Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861
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Thus over nearly half of the national domain and among a large minority
of the citizens of the Republic, the dynasty of Cotton has worked a
divergence from original principle. Wherever the sway of King Cotton
extends, the people have for the present lost sight of the most
essential of our national attributes. They are seeking to found a great
and prosperous republic on the cultivation of a single staple product,
and not on intelligence universally diffused: consequently they
have founded their house upon the sand. Among them, cotton, and
not knowledge, is power. When thus reduced to its logical
necessities,--brought down, as it were, to the hard pan,--the experience
of two thousand years convincingly proves that their experiment as a
democracy must fail. It is, then, a question of vital importance to
the whole people,--How can this divergence be terminated? Is there any
result, any agency, which can destroy this dynasty, and restore us as a
people to the firm foundations upon which our experiment was begun? Can
the present agitation effect this result? If it could, the country might
joyfully bid a long farewell to "the canker of peace," and "hail the
blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire"; but the sad answer, that
it cannot, whether resulting in the successor Democrat or Republican,
seems almost too evident for discussion. The present conflict is good so
far as it goes, but it touches only the surface of things. It is well to
drive the Cotton dynasty from the control of the national government;
but the aims of the Republican party can reach no farther, even if it
meet with complete success in that. But even that much is doubtful. The
danger at this point is one ever recurring. Those Northern politicians,
who, in pursuit of their political objects and ambition, unreservedly
bind up their destinies with those of the Cotton dynasty,--the Issachars
of the North, whose strong backs are bowed to receive any burden,--the
men who in the present conflict will see nought but the result of the
maudlin sentimentality of fanatics and the empty cries of ambitious
demagogues,--are not mistaken in their calculations. While Cotton is
King, as it now is, nothing but time or its own insanity can permanently
shake its hold on the national policy. In moments of fierce convulsion,
as at present, the North, like a restive steed, may contest its
supremacy. Let the South, however, bend, not break, before the storm,
and history is indeed "a nurse's tale," if the final victory does not
rest with the party of unity and discipline. While the monopoly of
cotton exists with the South, and it is cultivated exclusively by native
African labor, the national government will as surely tend, in spite of
all momentarily disturbing influences, towards a united South as the
needle to the pole. But even if the government were permanently wrested
from its control, would the evil be remedied? Surely not. The disease
which is sapping the foundations of our liberty is not eradicated
because its workings are forced inward. What remedy is that which leaves
a false and pernicious policy--a policy in avowed war with the whole
spirit of our civilization and in open hostility to our whole experiment
as a government--in full working, almost a religious creed with near
one-half of our people? As a remedy, this would be but a quack medicine
at the best. The cure must be a more thorough one. The remedy we must
look for--the only one which can meet the exigencies of the case--must
be one which will restore to the South the attributes of a democracy. It
must cause our Southern brethren of their own free will to reverse their
steps,--to return from their divergence. It must teach them a purer
Christianity, a truer philosophy, a sounder economy. It must lead them
to new paths of industry. It must gently persuade them that a true
national prosperity is not the result of a total abandonment of
the community to the culture of one staple. It must make them
self-dependent, so that no longer they shall have to import their
corn from the Northwest, their lumber-men and hay from Maine, their
manufactures from Massachusetts, their minerals from Pennsylvania, and
to employ the shipping of the world. Finally, it must make it impossible
for one overgrown interest to plunge the whole community unresistingly
into frantic rebellion or needless war. They must learn that a
well-conditioned state is, so far as may be, perfect in itself,--and,
to be perfect in itself, must be intelligent and free. When these
lessons are taught to the South, then will their divergence cease,
and they will enter upon a new path of enjoyment, prosperity, and
permanence. The world at present pays them an annual bribe of some
$65,000,000 to learn none of these lessons. Their material interest
teaches them to bow down to the shrine of King Cotton. Here, then, lies
the remedy with the disease. The prosperity of the country in general,
and of the South in particular, demands that the reign of King Cotton
should cease,--that his dynasty should be destroyed. This result can
be obtained but in one way, and that seemingly ruinous. The present
monopoly in their great staple commodity enjoyed by the South must be
destroyed, and forever. This result every patriot and well-wisher of the
South should ever long for; and yet, by every Southern statesman and
philosopher, it is regarded as the one irremediable evil possible to
their country. What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What
principle of political economy is better established than that a
monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays
a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies
the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest
possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and
in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch
of industry can be cursed. The South is now showing to the world an
example of a great people borne down, crushed to the ground, cursed, by
a monopoly. A fertile country of magnificent resources, inhabited by a
great race, of inexhaustible energy, is abandoned to one pursuit;--the
very riches of their position are as a pestilence to their prosperity.
In the presence of their great monopoly, science, art, manufactures,
mining, agriculture,--word, all the myriad branches of industry
essential to the true prosperity of a state,--wither and die, that
sanded cotton may be produced by the most costly of labor. For love of
cotton, the very intelligence of the community, the life-blood of their
polity, is disregarded and forgotten. Hence it is that the marble and
freestone quarries of New England alone are far more important sources
of revenue than all the subterranean deposits of the Servile States.
Thus the monopoly which is the apparent source of their wealth is in
reality their greatest curse; for it blinds them to the fact, that, with
nations as with individuals, a healthy competition is the one essential
to all true economy and real excellence. Monopolists are always blind,
always practise a false economy. Adam Smith tells us that "it is not
more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighborhood
of London petitioned the Parliament against the extension of the
turnpike roads into the remoter counties. Those remoter counties, they
pretended, from the cheapness of labor, would be able to sell their
grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would
thereby reduce their rents and ruin their cultivation." The great
economist significantly adds,--"Their rents, however, have risen, and
their cultivation has been improved, since that time." Finally, to-day,
would the cultivation of cereals in the Northwest be improved, if made
a monopoly? would its inhabitants be richer? would their economy be
better? Certainly not. Yet to-day they undersell the world, and, in
spite of competition, are far richer, far more contented and prosperous,
than their fellow-citizens in the South in the full enjoyment of their
boasted dynasty of Cotton.
"Here," said Wellington, on the Eton football ground, "we won the battle
of Waterloo." Not in angry declamation and wordy debate, in threats of
secession and cries for coercion, amid the clash of party-politics, the
windy declamation of blatant politicians, or the dirty scramble for
office, is the destruction of the dynasty of King Cotton to be looked
for. The laws of trade must be the great teacher; and here, as
elsewhere, England, the noble nation of shopkeepers, must be the agent
for the fulfilment of those laws. It is safe to-day to say, that,
through the agency of England, and, in accordance with those laws, under
a continuance of the present profit on that staple, the dynasty of King
Cotton is doomed,--the monopoly which is now the basis of his power will
be a monopoly no more. If saved at all from the blight of this
monopoly, the South will be saved, not in New York or Boston, but in
Liverpool,--not by the thinkers of America, but by the merchants of
England. The real danger of the Cotton dynasty lies not in the hostility
of the North, but in the exigencies of the market abroad; they struggle
not against the varying fortunes of political warfare, but against the
irreversible decrees of Fate. It is the old story of the Rutulian hero;
and now, in the very crisis and agony of the battle, while the Cotton
King is summoning all his resources and straining every nerve to cope
successfully with its more apparent, but less formidable adversary, in
the noisy struggle for temporary power, if it would listen for a moment
to the voice of reason, and observe the still working of the laws of our
being, it, too, might see cause to abandon the contest, with the
angry lament, that, not by its opponent was it vanquished, but by the
hostility of Jupiter and the gods. The operation of the laws of
trade, as touching this monopoly, is beautifully simple. Already the
indications are sufficient to tell us, that, under the sure, but
silent working of those laws, the very profits of the Southern planter
foreshadow the destruction of his monopoly. His dynasty rests upon the
theory, that his negro is the only practical agency for the production
of his staple. But the supply of African labor is limited, and the
increased profit on cotton renders the cost of that labor heavier in
its turn,--the value of the negro rising one hundred dollars for every
additional cent of profit on a pound of cotton. The increased cost of
the labor increases the cost of producing the cotton. The result is
clear; and the history of the cotton-trade has twice verified it. The
increased profits on the staple tempt competition, and, in the increased
cost of production, render it possible. Two courses only are open to the
South: either to submit to the destruction of their monopoly, or to try
to retain it by a cheaper supply of labor. They now feel the pressure of
the dilemma; and hence the cry to reopen the slave-trade. According to
the iron policy of their dynasty, they must inundate their country with
freshly imported barbarism, or compete with the world. They cry out for
more Africans; and to their cry the voice of the civilized world returns
its veto. The policy of King Cotton forces them to turn from the
daylight of free labor now breaking in Texas. On the other hand, it is
not credible that all the land adapted to the growth of the cotton-plant
is confined to America; and, at the present value of the commodity, the
land adapted to its growth would be sought out and used, though buried
now in the jungles of India, the wellnigh impenetrable wildernesses of
Africa, the table-lands of South America, or the islands of the Pacific.
Already the organized energy of England has pushed its explorations,
under Livingstone, Barth, and Clegg, into regions hitherto unknown.
Already, under the increased consumption, one-third of the cotton
consumed at Liverpool is the product of climes other than our own.
Hundreds of miles of railroad in India are opening to the market vast
regions to share in our profits and break down our monopoly. To-day,
India, for home-consumption and exportation, produces twice the amount
of cotton produced in America; and, under the increased profit of late
years, the importation into England from that country has risen from
12,324,200 pounds in 1830, to 77,011,839 pounds in 1840, and, finally,
to 250,338,144 pounds in 1857, or nearly twenty per cent of the whole
amount imported, and more than one-fourth of the whole amount imported
from America. The staple there produced does not, indeed, compare in
quality with our own; but this remark does not apply to the staple
produced in Africa,--the original home of the cotton-plant, as of the
negro,--or to that of the cotton-producing islands of the Pacific. The
inexhaustible fertility of the valley of the Nile--producing, with a
single exception, the finest cotton of the world,--lying on the same
latitude as the cotton-producing States of America, and overflowing
with unemployed labor--will find its profit, at present prices, in the
abandonment of the cultivation of corn, its staple product since the
days of Joseph, to come in competition with the monopoly of the South.
Peru, Australia, Cuba, Jamaica, and even the Feejee Islands, all are
preparing to enter the lists. And, finally, the interior of Africa, the
great unknown and unexplored land, which for centuries has baffled the
enterprise of travellers, seems about to make known her secrets under
the persuasive arguments of trade, and to make her cotton, and not her
children, her staple export in the future. In the last fact is to be
seen a poetic justice. Africa, outraged, scorned, down-trodden, is,
perhaps, to drag down forever the great enslaver of her offspring.
Thus the monopoly of King Cotton hangs upon a thread. Its profits must
fall, or it must cease to exist. If subject to no disturbing influence,
such as war, which would force the world to look elsewhere for its
supply, and thus unnaturally force production elsewhere, the growth of
this competition will probably be slow. Another War of 1812, or any
long-continued civil convulsions, would force England to look to other
sources of supply, and, thus forcing production, would probably be the
death-blow of the monopoly. Apart from all disturbing influences arising
from the rashness of his own lieges, or other causes, the reign of King
Cotton at present prices may be expected to continue some ten years
longer. For so long, then, this disturbing influence may be looked for
in American politics; and then we may hope that this tremendous material
influence, become subject, like others, to the laws of trade and
competition, will cease to threaten our liberties by silently sapping
their very foundation. As in the course of years competition gradually
increases, the effect of this competition on the South will probably be
most beneficial. The change from monopoly to competition, distributed
over many years, will come with no sudden and destructive shock, but
will take place imperceptibly. The fall of the dynasty will be gradual;
and with the dynasty must fall its policy. Its fruits must be eradicated
by time. Under the healing influence of time, the South, still young and
energetic, ceasing to think of one thing alone, will quickly turn its
attention to many. Education will be more sought for, as the policy
which resisted it, and made its diffusion impossible, ceases to exist.
With the growth of other branches of industry, labor will become
respectable and profitable, and laborers will flock to the country; and
a new, a purer, and more prosperous future will open upon the entire
Republic. Perhaps, also, it may in time be discovered that even
slave-labor is most profitable when most intelligent and best
rewarded,--that the present mode of growing cotton is the most wasteful
and extravagant, and one not bearing competition. Thus even the African
may reap benefit from the result, and in his increased self-respect and
intelligence may be found the real prosperity of the master. And thus
the peaceful laws of trade may do the work which agitation has attempted
in vain. Sweet concord may come from this dark chaos, and the world
receive another proof, that material interest, well understood, is
not in conflict, but in beautiful unison with general morality,
all-pervading intelligence, and the precepts of Christianity. Under
these influences, too, the very supply of cotton will probably be
immensely increased. Its cultivation, like the cultivation of their
staple products by the English counties mentioned by Smith, will
not languish, but flourish, under the influence of healthy
competition.--These views, though simply the apparently legitimate
result of principle and experience, are by no means unsupported by
authority. They are the same results arrived at from the reflections of
the most unprejudiced of observers. A shrewd Northern gentleman, who has
more recently and thoroughly than any other writer travelled through the
Southern States, in the final summary of his observations thus covers
all the positions here taken. "My conclusion," says Mr. Olmsted, "is
this,--that there is no physical obstacle in the way of our country's
supplying ten bales of cotton where it now does one. All that is
necessary for this purpose is to direct to the cotton-producing region
an adequate number of laborers, either black or white, or both. No
amalgamation, no association on equality, no violent disruption of
present relations is necessary. It is necessary that there should
be more objects of industry, more varied enterprises, more general
intelligence among the people,--and, especially, that they should
become, or should desire to become, richer, more comfortable, than they
are."
It is not pleasant to turn from this, and view the reverse of the
picture. But, unless our Southern brethren, in obedience to some great
law of trade or morals, return from their divergence,--if, still being
a republic in form, the South close her ears to the great truth, that
education is democracy's first law of self-preservation,--if the dynasty
of King Cotton, unshaken by present indications, should continue
indefinitely, and still the South should bow itself down as now before
its throne,--it requires no gift of prophecy to read her future. As you
sow, so shall you reap; and communities, like individuals, who sow the
wind, must, in the fulness of time, look to reap the whirlwind. The
Constitution of our Federal Union guaranties to each member composing it
a republican form of government; but no constitution can guaranty that
universal intelligence of the people without which, soon or late, a
republican government must become, not only a form, but a mockery. Under
the Cotton dynasty, the South has undoubtedly lost sight of this great
principle; and unless she return and bind herself closely to it, her
fate is fixed. Under the present monopolizing sway of King Cotton,--soon
or late, in the Union, or out of the Union,--her government must
cease to be republican, and relapse into anarchy, unless previously,
abandoning the experiment of democracy in despair, she take refuge in a
government of force. The Northern States, the educational communities,
have apparently little to fear while they cling closely to the
principles inherent in their nature. With the Servile States, or away
from them, the experiment of a constitutional republic can apparently be
carried on with success through an indefinite lapse of time; but
though, with the assistance of an original impetus and custom, they
may temporarily drag along their stumbling brethren of the South, the
catastrophe is but deferred, not avoided. Out of the Union, the more
extreme Southern States--those in which King Cotton has already firmly
established his dynasty--are, if we may judge by passing events, ripe
for the result. The more Northern have yet a reprieve of fate, as having
not yet wholly forgotten the lessons of their origin. The result,
however, be it delayed for one year or for one hundred years, can hardly
admit of doubt. The emergency which is to try their system may not arise
for many years; but passing events warn us that it maybe upon them now.
The most philosophical of modern French historians, in describing the
latter days of the Roman Empire, tells us that "the higher classes of
a nation can communicate virtue and wisdom to the government, if they
themselves are virtuous and wise: but they can never give it strength;
for strength always comes from below; it always proceeds from the
masses." The Cotton dynasty pretends not only to maintain a government
where the masses are slaves, but a republican government where the vast
majority of the higher classes are ignorant. On the intelligence of the
mass of the whites the South must rely for its republican permanence, as
on their arms it must rely for its force; and here again, the words of
Sismondi, written of falling Rome, seem already applicable to the South:
--"Thus all that class of free cultivators, who more than any other
class feel the love of country, who could defend the soil, and who ought
to furnish the best soldiers, disappeared almost entirely. The number
of small farmers diminished to such a degree, that a rich man, a man of
noble family, had often to travel more than ten leagues before falling
in with an equal or a neighbor." The destruction of the republican form
of government is, then, almost the necessary catastrophe; but what will
follow that catastrophe it is not so easy to foretell. The Republic,
thus undermined, will fall; but what shall supply its place? The
tendency of decaying republics is to anarchy; and men take refuge from
the terrors of anarchy in despotism. The South least of all can indulge
in anarchy, as it would at once tend to servile insurrection. They
cannot long be torn by civil war, for the same reason. The ever-present,
all-pervading fear of the African must force them into some government,
and the stronger the better. The social divisions of the South, into the
rich and educated whites, the poor and ignorant whites, and the
servile class, would seem naturally to point to an aristocratic or
constitutional-monarchical form of government. But, in their transition
state, difficulties are to be met in all directions; and the
well-ordered social distinctions of a constitutional monarchy seem
hardly consistent with the time-honored licentious independence and
rude equality of Southern society. The reign of King Cotton, however,
conducted under the present policy, must inevitably tend to increase and
aggravate all the present social tendencies of the Southern system,--
all the anti-republican affinities already strongly developed. It makes
deeper the chasm dividing the rich and the poor; it increases vastly the
ranks of the uneducated; and, finally, while most unnaturally forcing
the increase of the already threatening African infusion, it also tends
to make the servile condition more unendurable, and its burdens heavier.
The modern Southern politician is the least far-seeing of all our
short-sighted classes of American statesmen. In the existence of a
nation, a generation should be considered but as a year in the life of
man, and a century but as a generation of citizens. Soon or late, in the
lives of this generation or of their descendants, in the Union or out
of the Union, the servile members of this Confederacy must, under the
results of the prolonged dynasty of Cotton, make their election either
to purchase their security, like Cuba, by dependence on the strong arm
of external force, or they must meet national exigencies, pass through
revolutions, and destroy and reconstruct governments, making every
movement on the surface of a seething, heaving volcano. All movements of
the present, looking only to the forms of government of the master, must
be carried on before the face of the slave, and the question of class
will ever be complicated by that of caste. What the result of the
ever-increasing tendencies of the Cotton dynasty will be it is therefore
impossible to more than dream. But is it fair to presume that the
immense servile population should thus see upturnings and revolutions,
dynasties rising and falling before their eyes, and ever remain quiet
and contented? "Nothing," said Jefferson, "is more surely written in the
Book of Fate than that this people must be free." Fit for freedom at
present they are not, and, under the existing policy of the Cotton
dynasty, never can be. "Whether under any circumstances they could
become so is not here a subject of discussion; but, surely, the day will
come when the white caste will wish the experiment had been tried. The
argument of the Cotton King against the alleviation of the condition of
the African is, that his nature does not admit of his enjoyment of true
freedom consistently with the security of the community, and therefore
he must have none. But certainly his school has been of the worst. Would
not, perhaps, the reflections applied to the case of the French peasants
of a century ago apply also to them?" It is not under oppression that
we learn how to use freedom. The ordinary sophism by which misrule is
defended is, when truly stilted, this: The people must continue in
slavery, because slavery has generated in them all the vices of slaves;
because they are ignorant, they must remain under a power which has made
and which keeps them ignorant; because they have been made ferocious by
misgovernment, they must be misgoverned forever. If the system under
which they live were so mild and liberal that under its operation they
had become humane and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a
change; but, as this system has destroyed morality, and prevented the
development of the intellect,--as it has turned men, who might, under
different training, have formed a virtuous and happy community, into
savage and stupid wild beasts, therefore it ought to last forever.
Perhaps the counsellors of King Cotton think that in this case it will;
but all history teaches us another lesson. If there be one spark of love
for freedom in the nature of the African,--whether it be a love common
to him with the man or the beast, the Caucasian or the chimpanzee,--the
love of freedom as affording a means of improvement or an opportunity
for sloth,--the policy of King Cotton will cause it to work its way out.
It is impossible to say how long it will be in so doing, or what weight
the broad back of the African will first be made to bear; but, if the
spirit exist, some day it must out. This lesson is taught us by the
whole recorded history of the world. Moses leading the Children of
Israel up out of Egypt,--Spartacus at the gates of Rome,--the Jacquerie
in France,--Jack Cade and Wat Tyler in England,--Nana Sahib and the
Sepoys in India,--Toussaint l'Ouverture and the Haytiens,--and, finally,
the insurrection of Nat Turner in this country, with those in Guiana,
Jamaica, and St. Lucia: such examples, running through all history,
point the same moral. This last result of the Cotton dynasty may come at
any moment after the time shall once have arrived when, throughout any
great tract of country, the suppressing force shall temporarily, with
all the advantages of mastership, including intelligence and weapons, be
unequal to coping with the force suppressed. That time may still be far
off. Whether it be or not depends upon questions of government and
the events of the chapter of accidents. If the Union should now be
dissolved, and civil convulsions should follow, it may soon be upon us.
But the superimposed force is yet too great under any circumstances, and
the convulsion would probably be but temporary. At present, too, the
value of the slave insures him tolerable treatment; but, as numbers
increase, this value must diminish. Southern statesmen now assert that
in thirty years there will be twelve million slaves in the South; and
then, with increased numbers, why should not the philosophy of the
sugar-plantation prevail, and it become part of the economy of the
Cotton creed, that it is cheaper to work slaves to death and purchase
fresh ones than to preserve their usefulness by moderate employment?
Then the value of the slave will no longer protect him, and then the
end will be nigh. Is this thirty or fifty years off? Perhaps not for
a century hence will the policy of King Cotton work its legitimate
results, and the volcano at length come to its head and defy all
compression.
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