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LECTURE IV.

that

FROM THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE TO THE PRESIDENCY OF GENE-
RAL JACKSON (1820-1829) — THE

RESPECTS THE TERRITORIES.

SLAVERY QUESTION AS

(Monroe, 1817 to 1825; John Quincy Adams, 1825 to 1829.)

THE year 1820-the date of the Missouri Compromise-opens what may be termed the second era of the history of the United States. The consolidation of the Union, it may be said, is what the former period of forty-three years exhibits; the preparations for its disruption occupy the latter forty or forty-one. Not, indeed, but what the germs of disruption may be very visible to us now in the former period; not but that many a measure of real consolidation may belong to the latter but had the history remained a blank for us since 1820, we might have retained a doubt whether any of those germs would ever have sprung up and fructified; whereas the narrative might stop almost at any time henceforth without leaving us in doubt that they had sprung up, and were growing apace into maturity.

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The chief results of the former period have been these:-1st. Development of the geographical limits

PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

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and population of the United States, the original thirteen states having swelled to twenty-three,* which Missouri will presently carry to twenty-four, whilst the Floridas are claimed to have been ceded by Spain, and the American flag has even been hoisted on the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia River, in the ill-fated settlement of Astoria, which for us prefigures the now flourishing State of Oregon; the census, on the other hand, giving a population of 9,708,305, more than doubled since 1790—or within a single generation. 2nd. Subjugation of the great bulk of the Indian tribes within the territory of the Union, and restriction of them, by purchases of the lands over which they claimed a title, to ever-narrowing limits. 3rd. Development of the trade of the United States. Thanks to the great-Continental wars, the Americans had become for a time the foremost carriers of the world, and the extension of their neutral trade had, as we have seen, been such as seriously to thwart the action of the contending powers, till, wearied and outraged by both, the Americans had at last taken up arms against one of them (England), and carried on a three years' war. Hence, 4th, The creation of a very efficient naval force, which, besides various achievements against the Barbaresques in the Mediterranean, had obtained many signal successes over our own ships in the war of 1812-15, and the rise of the United

* New States admitted: Vermont (1791); Kentucky (1792) ; Tennessee (1796); Ohio (1802); Louisiana (1812); Indiana (1815); Mississippi (1817); Illinois (1818); Alabama (1819); Maine (1820).

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GROWTH OF THE COTTON

States to a very important position among the secondary naval powers of the world; and 5th, The rise, through the frequent interruptions to trade during the Continental wars, and again through the war with England, of domestic manufactures, especially in the NorthEastern states, which already called for protection. 6th and last, The development in the South of the cultivation and export of cotton. In the year 1791, as I told you, the first parcel of cotton of American growth was exported from the United States, the production being 1,000,000 lbs. In the year 1801, the export was 20,911,201 lbs., the production nearly 50,000,000 lbs. In the year 1807, the export was 66,000,000 lbs. already, and the acquisition of Louisiana had given a further enormous impetus to it. A vast increase of value had thus been given to slaves, and a powerful centre created for Southern interests.

Slavery had, until the question of the admission of Missouri into the Union, formed no topic of popular agitation. The two great parties into which the politicians of the United States were originally divided—those of the "Federalists," or their successors the "Whigs," and of the "Republicans," afterwards Democrats-were composed alike of slaveholders and non-slaveholders. Some increase of power had indeed been gained by the slaveholding states, which had succeeded in heading the national movement of expansion in the following manner:- The custom had grown up of admitting a free and a slave state alternately or together. But this had only taken place after the successive admission of

AND SLAVE INTEREST.

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the slave states of Kentucky and Tennessee; so that although, of the ten states which had been added to the original thirteen, five were free (Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Maine) and five slave (Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), yet the next turn of admission belonged not to the free, as it should have done, but to the slave states; whilst the remainder. of the Louisiana purchase, with Florida, already in process of annexation, afforded the prospect of future extensions of slave territory, in direct opposition to the views of Mr. Jefferson, as to the exclusion of slavery from all after-admitted states. Of disunion there had been for years no talk at the South. On the contrary, what talk there had been of it, or tending to it, lately, had been in New England, at the "Hartford Convention." But " the difference between the American Union and a league," we are told by a prominent representative of a slave state, Colonel Benton, "being better understood at that time," the "leading language" with respect to the convention "south of the Potomac was, that no state had a right to withdraw from the Union-that it required the same power to dissolve as to form the Union-and that any attempt to dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitutional laws, was treason." The main subject of difference between North and South even at this time, indeed, was not slavery, but the tariff. Headed by politicians from the Border slave states, the North, which had become more and more manufacturing, sought for high import duties; the South, whose agricultural exports

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QUESTION OF THE TERRITORIAL

were receiving an enormous development, desired a low tariff, to procure supplies and encourage the foreign demand for its productions. But the South itself was divided upon this question; the sugar-growing interest of Louisiana, which found inland the great market for its staple, leading it to side with the North. Thus an avowedly protective tariff, though still a moderate one, had been in force since 1816.

But we have seen how, on the question of the admission of Missouri, an agitation on the subject of slavery had grown up, and had been sought to be stifled by fixing at 36° 40′ N. lat., a line beyond which slavery was not to be permitted in new states to be formed out of the Louisiana territory. It is worth while to consider now the question of the territorial extension of slavery in itself, as respects its bearing upon the history of America.

I shall not insult your consciences by tarrying over the moral side of the slavery question. If the negro be a man (and I shall not insult your understandings by attempting to argue that he is), your hearts know well that no brother-man of whatever colour has the right to buy or to sell him. That deep moral conviction of the utter hatefulness of slavery, embodied in the glorious principle of our law, that. the very dust of our English soil gives freedom to the slave, is the only answer which England deigns to give to the blasphemous pleading of the South in favour of the divine right of slavery. That conviction was shared, more or less, by a vast number of our Transatlantic brethren at the North; that

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