated; and it is not without plausibility that its champions have contended for it as a natural form of society-a normal development of the necessary association of Capital with Labor in Man's progress from rude ignorance and want to abundance, refinement, and luxury.

varieties of human capacity and culture, suffices to account for the universality of slaveholding in the anteChristian ages, for its tenacity of life, and for the extreme difficulty of even its partial eradication. The ancients, while they apprehended, perhaps adequately, the bitterness of bondage, which many of them had experienced, do not seem to have perceived so vividly the corresponding evils of slaveholding. They saw that end of the chain which encircled the ankle of the bondman; they do not seem to have so clearly perceived that the other lay heavily across the throat of even his sleeping master. Homer-if we may take Pope's word for it-observed that

"Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away;"

But Slavery, primarily considered, has still another aspect-that of a natural relation of simplicity to cunning, of ignorance to knowledge, of weakness to power. Thomas Car- but that the slaveholding relation eflyle,' before his melancholy decline fected an equal discount on the value and fall into devil-worship, truly ob- of the master appears to have escaped served, that the capital mistake of him. It is none the less true, howRob Roy was his failure to compre- ever, that ancient civilization, in its

1 In a letter on Copyright.

various national developments, was habitually corrupted, debauched, and ultimately ruined, by Slavery, which rendered labor dishonorable, and divided society horizontally into a small caste of the wealthy, educated, refined, and independent, and a vast hungry, sensual, thriftless, and worthless populace; rendered impossible the preservation of republican liberty and of legalized equality, even among the nominally free. Diogenes, with his lantern, might have vainly looked, through many a long day, among the followers of Marius, or Catiline, or Cæsar, for a specimen of the poor but virtuous and self-respecting Roman citizen of the days of Cincinnatus, or even of Regulus.

The Slavery of antiquity survived the religions, the ideas, the polities, and even the empires, in which it had its origin. It should have been abolished, with gladiatorial combats and other moral abominations, on the accession of Christianity to recognized supremacy over the Roman world; but the simple and sublime doctrine of Jesus and his disciples, of Paul and the Apostles, had ere this been grievously corrupted and perverted. The subtleties of Greek speculation, the pomp and pride of imperial Rome, had already commenced drawing the Church insensibly further and further away from its divine source. A robed and mitered ecclesiasticism, treacherous to humanity and truckling to power, had usurped the place of that austere, intrepid spirit which openly rebuked the guilt of regal, voluptuous Herod, and made

2 "In the year 990, Moorish merchants from the Barbary coast first reached the cities of Nigritia, and established an uninterrupted exchange of Saracen and European luxuries for

courtly Felix tremble. The prelates
of the lately persecuted Church were
the favored companions and coun-
selors-too often, alas! the courtiers
also-of Emperors and Cæsars; but
they seldom improved or risked their
great opportunity to demand obe-
dience, in all cases, to the dictates of
the Golden Rule. The Church had
become an estate above the people;
and their just complaints of the op-
pressions and inhumanities of the
powerful were not often breathed
White Sla-
into its reluctant ears.
very gradually wore out, or faded
was not grappled
out; but it
with and crushed as it should have
The Dark Ages, justly so
been.
called, are still quite dark enough;
but sufficient light has been shed
upon them to assure us that the
accord of priest and noble was com-
plete, and that serf and peasant
groaned and suffered beneath their
iron sway.

The invention of Printing, the discovery of America, the Protestant Reformation, the decline and fall of Feudalism, gradually changed the condition and brightened the prospect of the masses. Ancient Slavery was dead; modern Serfdom was substantially confined to cold and barbarous Russia; but African Slavery

the slavery of heathen negroeshad been revived, or reintroduced, on the northern coast of the Mediterranean, by Moorish traders, about the Tenth Century, and began to make its way among Spanish and Portuguese Christians somewhere near the middle of the Fifteenth."

The great name of Columbus is

the gold and slaves of Central Africa."-Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i., p. 165.

"The Portuguese are next in the market. An

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