Glass :___, 
 
 Book ■_■ > iJ on 
 
NO JUST CAUSE FOR A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION IN ANY THING 
 WHICH HAS HITHERTO HAPPENED ; BUT THE UNION THE ONLY SECURITY 
 FOR SOUTHERN RIGHTS. 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE CITIZENS OF TUSCALOOSA, ALA., 
 
 JULY 4tli, 1851; 
 
 BY F. A. P. BARNARD, M.A., 
 
 M 
 
 13 
 
 m 
 
 j , Professor of Cliemistry and Natural History in the University of Alabama. 
 
 i i 
 
 5 i 
 
 FURNISHED FOR PUBLICATION BY REQUEST 
 
 OF THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY. 
 
 Cuscaloosia : 
 
 PRINTED BY 3. "W. & 3. F. WARREN, "OBSERVER OFFICE." 
 
 1851. 
 
 y.'^ 
 
 fii^mmS SiSiSS^& ^^^^^ 
 
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I 
 
NO JUST CAUSE FOR A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION IN ANY THING 
 WHICH HAS HITHERTO HAPPENED ; BUT THE UNION THE ONLY SECURITY 
 FOR SOITTHERN RIGHTS. 
 
 AN ORATIOK 
 
 "77 
 
 V^ 
 
 DET.IVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE CITIZENS OF TUSCALOOSA, ALA., 
 
 JULY 4tli, 1851; 
 
 BY F. At T.° BARNARD, M.A., 
 
 Professor of Chemistry and Natural History in the University of Alabama. 
 
 ^:>^x^- 
 
 FURNISHED FOR PUBLICATION BY REQUEST 
 
 OF THK MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY. 
 
 Cusicaloosia : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. W. & J. F. AVARREN "OBSERVER OFFICE. 
 
 1851. 
 
-v 
 
 A >- 
 
 (b^' 
 
ORATION. 
 
 Fellow Citizens : 
 
 We are assembled to celebrate the seventy-fifth return 
 of the birthday of American liberty. Three quarters 
 of a century ago this day, the thirteen united colonies of 
 Great Britain on this continent declared themselves ab- 
 solved from all further allegiance to the British crown. 
 Seven years later, at, the close of an exhausting war, they 
 found themselves reduced to the lowest extremity of 
 national distress. All private enterprise was paralyzed 
 and blasted, and a frightful depreciation had fallen upon 
 all the evidences of the public debt. The new States, 
 still in the feebleness of their infancy, and now miserably 
 debilitated by years of wasting warfare, lay widely scat- 
 tered along a thousand miles of coast, and still half en- 
 veloped in the original forest. Intercommunication was 
 slow and dif^cult. There is not one of them which is not 
 virtually nearer to the European continent at this day 
 than they were then to their nearest neighbors. Though 
 nominally united in a species of compact entered into 
 for the common defence, they found themselves wholly 
 unable to arrange any common scheme for raising up the 
 broken fortunes of the country —for repairing its ruined 
 credit, or stimulating into new life its prostrate industry. 
 A few years of disheartening Experience were sufficient 
 to produce a universal conviction, that something must 
 be done to harmonize their distracted counsels and give 
 unity to their efforts for the common weal. Out of this 
 conviction sprung the measures which resulted in the 
 ultimate adoption of the present federal constitution. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose, to-day, to indulge in 
 eulogy of this noble instrument. We have been permit- 
 ted to see what, in little more than sixty years of trial, it 
 has done for a people, whom it found at the lowest ebb 
 of national depression, and whom it has raised to the 
 
4 
 highest pitch of national grandeur. The world never 
 before witnessed a progress so stupendous. Other 
 nations have risen on the ruins of their rivals, and gath- 
 ered strength by reducing all around them to weakness. 
 Their wealth has been steeped in the tears of the plun- 
 dered, and their glories have been stained by the blood of 
 the slain. Crushed beneath the conquering car of Alex- 
 ander, the far East crouched at the feet of Imperial 
 Macedon ; and borne down by the ferocious legions of 
 Caesar, the West received the yoke of Imperial Rome. 
 Far different has been ^the march of the American Re- 
 public. She, too, has made her conquests, but it has 
 been forests which have bowed, mountain barriers which 
 have been laid low, and rocky fastnesses which have sur- 
 rendered at her resistless approach. No subjugated 
 monarchs have worn her shackles or swelled the train of 
 her triumphal processions. She has imposed her chains 
 upon the elements themselves, and constrained the powers 
 of nature to pay her tribute. Her domain looks out on 
 one side toward the broad Atlantic, and on the other 
 rests upon the shores of the great South Sea. Her eagle 
 sweeps uninterrupted from ocean to ocean, and as he 
 hovers over the land he symbolizes, dips a wing in either 
 wave. There is no sea where her canvas is not spread to 
 the breeze, no land to which her enterprising sons have 
 not conveyed the knowledge of her greatness. The civ- 
 ilized world stands viewing with amazement her gigantic 
 strides in the path to supremacy. Admitted but yester- 
 day into the family of nations, among whom she was 
 esteemed to hold the very humblest rank, she disputes 
 to-day with Britain the sovereignty of the seas, and 
 divides with empires of a thousand years the dominion 
 of the land. 
 
 These are no words of idle boasting strung together to 
 amuse you, or to flatter that inordinate vanity of which 
 our countrymen have been accused. That which has 
 been esteemed the peculiar vocation of the American 
 village orator has ceased to be. Europe herself has 
 wrested from his liand the glowing pen, and has usurped 
 at once his functions of chronicler and prophet. In evi- 
 
5 
 
 dence of the spirit which at length begins to pervade the 
 
 speculations of British writers upon American progress, I 
 
 quote the following from the London Athcnceuni : 
 
 " The American census is not yet complete ; but the returns already 
 received point to conclusions far beyond hope or expectation. Look at 
 New York, for instance. In 1820 it had a population of 123,000 ; in 1830, 
 203,000 ; in 1840, 312,000. This rate of increase was unparallelled in the 
 history of statistics. But the population is now said to have risen to the 
 astonishing number of 750,000 ! This includes the suburb of Brooklyn, 
 etc. There are but two larger cities in Europe ; in ten years more, at 
 the same rate of progress, it will be larget than Paris. In thirty years 
 from this date New York will, on the same terms, be larger than London. 
 
 " And it must considered that the commercial capital of America is not 
 fed, like our Manchester and Liverpool, at the expense of the country ; its 
 advance is the type of that of an entire continent. In 1810 the population 
 of St. Louis was 1600 ; in 1830, 6600 ; in 1840, 16,400 ; in 1850, it numbered 
 90,000 ! So far as the general nature of the returns can be inferred from 
 the data at hand, the population of the Union will be about 25,000,000.* 
 From the year iSoo, when the number was a little more than 5,000,000, 
 to 1840 when it had advanced to 17,000,000, the decimal rate of increase 
 was about 33 per cent. This rate would have given for 1850 a popula- 
 tion of 22,000,000 only. 
 
 "Material power has been developed equally with population. Great 
 Britain alone excepted, no state in Europe could now maintain equal arm- 
 aments in the field for any length of time. This marvellous growth is 
 deranging all the old tradition of ' balances of power.' America is not 
 only a first-class state— in a few years, if no internal disorder shall 
 occur, she will be the greatest of all. Should the 1S40-50 rate of increase 
 be maintained for fifty years, the population will then amount to more 
 than ioo,oO(.,ooo! German umrs and French revolutions sink into complete 
 insignificance by the side of considerations like these. 
 
 " With such a comment, how well we may understand the ' roars of 
 laughter' with which the American Senate recently received the menaces 
 of Austria ! When the United States shook off the yoke of England, 
 their people numbered no more than 3,000,000 ; when they were last 
 measured against a European power they were not more than 8,000,000. 
 Ten years hence they will be equal to France or Austria. There hardly 
 seems to be a limit to their growth. The valley of the Mississippi would 
 alone support the whole population of Europe. In its vast basin, nations 
 are now growing up as if at the bidding of enchantment." 
 
 These are the words of an intelligent European in 
 speaking of the future of America. One sentence of the 
 passage deserves, especially at this moment, to be deeply 
 pondered by every sincere friend of civil and political lib- 
 erty. "America, ' ' says the writer, ' ' is not only a first-class 
 state — in a few years, if no internal disorder occurs, she 
 will be the greatest of all." Is this not a thing to be 
 desired ? Let us see. America stands before the world 
 to-day, the sole champion of those inestimable principles 
 of popular government on the prevalence of which de- 
 pends the redemption of a world from political bondage. 
 
 * These numbers are not rigidly accurate, but sufficiently so for the purpose of the illus- 
 tration. 
 
To her welcoming arms are now fleeing, year after year, 
 thousands and tens of thousands of the down-trodden 
 victims of European tyranny ; and beneath her protect- 
 ing flag are gathering the hundreds of gallant, generous- 
 hearted, but unfortunate patriots whom the fiendish 
 malignity which rules by right divine has hunted with 
 whips of scorpions from their homes. The crushed and 
 bruised spirits who remain yield for the time to a despot- 
 ism from which there is no immediate deliverance ; but 
 in their stolen moments of secret communion they 
 breathe to each other the name of America, and feel that, 
 while she survives, there is still hope for them. Their 
 hearts by day go forth across the waters to meet our 
 sympathies, and when at night they bend the knee to 
 Jieaven, their prayers ascend to God for blessings on that 
 starry banner in the West, at the very rustling of whose 
 folds their task-masters tremble in their palaces. 
 
 That the smothered fire which now burns restlessly 
 beneath the surface of society throughout Europe has 
 been kindled at the torch of American liberty, must be 
 obvious to the most superficial observer. That the 
 hopes of those who feed it are kept alive by the example 
 of American success, is just as obvious. Let the hal- 
 lowed light expire, of which heaven has made us the 
 guardians, and these cherished hopes will all be swallowed 
 up in the blackness of despair. The hour of deliverance, 
 for which millions are eagerly panting, will again be 
 postponed ; and the shadow will go backward upon the 
 dial of freedom, perhaps for centuries. 
 
 But this is not all. When America shall have become 
 the leading power of the earth, when her sons shall num- 
 ber one hundred millions of freemen and the population 
 of her Mississippi valley alone shall outnumber half a 
 dozen European monarchies, she will be not merely the 
 example and the encouragement, but the powerful pro- 
 tector of the wretched and oppressed. She will no longer 
 permit herself to be a passive spectator of events that 
 affect the happiness of the whole human race. She will 
 not patiently see a new-born republic stifled in its infancy, 
 as recently in Rome, because it is an eyesore to kings ; 
 
nor a gallant people ground into the dust, as recently in 
 Hungary, because they dare to vindicate their immemo- 
 rial rights. She may not undertake a Quixotic crusade 
 of political propagandism, nor seek to thrust free institu- 
 tions upon such as hug their chains and kiss the hand 
 that smites them ; but surely, surely, she will no more 
 suffer venerable age to be brutally massacred, or defence- 
 less beauty to be stripped and lashed in the public 
 streets, by the fiendish Haynaus of another century. She 
 will permit no monarchical reactions enforced at the 
 point of the bayonet ; and tolerate no conspiracies of 
 tyrants, at Warsaw, or at Dresden, or at Olmutz, how 
 they may best hold a continent in c4iains. Every foot of 
 territory fairly redeemed from despotism by the bravery 
 of its inhabitants shall, in the shadow of her powerful 
 protection, be consecrated to liberty forever ; and it 
 shall fare ill with him, be he tyrant or tyrant's blood- 
 hound, who shall dare again to plot against its peace. 
 
 And yet there are not wanting those among us who 
 would arrest this majestic Republic in the fulfilment of 
 her sublime mission ; who would shatter it into frag- 
 ments, and give it over to anarchy, confusion, and ruin. 
 There are not wanting men so false to liberty, to 
 humanity, and to heaven that they would draw down 
 upon this smiling land all the horrors of civil war, and 
 fight, in effect, the battles of tyranny upon a soil conse- 
 crated to freedom. At both extremities of the Union 
 we hear that glorious Constitution, under whose benig- 
 nant influences a nation has been born in a day, made a 
 continual subject of reviling and bitterness. On the one 
 hand it is denounced as an instrument conceived in sin 
 and a compact made with hell ; and on the other, stig- 
 matized as a monstrous engine of tyranny, unworthy to 
 be the charter of a free people. So familiarized have we 
 become to language like this, that it has ceased to shock 
 our sensibilities, and almost to attract our attention. It 
 is deliberately proposed and earnestly advocated, all 
 around us, that with sacrilegious hands we should tear 
 down the temple of liberty which shelters us and bury 
 ourselves beneath its ruins, and the public listens to the 
 
demoniac suggestion with calmness and composure. It 
 is even possible for an American citizen publicly to urge a 
 desecration of this very Sabbath of liberty, to a purpose 
 so atrocious, so shocking, so absolutely horrible, as that 
 of entrapping little children into a public and solemn 
 league, to grow up sworn traitors to the Government 
 which protected their infancy. This has been actually 
 done, not one month since, in a leading organ of disunion 
 in a State not far distant ; and the press which uttered 
 the abomination still stands — still stands to repeat daily 
 other propositions scarcely less atrocious and abom- 
 inable — propositions to intimidate the weak, to ostra- 
 cize the independent, and to damn every man whose birth 
 has not been beneath the palmetto. From the Charles- 
 ton Mercury of June nth I quote the following sugges- 
 tion by a correspondent : ' ' That the coming anniversary 
 of the Declaration of Independence should be made use of 
 by our young friends (boys from the age of nine years and 
 upwards) to form Southern Rights Associations ; and to 
 swear upon the altar of their country (I mean the South 
 only) their devoted, eternal, and never-dying hatred to 
 our infamously aggressive, oppressive, and fanatical Gov- 
 ernment." A more fiendish proposition never emanated 
 from the bottomless pit. 
 
 And now, to what is all this deep-seated bitterness 
 owing ? I need not be told what is the immediate cause 
 of its present manifestations. I have no need to hear 
 again the story of the repeated and frequent intermcd- 
 dlings with affairs of strictly domestic interest, in which 
 the North has been the assailant and the South the suf- 
 ferer. That hostility and even rancor should have 
 sprung up among us toward the people of the North, on 
 this account, can hardly be considered surprising. But 
 the aggressions and threats of aggression have proceeded 
 mainly from private individuals, or voluntary associa- 
 tions, actuated by a spirit of fanaticism, and clothed with 
 no political character whatever. The efforts made to 
 introduce this species of agitation into politics have been 
 rewarded by no substantial successes. On the other 
 hand, in a fair trial of strength, during the lifetime of the 
 
9 
 last Congress, political abolitionism has been substanti- 
 ally defeated, and State after State has withdrawn the 
 legislation which has previously and justly given offence 
 to the South. At this very moment the entire energies 
 of the Federal Government are put in action to secure 
 the faithful execution of the law which has been regard- 
 ed as a test of its sincerity of purpose, and the local 
 authorities, wherever called upon, as recently in Boston, 
 have earnestly co-operated to the same end. Whatever 
 bitterness of feeling, therefore, individual or associated 
 agitation or resistance at the North may have been cal- 
 culated to awaken in the South, there is nothing in all 
 this to call for or to justify denunciations of the organic 
 law of the land. If we have been injured in this respect, 
 it has not been the Federal Constitution which has injured 
 us, if we have suffered wrong, the wrong has not come 
 from the hand of the Federal Government. There are, I 
 believe, causes much deeper than this for that war which 
 has been waged to the knife against the Union which 
 has secured to us as a people so glorious a name among 
 the nations of the earth — causes, however, which are so 
 misunderstood in their origin, that the remedy so often 
 appealed to for their removal would only serve to per- 
 petuate their disastrous effects. 
 
 The soreness of feeling, however, produced in the 
 Southern mind by the infringement of undeniable 
 rights and the interference with strictly private affairs, 
 to which I have alluded, has been seized upon by agita- 
 tors as the most available means of accomplishing their 
 ulterior designs. On this account they have spared no 
 effort to stimulate it into rancor and goad it on to mad- 
 ness. It would occupy a volume to point out and ex- 
 pose the various modes in which this has been done. A 
 single instance will suffice. It has been affirmed and 
 reaffirmed that the organized associations for preying 
 upon Southern property were stealing away annually 
 thousands of your most efficient laborers. The enormous 
 sums thus yearly detracted from Southern wealth have 
 been paraded in staring capitals before your eyes. One 
 hundred thousand fugitives in the free States at this 
 
lO 
 
 moment has been the smallest number that would satisfy 
 the moderate estimates of the experimenters on your 
 credulity- — and these, being drawn from among the 
 strong, vigorous, and able to run, have been assumed to 
 represent a sum total of plunder amounting to $50,000,- 
 000. Now what says the Census of 1850? There are not 
 tivo hundred thousand free negroes in all the free States 
 put together. And for twenty years this population has 
 been nearly stationary. Since 1840, the natural in- 
 crease, with all the imaginary fugitives added, has been 
 about eight per cent, while the natural increase of that 
 portion of the colored race held as your property has 
 been more than twenty-two per cent. The white popu- 
 lation, North, has, in the meantime, increased twenty- 
 eight per cent, and in the South at a rate still higher. 
 
 These simple statistics are sufficient to show how abso- 
 lute a piece of manufacture for the occasion have been 
 the statements put forth on this subject by agitators to 
 delude you. And to all this class of efforts to produce 
 alarm, and generate excitement, in the South, may be 
 opposed the calm and dispassionate judgment of the 
 sagacious and prudent statesman who has represented 
 your sovereignty in the national councils ever since Ala- 
 bama became a State, that " there is less danger of en- 
 croachments upon Southern rights (now) than at any 
 time for the last twenty years." 
 
 What then is the true secret of this revolutionary mad- 
 ness ? Public men in a State not ver^' distant have not 
 scrupled openly to avow that they have been living and 
 laboring for twenty or twenty-five years past with no 
 other earthly object but the dissolution of the Union of 
 these States. Yet, according to these very men, the 
 dangerous encroachments upon your rights, which they 
 so indignantly denounce and so eloquently adjure you 
 to resist, date back no farther than the year 1835. 
 Twenty years ago, then, the war on your institutions had 
 not yet opened ; but something Jiad happened twenty 
 years ago which you would do well to remember. 
 
 The tariff act of 1828 had hardly gone into operation 
 before an agitation on the subject began, in South Caro- 
 
II 
 
 lina and elsewhere, carried on by the aid of all the machin- 
 ery which politicians know so well how to employ. So 
 early as September, 1830, a general State Rights Con- 
 vention was assembled in Columbia, which ended as 
 usual in an inflammatory address to the people. These 
 local evidences of dissatisfaction produced, however, but 
 slight impression on the country ; and none whatever 
 upon its general policy ; for, on the 14th day of July, 
 1832, President Jackson afifixed his signature to a new 
 tariff act, retaining every stringent and offensive feature 
 of the former, which had been known, and is still, in the 
 vocabulary of nullification, as the bill of abominations. 
 
 On the 25th of October, in the same year, the Legisla- 
 ture of South Carolina-called a convention of the people, 
 to assemble at Columbia in the following month, for the 
 purpose of taking into consideration the obnoxious laws 
 of the Federal Government then existing, or any others 
 which might be subsequently passed ; and of devising 
 means of redress. On the 19th of November, this con- 
 vention assembled, and proceeded to pass an ordinance, 
 declaring both the acts of 1828 and 1832 null and void 
 within the State of South Carolina ; and naming the first 
 of February, 1833, as the day on which this ordinance 
 should take effect. On the loth day of December General 
 Jackson put forth his famous proclamation, declaring his 
 intention to execute the laws of Congress at every hazard, 
 and solemnly warning the people of South Carolina of 
 the inevitable consequences of resistance. On the first 
 of March, the great pacificator, Henry Clay, had the 
 satisfaction of seeing his tariff compromise become the 
 law of the land ; and, on the same day, the bill to pro- 
 vide for the more effectual execution of the revenue laws, 
 commonly called the force-bill, passed the House of 
 Representatives. On the nth of the same month the 
 State convention of South Carolina reassembled. Though 
 the law of Mr. Clay provided but for a very slow and 
 gradual removal of the burthens complained of, but held 
 out the certain prospect of nine years more of endurance, 
 yet this body, finding itself uncheered by a whisper of 
 aid or comfort from without, was constrained to repeal 
 
12 
 
 the ordinance of nullification. As a salvo to the wound- 
 ed pride of the State, it, at the same time, solemnly 
 nullified the force-bill ; a proceeding which, considering 
 that no obstruction was contemplated to the execution 
 of the laws, was trivial and nugatory. 
 
 This series of events is what took place twenty years 
 ago. In this unfortunate and fruitless struggle it was, 
 between a self-willed State and the Government of the 
 Union, that first originated that fixed and settled pur- 
 pose to overthrow the Constitution, which has been so 
 long secretly cherished, and which is now openly avow- 
 ed.* The original cause of disaffection has been merged 
 in bitter hatred of a Government whose fundamental 
 principle is that a minority shall not rule. And now 
 what was this cause ? It is to be sought for, not in any 
 dissatisfaction with the generally beneficial results which 
 the Constitution has wrought out for the Union as a 
 whole, but rather in a conviction that the benefits have 
 been unequally distributed. Such a conviction has been, 
 is probably at this moment, partaken by very many who 
 feel no disposition to rush into disunion as a remedy. 
 Indeed the impression seems extensively to exist, that, 
 by the operation of the Federal Constitution, through 
 Federal legislation, the South has been made, in some 
 sort, tributary to the North. The nature of the feeling 
 cannot be better illustrated than by the following extract 
 from an article which appeared in an Alabama news- 
 paper about two years ago : 
 
 " At present, the North fattens and grows rich upon the South. We 
 depend upon it for our entire supplies. We purchase all our luxuries and 
 necessaries from the North 
 
 " With us, every branch and pursuit in life, every trade, profession, and 
 occupation, is dependent upon the North ; for instance, the Northerners 
 abuse and denounce slavery and slaveholders, vet our slaves are clothed 
 with Northern manufactured goods, have Northern hats and shoes, work 
 with Northern hoes, ploughs, and other implements, are chastised with 
 a Northern-made instrument, arc working for Northern more than South- 
 ern profit. The slaveholder dresses in Northern goods, rides a North- 
 ern saddle with all the other accoutrements, sports his Northern carriage, 
 patronizes Northern newspapers, drinks Northern liquors, reads North- 
 ern books, spends his money at Northern watering-places, crowds North- 
 ern fashionable resorts ; in short, his person, his slaves, his farm, his neces- 
 saries, his luxuries — as he walks, rides, sleeps, loafs, lounges, or works, 
 he is surrounded with articles of Northern origin. The aggressive acts 
 
 * Sec note A. 
 
13 
 
 upon his rights and his property'arouse his resentment— and on Northern- 
 made paper, with a Northern pen, with Northern ink, he resolves and re- 
 resolves in regard to his rights ! In Northern vessels his products are 
 carried to market, his cotton is ginned with Northern gins, his sugar is 
 crushed and preserved by Northern machinery ; his rivers are navigated 
 by Northern steamboats, his mails are carried in Northern stages, his 
 negroes are fed with Northern bacon, beef, flour, and corn ; his land is 
 cleared with a Northern axe, and a Yankee clock sits upon his mantel- 
 piece ; his floor is swept by a Northern broom, and is covered with a 
 Northern carpet ; and his wife dresses herself in a Northern looking- 
 glass ; his child cries for a Northern toy, crows over a Northern shoe, 
 and is perfectly happy in having a Northern knife ; his son is educated 
 at a Northern college, his daughter receives the finishing polish at a 
 Northern seminary ; his doctor graduates at a Northern medical college, 
 his schools are supplied with Northern teachers, and he is furnished with 
 Northern inventions and notions." 
 
 Will it not just possibly occur to thinking minds that all 
 these complaints may be well-founded and just, and yet 
 their causes not in the slightest degree attributable to the 
 American Constitution ? May it not also occur, that if 
 the evils complained of have not their origin in the im- 
 puted source, a violent disruption of the Union can bring 
 no remedy ? Is it not worth while to consider whether 
 all the elements of human happiness are not as much 
 within our own reach as in that of our Northern 
 brethren, and that, if we do not use them within the 
 Union, there is just as little reason for believing that we 
 shall do so out of it ? 
 
 Let us examine the case, for a moment, by the light of 
 philosophy, and inquire what there is in our circumstances 
 to prevent the South from becoming as great, as good, and 
 in all respects as happy a people as the world ever saw. 
 
 Numerous elements contribute to the sum of human 
 happiness.. Highest in point of dignity among these we 
 should properly place intelligence, intellectual cultiva- 
 tion, virtuous principle, practical morality, religious free- 
 dom, and personal and political liberty. No one will 
 complain that the Constitution affects us unequally in 
 regard to any of these things. But this is not all. Hap- 
 piness presumes, further, immunity from want, and the 
 possession of such of the comforts and luxuries of life as 
 shall secure not only freedom from positive physical suf- 
 fering, but a reasonable amount of positive physical en- 
 joyment. The aggregate of such possessions in the 
 hands of the people constitutes national wealth. 
 
14 
 
 If the Constitution of the Union be assumed to affect 
 us unfavorably, therefore, in any point essential to na- 
 tional happiness, the presumption must be that, through 
 its influence, we suffer in our pecuniary interests. And 
 indeed the burden of all the complaints we hear on this 
 subject, from whatever quarter uttered, is precisely 
 this — by our union with the North we are impoverished 
 by her union with us she is enriched. That these 
 propositions are in one sense true, is undeniable. What 
 I propose, however, to prove is, that the connection be- 
 tween the North and the South, which has brought about 
 results so dissimilar, is not the political union ; that for 
 the evils of which we complain, the downfall of the Con- 
 stitution could bring no remedy ; but that all the causes 
 of our deficient prosperity are wholly unconnected with 
 legislation, are within our own control, and removable at 
 our own free-will. 
 
 And first a word as to the true dignity of wealth. Do 
 we not magnify its importance, and, by exhibiting so 
 sensitive a spirit in regard to it, do we not manifest a 
 mercenary disposition ? I think not. As a means of indi- 
 vidual happiness, wealth would indeed seem to occupy a 
 very low rank. But in communities wealth is, certainly, 
 to a considerable extent, essential to the existence of an 
 elevated tone of morality. Poverty in isolated cases is, 
 no doubt, often found to co-exist with the highest purity 
 of virtue, and the nearest approach to the beauty of holi- 
 ness of which human nature is capable ; but all experi- 
 ence has shown that the same is not equally true of 
 great masses of men in society. 
 
 The reasons for the difference may be more numerous 
 than it would be convenient here to analyze ; but there 
 are two so especially prominent, that they cannot be left 
 unnoticed. And first, wherever the presence of want 
 compels a whole community to expend all their energies 
 in providing for the animal man, the general mind is kept 
 down to the level of the labor, and man is degraded from 
 his dignity as an intellectual being. I lis thoughts are bent, 
 perforce, upon the task which occupies his hands, or the 
 contingent evils which may spring out of its unsuccessful 
 
15 
 
 execution. He has no time to devote to his own intel- 
 lectual cultivation, or to the proper training of the tender 
 minds of his offspring. The means are wanting to him- 
 self, and to his companions in penury, to provide those 
 facilities for the general education of the young, which, 
 in more favored communities, fill up in great measure 
 the deficiency of parental care. Under circumstances 
 like these a depression of the standard of national 
 morality is all but inevitable, and the universal preva- 
 lence of intellectual darkness becomes a settled certainty. 
 
 The barriers against vice and crime being thus weak- 
 ened, it is secondly to be remembered that with want 
 comes temptation of the most dangerous kind. If fraud 
 and treachery, if craft and cunning, if violence and blood- 
 shed, cannot be excluded from communities in the en- 
 joyment of every physical comfort, and provided with 
 every means of mental, moral, and religious culture, what 
 can be expected of a people to whom all these securities 
 are wanting, and whom present and urgent necessity is 
 ever goading on to crime ? In illustration of these obser- 
 vations what more is necessary than to point to op- 
 pressed, unhappy, and down-trodden Ireland ! 
 
 It appears, therefore, that, to a certain extent, the 
 possession of wealth is essential to the security of other 
 and higher elements of national happiness. But it is 
 more. It is essential to all progress in civilization, in 
 refinement, in knowledge, in scientific discovery, in every 
 useful and in every ornamental art. It is essential to 
 that first condition, necessary to render progress of any 
 kind whatever possible — the exclusive devotion of the 
 labor of Some at least in a community to other pursuits 
 beside the personal preparation of the means of sustain- 
 ing life. And in proportion as the labor of a larger 
 number is turned into other and various channels, in the 
 same proportion will the arts receive their development, 
 and the comforts and elegances of social life be multi- 
 plied. 
 
 It is not, therefore, without reason that nations strive, 
 and ought to strive, for the increase of the general 
 wealth. That which in an individual would be covetous- 
 
i6 
 
 ness or avarice, is not such in communities ; it is a laud- 
 able ambition to secure the instrument, by which are to 
 be most effectually promoted the highest interests of man 
 as a rational and a moral being. 
 
 But wealth is not of spontaneous growth. It is the 
 offspring of never-ceasing industry. So true is this, that 
 it has not in itself even the principle of permanence when 
 produced. Our possessions of to-day are wasting before 
 our eyes. Let us for a moment fold our arms in idle- 
 ness, and " our poverty will come upon us as one that 
 traveleth, and our want as an armed man." Ten years 
 from this time we may be as rich or richer than to-day ; 
 but our wealth of to-day will in great part have perished, 
 to give place to other possessions as ephemeral as these. 
 The seeming permanence or fluctuation of a nation's 
 wealth is, therefore, but a visible index of the degree 
 of steadiness of its industry, or the skill and judgment 
 with which its labor is applied. 
 
 This last suggestion brings me to the point which I 
 have been preparing to approach. It is not enough that, 
 in order to be wealthy, a people should be industrious — 
 it is necessary that judgment should select the channels 
 into which its labor is turned, and skill should preside over 
 its immediate application. 
 
 The wants of civilized man are spread over a very wide 
 field. The channels of labor have been multiplied almost 
 to infinity. Some of these demand, principally, the ex- 
 ercise of strength, and are exhausting to the laborer in the 
 highest degree ; while so little is required in them of intel- 
 lectual activity, or even of manual dexterity, that the 
 brute forces of nature may often be substituted for the 
 execution of the same work. 
 
 There are other departments of labor for which 
 strength is less required, but which demand proportion- 
 ately greater skill ; and others still, such as the arts of 
 engraving, and the division of mathematical instru- 
 ments, in which skill alone is necessary, but skill of the 
 highest order. 
 
 Considered as means of producing wealth, these vari- 
 ous kinds of labor are very unequally valuable. Those, 
 
^7 
 as a general rule, which require the greatest exertion of 
 physical strength are the least productive of all ; and 
 those in which the element of skill predominates, the 
 most so. The marketable values of the several products 
 are out of all proportion to the time, or to the merely 
 animal exertion, which has been expended on them. 
 The visible wealth of a people will be, therefore, quite as 
 much dependent on the direction given to its industry, 
 as upon the absolute amount of labor employed to pro- 
 duce and sustain it. And an enlightened economy will 
 seek, so far as circumstances allow, to introduce and en- 
 courage, in every community, those branches of industry 
 which are secure of the highest rewards. 
 
 For the lowest and least productive descriptions of 
 labor there will always be a demand, and usually an 
 abundant supply. The capacities of individuals are as 
 various as human pursuits. But it is a perversion of the 
 gifts of nature to waste capacities of a superior order 
 upon tasks to which all are alike equal, or in which they 
 only differ as they differ in animal strength. The mere 
 drudgery which society requires may be supplied, and is, 
 by a moderate proportion of its members. Beyond this, 
 there is room for immense improvement in wealth, by 
 the judicious direction of the disposable labor which re- 
 mains. To degrade this to the same level is unwise ; to 
 leave it wholly unemployed, as is, to a lamentable extent, 
 the case with us, is more unwise still. 
 
 That I may better illustrate the application of these 
 principles in practice, allow me to make the following 
 supposition. Imagine two nations, equally favored by 
 nature, equal in numbers, and equal in extent of terri- 
 tory. Suppose free communication to exist between 
 them ; but let both be cut off from all commerce with 
 every other people. Suppose the arts to be with both in 
 their infancy ; and that both are occupied, at first, 
 mainly with the pursuits rendered necessary by the earliest 
 wants of man. The industry of both will, for the most 
 part, be expended upon the cultivation of the earth. 
 Their earliest garments, dwellings, and implements of 
 husbandry will be of the rudest kind. In the midst of 
 
one of these communities let the spirit of invention be 
 awakened. Let superior tools, more comfortable gar- 
 ments, and better shelters make their appearance. Let 
 new devices be contrived for the promotion of human 
 comfort — in short, let the arts spring into birth. Their 
 neighbors, still slumbering in intellectual torpor, will 
 soon be roused by observing their improved condi- 
 tion. They too will naturally desire to partake of the 
 same advantages. Two methods will suggest themselves 
 for the attainment of this end. The first and simplest is 
 to purchase the products of the newly-developed industry ; 
 the second, to transplant to their own soil the arts by 
 which they were produced. Suppose them, from indo- 
 lence or any other cause, to prefer the former. But, in 
 order to purchase, they must offer an equivalent. Their 
 labor being wholly agricultural, they can propose nothing 
 but the productions of the soil. These they may raise in 
 greater quantity than their own necessities require ; and 
 the surplus they may exchange for the better tools, 
 fabrics, and articles of comfort or luxury manufactured 
 by their more progressive neighbors. 
 
 What will be the effect upon these last ? The opening 
 of a market for their productions will stimulate into 
 activity among them a larger amount of labor of the 
 higher order hitherto unemployed, and will enable them 
 to prosecute improvement in art to higher degrees of 
 skill. With every step in advance new additions will be 
 made to the means of human happiness. The mind, 
 excited to activity by the progress of invention, will pres- 
 ently pursue its investigations into the region of science, 
 and man will as rapidly rise in the intellectual as in the 
 physical scale. 
 
 It will presently appear that the labor of one artisan is 
 twice or thrice as valuable as that of an agriculturist ; 
 and, consequently, that the wealth of the progressive 
 people has become double or triple of what it was at 
 first. By the multiplication of objects of use and orna- 
 ment the people who have hitherto remained exclu- 
 sively agricultural will find their wants increasing, while 
 their means remain stationar)'. Nor will the)' even enjoy 
 
19 
 a monopoly in producing the only articles which they 
 can employ in international exchanges. For the manu- 
 facturing nation has still its soil, and still an adequate 
 supply of that humbler kind of capacity which, under an 
 intelligent directing head, is able to cause the earth to 
 yield her increase. Indeed, the existence of any demand 
 for agricultural products from abroad, which the native 
 soil is capable of yielding, in great measure arises from 
 the fact that, with increasing prosperity, a community 
 becomes proportionally lavish in the consumption of the 
 good things of this life. 
 
 For the non-manufacturing people to stimulate its 
 agricultural industry, and thus increase its production, 
 would evidently afford no adequate remedy ; for increas- 
 ed production would operate only to depress prices. 
 
 Here, then, we should see, between two nations com- 
 mencing under circumstances in all respects equally favor- 
 able, and totally unaffected by legislation of any kind 
 whatever, the widest contrast in point of prosperity. 
 One of them is in the easy enjoyment of every thing 
 which art has invented for the promotion of human hap- 
 piness, and is rapidly multiplying new comforts and new 
 luxuries as time goes on. With physical improvement, 
 intellectual development is advancing hand in hand, and 
 the measure of the progress of both may be read in the 
 rapid expansion of national wealth. The other has re- 
 mained stationary ; or rather, its wants having outgrown 
 its means, it has become virtually poorer by standing 
 still. 
 
 These consequences, I cannot too often repeat, are so 
 wholly independent of constitutions and laws, of forms 
 of government or their administration, that they would 
 occur if we were to suppose our two communities, instead 
 of being nations distinctly separated, to be two villages 
 side by side. I am far from denying that legislation may 
 interfere with the natural and free course of trade — I am 
 simply asserting the principle that, in the absence of 
 legislation, or under legislation precisely similar, com- 
 munities of men, by the direction they give to labor, 
 have their prosperity mainly in their own hands. And, 
 
20 
 
 to allude to a grievance often complained of among us, I 
 may here remark, that high duties upon such imported 
 articles as can, and upon every principle of wise econ- 
 omy ought to be, made at home, are permanently op- 
 pressive only in exact proportion as a people are obsti- 
 nately resolved not to provide for themselves. 
 
 But the condition of the merely agricultural people 
 would become still more unfortunate, if we suppose that 
 other nations beside have access to the markets of her 
 thriving neighbor, and bring to them similar commodi- 
 ties. By such competition she may be depressed still 
 lower, if not reduced to absolute distress. 
 
 There is one condition which may except a people ex- 
 clusively agricultural from the ruinous operation of this 
 general law. It is, that it possess a climate and soil 
 capable of yielding, on a large scale, some product indis- 
 pensable to its manufacturing neighbors, but which they 
 can neither produce themselves, nor obtain in sufficient 
 abundance elsewhere. With such a climate and such a 
 soil, a people strictly agricultural may be rich, though 
 they so heedlessly disregard the economy of labor as to 
 purchase a thousand miles from home the simplest in- 
 struments with which they stir the ground. They may 
 grow rich, though the rude shoes on the feet of their 
 laborers and the shirts on their backs may have made a 
 journey for their comfort across half a continent. They 
 may thus grow rich upon the lavish bounty of Nature 
 herself ; in spite of the careless unconcern with which 
 they neglect the more exhaustless resources which God 
 has given them in their own strong but idle right arms, 
 and their naturally acute but slumbering ingenuity. 
 
 But riches thus bestowed, while the means of greater 
 riches remain unemployed, will never give contentment. 
 The peculiar product of the soil, in the case supposed, 
 would have no value were it not capable in the hands of 
 labor of assuming a higher value still. This value the 
 producer sees imparted to it by men who, having devoted 
 themselves in a distant land to no other occupation, 
 have apparently no other resource, and who seem, there- 
 fore, to be living by his sufferance only. But they do 
 
21 
 
 not merely live : they accumulate wealth, they build up 
 thriving towns — arts flourish and multiply among them, 
 and population increases, till the sterile soil beneath 
 them, of itself scarcely capable of supporting a handful 
 of human beings, swarms everywhere with busy life. 
 
 The producer sees all this. He compares the wealth 
 which the raw material has left in his hands, with that 
 which has been wrung from it in the process of manu- 
 facture, and he almost feels as if he had suffered wrong. 
 But this is not all. Confining himself to production 
 solely, and leaving even the transportation of the com- 
 modity in the hands of others, he presently perceives 
 that the merest contact with his wealth enriches, and 
 that no - small portion clings to the hands that simply 
 handle it. And when, after all this, he applies to the 
 very same men to whose prosperity he has already sup- 
 plied the life's blood, for all those various articles of 
 necessity or use or luxury, which he might have provided 
 for himself, but did not, and finds the accumulations of 
 one year of labor melting away in provision for another, 
 all to the profit of those who have done nothing but 
 profit by him from beginning to end, it is not surprising 
 that he should become seriously annoyed at a state of 
 things in which all the advantages appear to be on one 
 side. 
 
 In the imaginary picture which I have thus drawn, it 
 seems to me that I have truly described the situation of 
 the cotton-producing States of the Union at this mo- 
 ment. But if the principles which I have laid down be 
 correct, it is utterly visionary to seek a remedy for the 
 evil in an interruption of the relations of business be- 
 tween the North and the South. By such an interrup- 
 tion the North might be seriously injured, but the South 
 would have nothing to gain. If she still pursues her 
 policy of producing cotton only, and of leaving others to 
 manufacture it ; of indulging freely in all the luxuries 
 of life, and leaving others to prepare them — nay, more, 
 of holding out only discouragement to the intelligent 
 labor of white men, while she purchases her pins and 
 needles, her screws and gimlets, her knives and ham- 
 
mers, her broomsticks and hoe-handles, her hicifer 
 matches and her baby-jumpers from abroad — I see not, 
 for my part, what it can matter to her whether all these 
 " notions," which she ought to be ashamed to buy at all, 
 are manufactured for her use in the land of the Yankees 
 or in the workshops of John Bull. One point of differ- 
 ence only is perceptible, and that is in favor of the exist- 
 ing arrangement — we obtain them at present free of 
 duty. 
 
 This habit, in which we have so long lived, of resort-' 
 ing to workshops at a distance for almost every conceiv- 
 able article of manufacture, has made us, with all our 
 wealth, a dependent people. To a sensitive mind 
 nothing is more annoying than a feeling of dependence ; 
 and to this fact I feel that I am justified in ascribing, as I 
 have already done, no small portion of the dissatisfac- 
 tion which has grown out of the state of our relations 
 with the North. The offensiveness of those protective 
 enactments of which I have spoken grew not so much 
 out of their directly oppressive effect in the South, as 
 out of the stimulus they were calculated to give to 
 Northern prosperity. It was felt or feared that they 
 would increase a dependence on our part already too 
 grievous to be borne. From this condition of things 
 our people have become impatient to be free ; and this 
 it is, as I am forced to believe, more truly than any 
 other existing evil, which has caused the word disunion 
 to be of late so often and so lightly spoken among us, 
 and the thought of what it signifies to be contemplated 
 with so little of horror. 
 
 But unless I am entirely wrong in all my premises, dis- 
 union would bring with it but a transfer of our depend- 
 ence. The wealth with which we now enrich our North- 
 ern brethren would be poured into the coffers of a foreign 
 people. Other ships would carry our cotton, other 
 brokers would speculate upon it, other merchants would 
 send back to us the manufactured fabric for our con- 
 sumption at home. And Northern hammers, Northern 
 axes. Northern kettles, and Northern broomsticks would 
 only give place to similar articles from foreign sources. 
 
liable to duty. Disunion, fellow-citizens, may bring with 
 it many advantages which I am unable to discover ; but 
 disunion, believe me, is not the road to independence. 
 And it may serve to check the rash madness which would 
 blindly plunge into this ruinous abyss, to become once 
 satisfied that all the pictures of consequent prosperity 
 and greatness with which its instigators amuse you, are 
 baseless as the wildest visions shaped out by a delirious 
 imagination in a fevered brain. 
 
 By what means, then, shall we be independent ? By 
 adopting the only course that could have made us so — 
 could have saved us even from a dependence still more 
 humiliating and degrading — if bountiful nature had not 
 made us rich : by ceasing to buy of others every article, 
 down to the smallest essential to human comfort, and 
 learning at last to make something for ourselves. 
 
 I am aware that there are great difficulties in the way 
 of so radical a change of habits. We have at our disposal 
 an immense amount of involuntary labor. Could that, 
 or any considerable part of it, be turned with facility 
 from agriculture to manufactures, the, problem would ad- 
 mit of an easy solution. We have also a considerable 
 amount of white labor distributed over our territory, 
 engaged also in the cultivation of the ground. But this is 
 unaccompanied by capital, deficient in intelligence, bound 
 down in the struggle for a difificult subsistence to an un- 
 varying routine, entirely unconcentrated, and incapable 
 of self-concentration. 
 
 If there is to be a change in the economical distribu- 
 tion of labor among us, the initiative must be taken by 
 those of our citizens who are able to be employers. Such 
 have hitherto held themselves personally above labor — at 
 least the labor of the hands. Whether this feeling has 
 not been carried too far, admits of more than a question. 
 Whether the true dignity of labor has not been under- 
 valued, is worthy of our serious consideration. Our 
 domestic institutions have powerfully contributed to 
 keep the feeling alive. Wherever involuntary labor on 
 a large scale exists, idleness is too apt to be confounded 
 with respectability. And by the admission and recogni- 
 
24 
 
 tion of a false social standard, a vast amount of the most 
 productive descriptions of industry — the most productive 
 because demanding the highest exercise of skill — is effec- 
 tually ostracized, to make room for a class of men who, 
 while idle themselves, complain that they are not pros- 
 perous. 
 
 There is nothing to prevent the successful introduction 
 among us of every useful art. There are many things in 
 our situation which give us great natural advantages over 
 those to whom we are now accustomed to look for our 
 supplies. The British prints and muslins in the shops of 
 Tuscaloosa have, in one form or another, made a journey 
 equal to a third part of the circumference of the globe. 
 They have paid the expense of freights, commissions, 
 insurances, and custom-house duties, and have come to 
 us burthened with all these additions to their intrinsic 
 value. Had the cotton grown in England, they would 
 have been taxed but in one direction. Had the British 
 cotton-mill been built in Alabama, the whole chain of 
 impositions would have had no existence. 
 
 Now I do not \vish to make any comment upon what 
 any cotton-mill in Alabama has yet done ; but I do wish 
 to call your attention to what a British mill transplanted 
 here would be capable of doing. And in any statistical 
 statements which I may here introduce, I wish you to 
 understand that I put forth no vague and uncertain con- 
 jectures hazarded by myself ; but I give you the results 
 of experience, as ascertained by men who have been for 
 many years engaged in forwarding your cotton to market, 
 and in bringing to your doors the various products of 
 Northern and foreign industry. Let, then, such a mill, 
 constructed on the bold and liberal scale which distin- 
 guishes the British factories, be set down on the banks of 
 the Warrior, and furnished with the raw material at its 
 own doors. In the first place, it could purchase its cot- 
 ton at a cost permanently four cents per pound cheaper 
 than at present, and would be able to turn out its fabrics 
 at a corresponding reduction below the contemporaneous 
 prices in Manchester. Secondly, these fabrics would be 
 herein the midst of us, instead of being four thousand miles 
 
25 
 
 away, and we should receive them free of any charge for 
 freights, insurance, custom-house duties, or importers' 
 profits. All these things, freight excepted, affect chiefly 
 the finer and more costly goods. They impose a burthen, 
 under our present revenue tariff, upon imported cottons 
 laid down in the city of New York, of no less than 45 
 per cent upon the prime cost. Our indirect mode of 
 trading forces us to add to this the New York import- 
 er's profit of I2|^ per cent, and the further expense of 
 sending out here, of 10 per cent more — amounting in all 
 to hardly less than 80 per cent taxation to you upon 
 the New York imported cottons now on the shelves of 
 your merchants in Tuscaloosa.* Supposing the direct 
 trade substituted, however, there is still no escape from 
 the permanent tax of nearly 50 per cent upon all your 
 importations of manufactured cottons — a tax to be super- 
 added to that which arises from the increased expense 
 of the raw material. If the cost of running the mill 
 would be any thing greater here, it would not be sufficient 
 to affect materially the general result ; as is proved by 
 the successful competition of the coarser New England 
 muslins with those of Manchester in the London market ; 
 while the current expenses of manufacturing are no 
 greater here than in New England. 
 
 The amount of British cottons, therefore, which our 
 merchants now receive for every hundred dollars ex- 
 pended through New York, could be furnished by a 
 British mill, under British direction, on the banks of the 
 Warrior, for fifty-five dollars ; while the mill-owner would 
 pocket a handsome profit by the operation. 
 
 Let us look into the effect of our policy upon some 
 other of our important interests : 
 
 Our importations of woollens, if made direct, are taxed 
 to the extent of 55 per cent ; if introduced through the 
 North, to no less than 92 per cent. 
 
 Our Shefifield cutlery pays also 55 per cent, as directly 
 imported ; and indirectly — that is, as usually, at present 
 —92. 
 
 * See note B. 
 
26 
 
 Our hardware from Birmingham pays 75 per cent up 
 to New York, and 117 here. 
 
 Our crockery hollow ware is subject to the enormous 
 burthen of 130 per cent in New York, and 200 to 300 in 
 Tuscaloosa. 
 
 The superior article of similar description, called gran- 
 ite, is taxed 100 per cent to the Northern importer, and 
 150 or upward to our own merchants. 
 
 Common plates, and common cups and saucers, pay 
 125 per cent in New York, and more than 200 here. 
 
 Such are a few of the burdens to which the whole 
 South placidly and contentedly submits, under a tariff 
 constructed strictly with a view to revenue. Who would 
 believe that a people, who can sit down calm as a sum- 
 mer's morning under a system of taxation so utterly 
 ruinous and so absolutely self-imposed, could be roused 
 to fury by the addition of 10 or 20 per cent duty to the 
 revenue standard ; more especially when that very addi- 
 tion is designed to break up this most pernicious system 
 of national improvidence, by which our wealth is swal- 
 lowed up as fast as it is made. 
 
 But to return to our hypothetical cotton-mill. If Brit- 
 ish enterprise could produce the results which I have 
 stated here, in the very midst of us, why may not we go 
 and do likewise ? I anticipate the answer. We have not 
 the experience, we have not the skill, we have not the 
 tact to adapt our fabrics to the condition of the market. 
 If we build the mill, set up the machinery, and plunge 
 into the manufacture, we shall flounder like one who 
 ventures beyond his depth without having learned to 
 swim ; we shall make shipwreck of our capital, and 
 squander our toil^ — we shall spend our money for that 
 which is not bread, and our labor for that which satisfi- 
 eth not. So shall the last state of Alabama be worse than 
 the first. To this I reply that the answer is a good one 
 so far as it goes, and perfectly satisfactory but for a 
 single oversight. The native Southern man who never 
 saw a cotton-mill is no more to be supposed competent 
 to direct one, than any individual of this audience, se- 
 lected at random, is to be presumed capable of playing 
 
27 
 
 the violin the first time the instrument is put into his 
 hands. We have not at present the experience and skill, 
 it is admitted. What then ? We must import them. 
 We must not only erect the mills and purchase the ma- 
 chinery, but we must bring here also the men who are to 
 manage them. This is the absolute and only condition 
 of success. If it were not so, every thing which I have 
 said of the value of skill would be founded in false phi- 
 losophy. All special education, of every kind, would be 
 worthless, and we should be compelled to admit the ab- 
 surdity, that whatever any one man can do, every other 
 can do as well. 
 
 Take a simple illustration. Our splendid rivers are 
 navigated by hundreds of steamers, liearing the rich pro- 
 ducts of our soil to our ports, and bringing back the im- 
 mense amounts of imported goods which we now annually 
 consume. This was not always so. The early naviga- 
 tion of the rivers, not of this only, but of every land, 
 was conducted in slow-sailing sloops and schooners, and 
 still more sluggish and uncouth flat-boats and barges. 
 The application of steam to locomotion on the water 
 was a triumph of human perseverance and invention, of 
 inap|3reciable value. Its introduction upon the rapid 
 rivers of the South was a measure which immediately 
 assumed the importance of an absolute necessity. It was 
 introduced ; but no man dreamed of the folly of putting 
 engines of such enormous power, surrounded with so 
 fearful dangers, into the hands of men unacquainted 
 with their construction and unpractised in their manage- 
 ment. The necessity of importing, along with the new 
 power, the heads and hands which were competent to 
 govern it, was palpable to all. 
 
 The application is obvious. If we would build up 
 any art among us, we must bring here not merely the 
 brute machines which are necessary to its operations, 
 but the practised skill which can turn them to good 
 account. 
 
 I do not mean that our master workmen and superin- 
 tendents must always be aliens to our soil. By no means. 
 When any branch of industry shall have obtained a secure 
 
footing among us, hundreds of native artisans will spring 
 up to give it direction. Our first establishments will be 
 our normal schools of industry ; but we shall no longer 
 need foreign guidance when we are once able to go alone, 
 
 I see nothing objectionable in this proposition. It is 
 no discredit to us that we are deficient in knowledge ; 
 but if we refuse to learn, we shall be highly censurable. 
 Some may be disposed to repel the idea of calling in aid 
 from a quarter which they deem unfriendly. To such I 
 would cite the familiar Roman maxim, the wisdom of 
 which has been admitted by all succeeding ages, "Fas 
 est ct ab Jiostc doccri !'' — it is good policy to learn even 
 of our enemies. Let us act upon this principle — let us 
 endeavor to diversify the applications of our industry 
 without ever attempting, unguided by experience, tasks 
 to which none among us have ever been educated — -and 
 we shall very soon attain to that real and substantial in- 
 dependence, which nothing in Federal legislation can 
 ever undermine. 
 
 Other incidental but important advantages would flow 
 from the adoption of this policy. Instead of a sparsely 
 scattered population, we should presently see thriving 
 towns and villages springing up throughout our territory ; 
 thus multiplying everywhere the blessings of social life. 
 Better schools and more of them would be brought to the 
 doors of almost every family. Feeble churches would 
 grow strong ; and to thousands, who now never so much 
 as hear the sound of the church-going bell, would be 
 regularly proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation. By 
 the more intimate and constant contact of man with 
 man, the courtesies of life would come to be more re- 
 garded, manners would be softened, and tastes culti- 
 vated to a higher degree of refinement. Associations for 
 intellectual improvement would become possible. Libra- 
 ries, reading-rooms, forensic clubs, lecture-halls, and all 
 the various means by which a busy population is able to 
 mingle instruction with entertainment, would come into 
 existence in a thousand places. Our people would thus 
 become not only richer, but more polished, more en- 
 lightened, and better, at the same time. 
 
29 
 
 Moreover, our population would go on increasing in 
 numbers in a higher ratio than heretofore. The tide of 
 immigration from abroad has hitherto flowed ahnost 
 exclusively over the States of the North. The reason 
 has been, that the cotton-growing States have been able 
 to offer no inducements to turn it aside. Southern agri- 
 culture is ill adapted to European hands — and what occu- 
 pation but agriculture has the South had to offer ? Here 
 and there, where an unfrequent railroad has presented 
 occasional employment, the sturdy arms of Irish or Ger- 
 man excavators have been called on for their aid ; but 
 nowhere has there existed a demand steady enough to 
 secure an unbroken inward current. Let the arts lift up 
 their heads among us, and all this will be changed. We 
 shall attract to ourselves at least our share of that great 
 influx from abroad, which now goes to swell exclusively 
 the immense Northern sea of human life ; and we shall 
 assimilate to ourselves, and convert into defenders, thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands of those who would else fall 
 naturally into th§ ranks of our assailants. 
 
 The effect of this would be twofold. It would detract 
 something from the increase of Northern population, 
 and add something to ours. In the progress of years 
 this process would distinctly tell upon the relative num- 
 bers of the two great sections of the Union ; and our 
 relative strength in the councils of the nation would 
 steadily increase. 
 
 Time will not permit me to follow these ideas further. 
 But I cannot close without suggesting one additional 
 consideration in favor of the policy I have been recom- 
 mending. The South is rich to-day, because the prod- 
 uct of her industry is in increasing demand. But as 
 that product is single, her riches have no firmer basis 
 than the permanence of the demand which creates them. 
 Let cotton give place, even partially, to other materials, 
 in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and a deathblow 
 will be given to the cotton-growing industry of America. 
 A suggestion like this may perhaps excite a smile from 
 those who hear me ; and yet it is neither absurd nor im- 
 possible — perhaps not even improbable. This is mani- 
 
30 
 
 fest from considering the history of cotton itself. A 
 century ago this article had no commercial importance 
 at all in the markets of the world. In 1 741, 4000 bales 
 was the total amount imported from all sources into the 
 British islands. In 1760, the value of all the British 
 manufactured cottons put together did not reach one 
 million of dollars. At the close of the war of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution, Great Britain manufactured, still, less 
 than 25,000 bales per annum. In forty years she had 
 scarcely increased her operations by 20,000 bales. Had 
 an Englishman at this time predicted before a London 
 audience that in the year 1850 any serious interruption 
 to the cotton manufacture of England would be suf^cient 
 to endanger the security of the sovereign on her throne, 
 and jDossibly to shatter into fragments the empire itself, 
 his prediction would have been met with the same in- 
 credulous smile with which you may be disposed to re- 
 ceive my suggestion of to-day. 
 
 Why may not something else supersede cotton in the 
 manufacture of woven goods ? Because, you will reply, 
 nothing else can possibly compete with it in cheapness. 
 But cotton was not always cheap. It was known and used 
 in Europe for a century or more before it could com- 
 pete with wool or flax. How did it acquire this new 
 quality, which has given to its manufacture an importance 
 second perhaps to that of none other existing in the 
 whole range of human industry ? By the simple exercise 
 of a little ingenuity in improving the methods of sepa- 
 rating it from the seed. 
 
 Why may not similar ingenuity be yet exerted upon 
 other materials, with similar success ? It is affirmed that 
 this is likely to be done in the case of flax. A process 
 has been invented, which is said to be entirely success- 
 ful, by means of which the fibre of the plant is made 
 to resemble most completely, in appearance and mechan- 
 ical properties, cotton prepared for spinning. So remark- 
 able is the similarity, that it may be spun by the same 
 machinery, with nearly or quite the same facility, as cot- 
 ton itself ; and to come at once to the point of princi- 
 pal interest, the manufactured product is fully as cheap. 
 
31 
 
 Such are the statements which have thus far reached us. 
 It remains to be seen to what degree they will be verified 
 by more extensive experiment. 
 
 But, it may be asked, where is the raw material to be 
 obtained in quantity to compare with the three millions 
 or more of bales of cotton now supplied by the two 
 Americas, India, and Egypt ? There will be no difficulty 
 on this head. It will come if it is wanted. The cotton- 
 growing regions are mere patches on the face of the 
 earth compared with those which are adapted to the 
 culture of flax. It is that fact indeed which gives to 
 us our present enormous advantage.* Now suppose a 
 competition of this formidable character to spring up 
 against our great staple. The arm of our present 
 strength will be paralyzed, and national ruin will come 
 upon us like a thief in the night. Even now we experi- 
 ence disastrous effects from occasional and temporary 
 depression of prices. What may we not anticipate when 
 prices fall permanently below the cost of production ? 
 
 I do not undertake to say that this danger is immedi- 
 ately upon us. It is by no means ascertained that the 
 present experiment will succeed. But the fact that such 
 experiments are possible, and that some one may sooner 
 or later put at hazard our most vital interests, warns us 
 significantly of the folly of embarking all our fortunes in 
 a single bottom. If by diversifying our labor, if by 
 cultivating amongst us all those useful arts by which 
 wealth is retained at home, and accumulated where it is 
 retained, we arrive at that substantial independence to 
 which wisdom teaches us to aspire, we shall be prepared 
 for any reverse which afTects but a single interest. Pov- 
 erty or riches, want or abundance, will no longer depend 
 for us upon the turning of a die. Strong in the multi- 
 tude of our resources, we shall always be prepared for 
 what the morrow may bring forth. We shall no longer 
 seem to ourselves to be accumulating food for cormo- 
 rants to feed on, or lavishing upon others the aliment 
 which should fatten ourselves. 
 
 * See note C. 
 
32 
 
 Perhaps, when we shall have familiarized ourselves with 
 the same pursuits which have made our Northern breth- 
 ren prosperous, and when all parts of our common 
 country shall be more nearly assimilated in interests, we 
 shall find fewer causes of contention in the halls of our 
 national legislature, and fewer occasions for asperity in the 
 language we apply to each other. Perhaps we shall be- 
 come more truly in fact what our fathers were before us, 
 and what we too are still in name— a united people. 
 
 But if this may not be, if the lamentable schisms which 
 divide us are fated to grow wider and wider, if we are 
 doomed to see the glorious flag of our republic rent in 
 twain, and the fair temple of liberty in which we have so 
 long worshipped together given over dismantled to crum- 
 ble into ruin, then at least may we of the South feel, in 
 that day of darkness, that we have within ourselves every 
 element of an empire, and ^that when we decree our 
 separation from our Northern brethern, we are truly 
 independent of all the world. 
 
 Decree our separation ! On this unwelcome theme 
 permit me for one moment to dwell. Permit me, before 
 I conclude, to add one word of warning, one word of 
 entreaty, one word of deep, earnest, most certainly patri- 
 otic, conviction. For what should we decree our separa- 
 tion ? That the broad barrier of the Constitution, which 
 now forms our impregnable rampart against the rabid 
 abolitionism of England, and the no less dangerous so- 
 cialism of France, may be broken down, and leave us 
 exposed to formidable assaults upon all our boundaries, 
 and vexatious annoyances in all our intercourse with the 
 world ? That the combined fanaticism of all Christen- 
 dom may plot unmolested against our peace, may harass 
 all our borders with marauding incursions, and instigate 
 servile war in the very heart of our quiet land ? That 
 the obligation to respect, protect, and restore our prop- 
 erty, which now shields our widely exposed Northern 
 frontier — an obligation not cheerfully fulfilled, if you 
 please, but still an obligation, and still — mark that — 
 fulfilled, nevertheless — may be utterly swept away, to 
 give place to a never-ceasing border war expanding at 
 
33 
 frequent intervals into general hostilities? Is it for 
 these things that we are to decree our separation? If 
 not, then for what other, and for what better ? 
 
 What was it I heard ? A foreign alliance ? Did some 
 one seem to say that Britain, in terror of her operatives 
 and dependant on the cotton-growing States for her only 
 security against convulsion, would gladly receive us un- 
 der the shadow of her wing ? Did I hear the remark that 
 this all-powerful mistress of the waves would eagerly 
 seize the proffered privilege of fighting for us our baUles 
 against the North, and that a British line-of-battle ship 
 off. the harbor of Charleston would blow the revenue- 
 cutters of the Union— aye, and the frigates too— like so 
 many fishing smacks, out of the water? If I did not 
 hear that language here I have heard it elsewhere. And 
 shall we yield ourselves up to so fatal a delusion as this ? 
 Great Britain needs your cotton, you say, and therefore 
 she will help you. And this remark you make of the 
 grand robber of the civilized world— a nation whose 
 career has been signalized by depredation wherever her 
 adventurers have penetrated and wherever her flag has 
 flown, whose cry, like that of the daughters oi the 
 horse-leech, has been everywhere, "Give, give"— a na- 
 tion whose track over India and the farthest East has 
 been marked by bloodshed, rapine and plunder, the 
 gripe of whose covetous hand your own fathers felt at 
 their throats, and who would now be fattening herself 
 upon your life-blood also, but for that devoted heroism 
 in them which we are assembled this day to commemo- 
 rate. And this nation it is which you expect to give 
 you something. Deceive not yourselves, fellow-citizens. 
 Great Britain never gives where she has the power to 
 take. She needs your cotton— granted. You need her 
 manufactures— she knows it. If she must buy or perish 
 you must sell or starve. And which, in a contest of this 
 kind, do you think has power to hold out the longest ? 
 Certainly not you. But suppose you have ; will this bring 
 her to your terms ? You seem to imagine that if you 
 will not willingly give her your cotton she cannot get it 
 Inconceivable error ! You tell us that her very exist- 
 
34 
 ence is at stake if you stop her mills. Grant this to be 
 true, and I tell you that you cannot stop them. Instead 
 of coming to your terms, she will force you to hers. 
 You say she fears the rabble of her unemployed opera- 
 tives. What is to prevent her turning that rabble loose 
 upon you ? Do I hear you say that you will never be 
 wanting to the vindication of your independence and the 
 defence of your firesides ? I hope not ; yet my heart 
 sickens when I meet, at every turn, still the same trum- 
 pet-cry of conflict, still the same menace of blood ! 
 
 But you answer, triumphantly, England will sooner 
 make terms than fight. War is fearfully expensive, and 
 England totters on the verge of national bankruptcy. 
 True — and therein lies the very hopelessness of the case. 
 England cannot come to terms with you without fighting 
 an enemy more formidable than you will be^ — the confed- 
 erated states from w^hich you will have torn yourselves 
 away. Unfortunately the army, the navy, all the stores 
 and munitions of war, the custom-houses of the great 
 sea-ports, and, more than all, the immense superiority of 
 numbers, w^ill remain on the side of the confederacy. 
 You propose that England shall become your ally in the 
 war. Mercenary England always counts the cost, the 
 more especially since she has no money to throw away. 
 What is to prevent her becoming the ally of the North 
 against you ? Certainly this would be her cheapest, her 
 surest, her most direct route to the object of her wishes. 
 Ai)d the cotton which you expect her to buy on your 
 terms she will force you to sell on her own. Nor will it 
 constitute the slightest objection to such a proceeding in 
 her eyes, that while with one hand she grasps your cot- 
 ton, with the other she may liberate your slaves. 
 
 These remarks may not be acceptable, but are they 
 not true ? And if they are, is it not necessary that such 
 truths should be plainly spoken and deeply pondered ? 
 Decree our separation ! If it is for this, or any thing like 
 this, that we are to be delivered from our [)resent griev- 
 ances, better, far better, is it that we 
 
 " Bear those ills we have, 
 Than fly to others that we know not of." 
 
35 
 And are we to consider ourselves alone ? Is nothing 
 due to that subHme mission which has been confided to 
 us, the propagation and universal diffusion of free princi- 
 ples throughout the world ? Shall we esteem as of no 
 account the prayers of the manacled thousands in other 
 and less happy lands who are stretching out their hands 
 to us and imploring us not to extinguish the fires upon 
 the only altars of pure liberty beneath the arch of 
 heaven ? Is this peaceful asylum of the persecuted of all 
 countries to be converted into a pandemonium of anarchy 
 and carnage, where life is even less secure than in the 
 blood-stained domains of despotism whence they have 
 fled ? 
 
 Decree our separation ! For any cause that has yet 
 arisen, be the thought cast out with loathing and horror ' 
 Decree our separation ! While the constitution still con- 
 tinues to throw over us its sheltering shield let not the 
 suggestion dare again to intrude upon our minds ! De- 
 cree our separation 1 God in His infinite mercy forbid ! 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note A. 
 
 {^Referred to on poi^e 12.) 
 
 The view here taken of the real causes which have led to the existing 
 war upon the Union has not perhaps been before distinctly presented 
 out of South Carolina, but within that State all affectation of concealment 
 on the subject is at length laid aside. The following is from a recent 
 number of the Charleston Mercitrv : 
 
 " Many of our resistance friends argue as if the sole purpose of oar tak- 
 ing issue 7uith the Federal Government was the proteetion and viaintenanee 
 of the institution of slavery. Hence, they reason, secession is not the 
 best method of effecting our object. Tliis is a narrow, and, as 7ve think, a 
 very erroneous, vie7v of the whole matter. The INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY 
 WAS NOT THE ITRST, nor will it be the last, interest of the South assailed 
 by the Government. The struggle in which we are involved is not for the 
 defence ol one interest but every interest vital to freedom. It is for lib- 
 erty itself. The institution has been assailed because that was one of the 
 most efifectual ways of depriving us of independence, and because by 
 SUBMISSION TO OTHER ENCROACHMENTS 7ve have made the North believe 
 7ve could be assailed 7vith impunity. 
 
 " We do not govern ourselves, but are governed, and, as Langdon 
 Cheves forcibly says, "governed by our bitter enemies." Being ruled, 
 our rulers have thought fit to interfere with the institution of slavery. It 
 was one way, and a most effectual one, of expressing their hostility. But 
 if 've had not PREVIOUSLY submitted to be i[07'erned by those t.'/zc no'(.' assail 
 this institution, it would never have been assailed. The attempt to overthrow 
 '\t is a consequence tnerely of rhe political inferiority imposed upon us, and 
 submitted to J)y us, through PREVIOUS legislation. If 'we had maintained 
 our equality in THE vital MATTER OF the imposition and expenditure 
 of taxes we should never have been attacked on the side of our domes- 
 tic institutions. The general government, thus checked, and kept within 
 the limits of the general purposes for which it was established, could 
 not have become the government of a section, and no sectional warfare 
 on slavery could ever have been made by Congress. 
 
 "" But 7ue submitted to sectional legislation ///THE IMPOSITION AND DIS- 
 BURSEMENT OF TAXES. The next stride was natural, if not inevitable, sec- 
 tional legislation against that interest that most definitely and strongly 
 distinguished the sections from each other. IVe surrendoed our liberties 
 WHEN WE SUBMITTED TO PAY TAXES levied by the North openly and avo7u- 
 edly to advance their 07un interests. Hf.RE was our FALL— alas, what a 
 fall!- for a fiee people in a Confederacy, the vital principle of which 
 was equality ! 
 
 " If the IN.STITUTION of slavery had never existed, OR NEVER 
 BEEN ASSAILED, the Union, as it H07V is, 7uould be an INTOLERABLE DESPO- 
 TISM, 7uhich ought either to be reformed or ABOLISHED." 
 
37 
 
 This writer very candidly avows that the aggressions upon our rights as 
 slaveholders are not the sole, nor even the principal, grievances for which 
 secession is urged as a remedy. They have been found a very effectual — 
 in fact the only efifectual — means of creating a popular ferment out of 
 South Carolina ; but now, when the feeling is presumed to be up, the in- 
 stigators uncover the old sore and tell us that " we surrendered our lib- 
 erties when we submitted to pay taxes," with much more of the same 
 kind. The " previous legislation" of twenty years ago, then, is still the 
 great grievance in South Carolina. Suppose our Alabama secessionists 
 should preach the same'doctrine ; what success would they meet with ? 
 
 The writer of the Mercury seems to take it for granted that the Federal 
 Government systematically oppresses South Carolina — not with any very 
 definite object in view, but simply for the gratification it affords. He 
 assumes a settled enmity to exist toward his state on the part of every 
 body north of Mason & Dixon's line, and declares that the Union 
 ought to be abolished, independently of any controversy about slavery ! 
 This is tolerably distinct, significant, intelligible. Will Alabama volun- 
 teer to help South Carolina fight over again her old nullification quarrel ? 
 
 Note B. 
 {Referred to on page 25.) 
 
 EXPENSE OF DIRECT IMPORTATION. 
 
 Cotton goods, prime cost %i 00 
 
 Duty, 25 per cent 25 
 
 Commissions in England 5 
 
 Receiving and forwarding commissions, cartage, dock 
 
 dues, cases, etc 10 
 
 Insurance, freight, etc 5 
 
 Cost, as directly imported $1 45 
 
 ADDITIONAL EXPENSES — INDIRECT IMPORTATION. 
 
 Cost as laid down in New York $1-45 
 
 Twelve and one half per cent, importer's profit j 8 
 
 New York cost to Alabama merchant $1 63 
 
 Ten per cent expenses out 163 
 
 Cost in Tuscaloosa $1 793 
 
 Note C. 
 
 (Referred to on page 31). 
 
 The most recent accounts whch have appeared in this country in regard 
 to Mr. Claussen's process for the preparation and manufacture or fiax 
 have been contained in the London letters to the editor of the New York 
 
38 
 
 Tiihutie. In regard to the economical question, Mr. Claussen's state- 
 ments are given as follows : 
 
 " He says the flax straw, or the ripe, dry plant, as it comes from the 
 field, with the seed taken off, may be grown even in England for |;ioper 
 ton ; but he will concede its cost for the present to be $15 per ton, deliv- 
 ered, as it is necessary that liberal inducements shall be given [for its ex- 
 tensive cultivation. Six tons of the straw or flax in the bundle will yield 
 one ton of dressed and clean fibre, the cost of dressing which by this 
 method, so as to make it flax-cotton, is $35 per ton. (Our superior West- 
 ern machinery ought considerably to reduce this.) The total cost of the 
 flax-cotton, therefore, will be $125 per ton, or six cents per pound, while 
 flax, as it comes from the field, is worth I15 per ton ; should this come 
 down to |io per ton, the cost of the fibre will be reduced to I95 per ton. 
 or less than five cents per pound." 
 
 " Mr. Claussen's process, it is said, requires but three hours for its 
 completion. It takes the flax as it came from the field, only somewhat 
 drier, and with the seed beaten off, and renders it thoroughly fit for break- 
 ing. The plant is allowed to ripen before it is harvested, so that the seed 
 is all saved, while the tediousness and injury to the fibre, not to speak 
 of the unwholesomeness of the old-fashioned rotting processes, are en- 
 tirely obviated. Where warmth is desirable in the fabrics contemplated, 
 the staple is made to resemble wool quite closely. Specimens dyed red, 
 blue, yellow, etc., are exhibited to show how readily and satisfactorily 
 the flax cotton takes any color that may be desired. Beside these lie rolls 
 of flannels, feltings, and almost every variety of plain textures, fabricated 
 wholly or in good part from flax as prepared for spinning under Mr. 
 Claussen's [patent, proving the adaptation of this fibre to almost every 
 use now subserved by either cotton or wool. The mixtures of cotton 
 and flax, flax-cotton and wool, are excellent and serviceable fabrics." 
 
INDEPENDENCE ODE. 
 
 yVriitcn for the celebration at Tiisealoosa, Ala., Jittv .\fh, 1851. 
 
 3Y I'ROF. F. A. V. BARNARD. 
 
 'Tis the day of freedom's birth ; 
 Fling her starry banner forth ; 
 Let it wave, from South to North, 
 
 In her own blue sky. 
 Floating wide, from sea to sea, 
 On the breath of liberty. 
 Let that glorious standard be 
 
 Ever borne on high. 
 
 Who its onward course would bar ? 
 Who its lustrous folds would mar? 
 Who "oould blot away a sta> V 
 
 Let him come not near. 
 Who would bear it proudly on, 
 Till its world-wide course is run ? 
 Of his sire, a worthy son. 
 
 Let him join us here. 
 
 By that sainted hero, sage. 
 Whose great deeds— our heritage- 
 Fill with brightness hist'ry's page. 
 
 By our Washington. 
 We will cling, til! hope expires. 
 To the charter of our sires. 
 With a grasp that never tires. 
 
 Till our course is run. 
 
7/ 
 
i