separated races, repelled free labor, discouraged manufactures and trade, hindered the development of agriculture, fixed an impassable gulf between master and servant, stratified society, corrupted morals, and repressed free thought. In the midst of the prodigious industrial progress of the first half of the nineteenth century, it helped by sheer dead weight and immobility to keep the South stationary. And when, in their efforts to control the nation for their own self-interest, those whose eyes were blinded were joined, as they were after 1850, by those who sinned against the light, the struggle became one for self-preservation. history teaches any lesson with unspotted clearness, it is that in such a struggle no legislative compromise, however skillfully contrived, can long avail.

If

Nevertheless, for the moment the compromise appeared to have achieved its purpose. To keep the question of slavery out of politics, and at the same time adjust the opposing interests of the sections, had been the aim of the Democrats; and in that aim the party had apparently once more succeeded. Senators and Representatives affirmed again and again that the Compromise of 1850 was a "finality." Fillmore, in his annual message of December, 1850, declared that "we have been rescued from the wide and boundless agitation that sur

rounded us, and have a firm, distinct, and legal ground to rest upon. Douglas thought that it would not again be necessary for him to make a speech on the subject of slavery.

Upon Webster, however, fell the weight of New England's condemnation. Webster had never sympathized with the abolition movement, nor was he a friend to slavery. So far as his public record went, he had stood with those who sought, by constitutional means, to restrict the growth of slavery. But his advocacy of the compromise, in his 7th of March speech, called down upon him from the Abolitionists the charge of apostasy; and the iron entered into his soul.

So sang the poet Whittier of "Ichabod," the repudiated statesman of Massachusetts. In the face of such a charge, unjust, indeed, but invited, the formal testimonials of supporters and friends were but a feeble solace.

CHAPTER VIII

THE UNITED STATES IN THE EARLY FIFTIES

even

THE nation which for the moment sought to accept the Compromise of 1850 as a "finality" was, in many important respects, quite different from what which, thirty years before, had struggled to achieve the Missouri Compromise. Heated discussion of slavery, foreign war, and the scope of the Constitution had not prevented or checked the growth in industry and population which throughout the nineteenth century made the United States a wonder among nations. If political quiet and stability are, as has so often been said, the conditions most favorable to economic prosperity, the United States stood for more than fifty years a notable exception to the rule.

In 1853, by the "Gadsden purchase,' the United States acquired from Mexico an additional area of about 36,000 square miles. With this addition the last, except Alaska, that has been made to the continental limits of the United States — the jurisdiction of the federal government ex

tended over an area about three and onehalf times that of the original area in 1783. The wide variety of soil, climate and natural resource, joined to undisputed access to the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico, made possible the growth of a varied agriculture, manufacture, and commerce; while the sterile character of much of the Mexican acquisitions was more than offset by the extraordinary mineral wealth of California.

The population, which reached 12,800,000 in 1830, grew to 17,000,000 in 1840 and to 23,000,000 in 1850; in 1860 it had become 31,400,000. The primacy of New York, with over 3,000,000 inhabitants, had been undisputed since 1820; but Pennsylvania had 2,300,000, Ohio nearly 2,000,000, Virginia 1,400,000, and Tennessee over 1,000,000, while Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Kentucky were near the million mark. California returned over 92,000 in 1850, and was to show in 1860 an unparalleled increase to 379,000; in addition, New Mexico in 1850 had 61,000, and Utah 11,000. Oregon, over whose possession the United States had nearly gone to war, had 13,000 population in 1850, while the new States of Iowa and Wisconsin showed 192,000 and 305,000 respectively.

The comparative growth of population in the free States and slave States showed, however, rapidly increasing divergence. A

free State population of 5,100,000 in 1820 became, in 1850, 13,500,000 and in 1860 19,100,000. A slave State population, on the other hand, of 4,400,000 in 1820 became only 9,600,000 in 1850 and 12,300,000 in 1860. The greatest gains were made in the 66 cotton belt" and in the border States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas; in the Atlantic coast States the growth was much less marked. As the census enumeration included negroes as well as whites, and as the average annual importations of Africans, from 1820 to 1860, probably did not fall below 5000, it was evident that the white population of the South was steadily losing ground.

A factor of increasing importance to the North was the swelling volume of foreign immigration. From 1845, when the figures reached 114,000, immigration grew rapidly, with unimportant fluctuations, until 1854, when over 427,000 aliens entered the country. After that there was a rapid decline until 1861, the aggregate for 1854 not being reached again until 1873. Altogether, over 4,000,000 immigrants arrived between 1845 and 1860. While the proportion of the undesirable classes was large, far the greater number represented the sturdy middle and lower classes of northern Europe and the British Isles. Practically none went to the South, but nearly all settled down in the