Chapter 71

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.