4. Account for the fact that the United States had war with Mexico rather than with England, over boundary disputes.

5. Indicate on the map the several explorations of the "Pathfinder." 6. Contrast the speed and comfort of travel in 1849 with that of to-day. 7. From the Index find what other important discoveries of gold have taken place in our history.

8. Show how the discovery of gold in California had a great influence on the development of the Western country.

9. Review the successive expansions of our territory. (See "Expansion" in the Index.)

10. Make an outline of the chapter.

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS

1. Describe a meeting of the American settlers in Oregon at which they discuss their difficulties and resolve upon action. This may be dramatized.

2. Place, a New England home; time, 1849. The news of the discovery of gold in California has been received. Two sons decide to start for California. Describe the scene. Dramatize.

3. Imagine that you lived in a cabin on the Overland California Trail. Write a letter describing the scene from your doorstep in 1849.

4. Imagine that your father established a store in California in 1849. In telling how he prospered, weave in some of the life of that period.

CHAPTER XXX

TAYLOR'S AND FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATIONS: THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

1849-1853

292. The North prosperous. The North had prospered greatly. Her factories and mines had multiplied; her cities had grown with almost mushroom speed; her commerce had developed enormously both at home and with Europe and Asia. Immigrants from Europe continued to settle throughout all the Northern States and to increase the population of this section. Colleges, academies, schools, and churches could everywhere be seen throughout this wealthy and rapidly growing portion of the Union.

293. The South backward, because of slavery. But since the Revolution the South had unfortunately made comparatively little progress in wealth and population. This was due chiefly to slavery, which was injurious in several

ways:

(a) Few European immigrants went into the South. These newcomers were usually poor, and must work for their living. But a Southern planter would not pay for the labor of a white man when he could get the labor of a slave for the cost of the latter's bread and clothes, and the interest on the value of the slave in money; he could also own the children of the slave.1 Thus the free white workman could not compete with the enslaved black. Moreover,

1 In 1850 there were 3,200,000 slaves in the South, owned by 347,000 persons. But most of these owners had no more than one or two each; a large majority of the slaves were held by men who had fifty or more of them there were two men, for example, who owned over a thousand each.

At the same time there were about 2,500,000 "poor whites." The rich slaveholders having bought up all the best lands, these unfortunate people had to content themselves with farming poor, worn-out tracts, from which they were never able to get more than a bare living.

the slaveholders did not care to have wage-earners in their neighborhood, for fear that the slaves might be discontented when they saw laborers who could save money and buy their own homes. The immigrants therefore went to the North and West, and helped to build up those sections. Without immigration, the South could not make much growth in white population, and thus she was doomed to a minority representation in Congress.

(b) The Southern planter supposed in those days that he could make a profit only when he cultivated one or two large crops that required little skill and on which his ignorant and unwilling slaves could be worked in gangs, under overseers. Therefore he planted tobacco, cotton, or rice, and scarcely anything else. But in so doing he rapidly exhausted the soil by planting it over and over again to the same crops, and he needed frequently to seek fresh land for planting. This was one of the chief reasons for his eagerness to extend slavery into the West and Southwest. In our own day, under freedom, the Southern planter has learned that diversified crops, that do not greatly exhaust the soil, are also profitable in his region.

(c) The slaves had no object in working when the overseer's back was turned, so that it often took two or three of them to do as much as one enterprising free white laborer could do in the same time. Thus the owning of slaves was not as profitable as it seemed. Moreover, many masters did little but enjoy themselves, leaving their overseers to manage the plantations which is usually an unprofitable method in farming.

(d) The unskilled labor of the slaves was not satisfactory in mills or mines, where the operators need to have considerable intelligence. Whites might have been used in such places, thus leaving the blacks to work in the fields, but we have seen that it was not thought best to have free laborers in the same neighborhood with slaves. The South, therefore, had few factories and paid little attention to her abundant mines of iron and coal. She was dependent on the

North for most of her tools, clothing, and other goods, and on the West for much of her food. Thus little benefit had come to her from the many great inventions and discoveries that enriched and strengthened the rest of the country.

294. Slavery against freedom. Most of the intelligent Northerners believed that the system of slave labor was ruining both whites and negroes in the South. For this reason they wanted the West to be made free territory, in which slavery should be forbidden. They believed that if the laws were rightly interpreted, every slave would be a free man the moment his master carried him over the border into a free State.

But the Southerners honestly believed that slavery was a most excellent institution, quite as good for the blacks as for the whites.1 They wanted to take their slaves with them, like other property, when they moved to the new lands of the West. They feared that if the North were once able to prevent this, through having a majority in Congress, it would next be proposing laws to abolish slavery altogether. This, they believed, would mean the ruin of the South, for her wealthy class had a very large amount of money invested in slaves. 2

It was, therefore, of great importance to the South that, when new States came to be formed from the vast stretch of lands recently acquired from Mexico, as many as possible of these should be made slave States, that would send to Congress men pledged to vote against any proposal to abolish slavery. On its part the North was just as deter

1 They pointed out that in Africa the negro was a savage, yet that in America, during two centuries as a slave, he had been developed into a civilized being although still far behind the white man. They said, and this was quite true, that those negroes who had been reared as house servants were, as a rule, well cared for and had a deep affection for their master's family; and that crime was little known among them. The field-hands, who did the hard labor, were, no doubt, under some masters, badly treated; but Southerners asked whether, if free, getting wages, and shifting for themselves, the negroes would be better off than in slavery, or be better laborers.

2 The South did not realize how great a burden slavery was, for she had never known any other system of labor. She feared that were the negroes freed, not only would their owners suffer a great loss, but that there would be no laborers willing to take the places of the blacks, and plant and gather the crops.

mined that most, if not all, of the proposed new States. should be free.

295. Election of Taylor and Fillmore. In the presidential election of 1848 the Whigs elected their candidates for President, General Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, an army officer who had been prominent in the Mexican War; for Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, a New York lawyer. Taylor was inaugurated in March, 1849.1

296. Threats of breaking up the Union. There were now fifteen States in the Union where no human being could be born into slavery,2 and an equal number in which slavery was permitted. This made the Federal Senate, where each State has two votes, evenly divided on the slavery question; but in the House of Representatives the North had a majority, because of its larger population.

California was now applying for admission, and, having been settled chiefly by Northern men, wanted to come in as a free State. But if she were allowed to enter the Union there would then be sixteen free as against fifteen slave States, which in the Senate would mean a majority for the North, and to this proposal the Southern Congressmen quite naturally would not agree.3

The feeling over this matter became very strong, and the men of each section uttered many threats as to what they would do. For a time there was fear that the United States might have to break up into two republics

one in the

1 General Taylor was born in Virginia in 1784. When he was a year old, his father moved to a Kentucky farm, on which Zachary was reared. Becoming a soldier, he served with great credit through the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, and after the latter retired to his plantation in Louisiana.

2 Florida and Texas were admitted as slave States in 1845. To balance them, Iowa entered in 1846 and Wisconsin in 1848 — both of them free. This made the list of States as follows:

Free States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa.

Slave States: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky.

They were willing, however, that California should be divided in the middle, the southern half to be a slave State and the northern free.