The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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gradual emancipation of the negro. Upon this question Virginia
appears to have been divided. But Georgia and the Carolinas at
once declared that they would not have the slave-trade
abolished: they wanted more slaves; and unless this species of
property were guaranteed, they would not enter the Union at
all. They demanded that slavery should be recognised and
protected by the Constitution. The Northerners at once gave in;
they only requested that the words βslaveβ and βslaveryβ might not
appear. To this the Southerners agreed, and the contract was
delicately worded; but it was none the less stringent all the
same. It was made a clause of the Constitution that the slave-trade should not be suppressed before the year 18O8. It might
then be made the subject of debate and legislation β not
before. It was made a clause of the Constitution that, if the
slaves of any state rebelled, the national troops should be
employed against them. It was made a clause of the Constitution
that, if a slave escaped to a free state, the authorities of
that state should be obliged to give him up. And lastly, slave-owners were allowed to have votes in proportion to the number
of their slaves. Such was the price which the Northerners paid
for nationality β a price which their descendants found a hard
and heavy one to pay. The fathers of the country ate sour
grapes, and the childrenβs teeth were set on edge.
But the Southerners had not finished yet. The colonies
possessed, according to their charters, certain regions in the
wilderness out west, and these they delivered to the nation. A
special proviso was made, however, by South Carolina and by
Georgia, that at no future time should slavery be forbidden in
the territories which they gave up of their own free will and
these territories in time became slave states. It is therefore
evident that the South intended from the first to preserve, and
also to extend slavery. It must be confessed that their policy
was candid and consistent, and of a piece throughout. They
refused to enter the Union unless their property was
guaranteed; they threatened to withdraw from the Union whenever
they thought that the guarantee was about to be evaded or
withdrawn. The clauses contained in the Constitution were
binding on the nation; but they might be revoked by means of a
constitutional amendment, which could be passed by the consent
of three-fourths of the states. Emigrants continually poured
into the north; and these again streamed out towards the west.
It was evident that in time new states would be formed, and
that the original slave states would be left in a minority.
These states were purely agricultural; they had no commerce;
they had no manufactures. Indigo, rice, and tobacco were the
products on which they lived; and the markets for these were in
an ugly state. The East Indies had begun to compete with them
in rice and indigo; the demand for tobacco did not increase.
There was a general languor in the South; the young men did not
know what to do. Slavery is a wasteful and costly institution,
and requires large profits to keep it alive; it seemed on the
point of dying in the South, when there came a voice across the
Atlantic crying for cotton in loud and hungry tones; and the
fortune of the South was made.
In the seventeenth century the town of Manchester was already
known to fame. It was a seat of the woollen manufacture, which
was first introduced from Flanders into England in the reign of
Edward the Third. It bought yarn from the Irish, and sent it
back to them as linen. It imported cotton from Cyprus and
Smyrna, and worked it into fustians, vermilions, and dimities.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the cotton industry had
become important. In thousands of cottages surrounding
Manchester might be heard the rattle of the loom and the
humming of the one-thread wheel, which is now to he seen only
in the opera of Marta. Invention, as usual, arose from
necessity; the weavers could not get sufficient thread, and
were entirely at the mercy of the spinners. Spinning machines
were accordingly invented: the water frame, the spinning jenny,
and the mule. And now the weavers had more thread than they
could use, and the power loom was invented to preserve the
equilibrium of supply and demand. Then steam was applied to
machinery; the factory system was established; hundred-handed
engines worked all the day: and yet more labourers were
employed than had ever been employed before; the soft white
wool was carded, spun, and woven in a trice; the cargoes from
the East were speedily devoured; and now raw material was
chiefly in demand. The American cotton was the best in the
market; but the quantity received had hitherto been small. The
picking out of the small black seeds was a long and tedious
operation. A single person could not clean more than a pound a
day. Here, then, was an opening for Yankee ingenuity; and
Whitney invented his famous saw-gin, which tore out the seeds
as quick as lightning with its iron teeth. Land and slaves
abounded in the South; the demand from Manchester became more
and more hungry βit has never yet been completely satisfied β
and, under King Cotton, the South entered upon a new era of
wealth, vigour, and prosperity as a slave plantation. The small
holdings were unable to compete with the large estates on which
the slaves were marshalled and drilled like convicts to their
work; society in the South soon became composed of the
planters, the slaves, and the mean whites who were too proud to
work like niggers, and who led a kind of gipsy life.
While the intellect of the North was inventing machinery,
opening new lands, and laying the foundations of a literature, the
Southerners were devoted entirely to politics; and by means of
their superior ability they ruled at Washington for many
years, and almost monopolised the offices of state. When
America commenced its national career there were two great
sects of politicians; those who were in favour of the central
power, and those who were in favour of state rights. In the
course of time the national sentiment increased, and with it
the authority of the President and Congress; but this
centralising movement was resisted by a certain party of the
North whose patriotism could not pass beyond the state house
and the city hall. The Southerners were invariably provincial
in their feelings; they did not consider themselves as
belonging to a nation, but a league; they inherited the
sentiments of aversion and distrust with which their fathers
had entered the Union; threats and provisos were always on
their lips. The executive, it was true, was in their hands, but
the House of Representatives belonged to the North. In the
Senate the states had equal powers, irrespective of size and
population. In the Lower House the states were merely sections
of the country; population was the standard of the voting
power. The South had a smaller population than the North; the
Southerners were therefore a natural minority, and only
preserved their influence by allying themselves with the
statesβ rights party in the North. The free states were
divided: the slave states voted as one man.
In the North politics was a question of sentiment, and sentiments
naturally differ. In the South politics was a matter of life and death;
their bread depended on cotton; their cotton depended on
slaves; their slaves depended on the balance of power. The
history of the South within the Union is that of a people
struggling for existence by means of political devices against
the spirit of the nation and the spirit of the age. By
annexation, purchase, and extension they kept pace with the
North in its rush towards the West. Free states and slave
states ran neck and neck towards the shores of the Pacific. The
North obtained Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Maine,
Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California. The South obtained
Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri,
Arkansas, Florida, and Texas. Whenever a territory became a
state, the nation possessed the power of rejecting and
therefore of modifying its constitution. The Northern
politicians made an effort to prohibit slavery in all new
states; the South as usual threatened to secede, and the Union
which had been manufactured by a compromise was preserved by a
compromise. It was agreed that a line should be drawn to the
Pacific along the parallel 36Β° 3Oβ; that all the states which
should afterwards be made below the line should be slaveholding; and all that were made above it should be free. But
this compromise was not, like the compromise of the
constitution, binding on the nation, and only to be set aside
by a constitutional amendment. It was simply a parliamentary
measure, and as such could be repealed at any future session.
However, it satisfied the South; the North had many things to
think of; and all remained quiet for a time. But only for a
time.
The mysterious principle which constitutes the law of
progress produces similar phenomena in various countries at the
same time, and it was such an active period of the human mind
which produced about forty years ago a Parisian Revolution, the
great Reform Bill, and the American agitation against slavery.
There was a man in a Boston garret. He possessed some paper,
pens and ink, and little else besides; and even these he could
only use in a fashion of his own. He had not what is called a
style; nor had he that rude power which can cast a glow on
jagged sentences and uncouth words. This poor garretteer, a
printer in his working hours, relied chiefly on his type for
light and shade, and had much recourse to capital letters,
italics and notes of exclamation, to sharpen his wit, and to
strengthen his tirades. But he had a cause, and his heart was
in that cause. When W. L. Garrison commenced his Liberator the
government of Georgia set a price upon his head, he was mobbed
in his native city, and slavery was defended in Faneuil Hall
itself, sacred to the memory of men who cared not to live
unless they could be free. The truth was, that the Northerners
disliked slavery, but nationality was dear to them and they
believed that an attack upon the βdomestic institutionβ of the
South endangered the safety of the Union. But the abolitionists
became a sect; they increased in numbers and in talent; they
would admit of no compromise; they cared little for the country
itself so long as it was stained. They denounced the
constitution as a covenant with death, and an agreement with
hell. No union with slaveholders! they cried. No union with
midnight robbers and assassins! Hitherto the war between the
two great sections of the country had been confined to
politicians. The Southerners had sent their boys to Northern
colleges and schools. Attended by a retinue of slaves they had
passed the summer at Saratoga or Newport, and some times the
winter at New York. But now their sons were insulted, their
slaves decoyed from them by these new fanatics; and the South
went North no more.
Abolition societies were everywhere formed, and envoys
were sent into the slave states to distribute abolition tracts
and to publish abolition journals, and to excite, if they could,
a St. Domingo insurrection. The Northerners were shocked at
these proceedings and protested angrily against them. But
soon there was a revulsion of feeling in their minds, The wild
beast temper arose in the South, and went forth lynching all it met.
Northerners were flogged and even killed. Negroes were burnt alive.
And so the meetings of abolitionists were no longer interrupted at the
North; mayors and select-men no longer
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