workingmen of the Eastern states, and he rewarded their loyalty (1840) by prescribing a ten-hour day for all employees of the national government. The crisis of 1837 and the subsequent industrial depression checked, for the time being, the growth of the labor movement. 148-153, 187. Noyes, Hist. of Am. In 1842 a second wave of socialist enthusiasm passed over New England and the North. Albert Brisbane, the apostle of Fourier's gospel of association, found a hearing among the most thoughtful men of the day, such as Horace Greeley, the Sotheran, editor of the New York Tribune, and William Henry Chan- 121-122, ning, who edited the Spirit of the Age, Wendell Philips, Parke Godwin, etc. A number of Fourierist phalansteries, thirty or forty in all, were set on foot, and to these came men and women of all classes and conditions, hoping to find in community of property and labor the secret of social regeneration. These associations, without exception, made their experiments in the Northern tier of states- Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. The practical results of the propaganda were no more encouraging than accrued from the Owenite movement; but its influence was even greater and more lasting. Failing to establish ideal communities, the reformers undertook to remedy the abuses of the society in which they were forced to live. The labor movement gathered fresh energy. George Henry Evans and Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright, all three of English birth and Owenites, addressed great audiences in the Hall of Science, New York, and convinced their hearers of the necessity of agitating for legislative reforms. Evans's paper, Young America, set forth among the objects to be attained, “the abolition of chattel slavery" and the free distribution of the public lands. Slavery and the Territories. - The advocates of the rights of free labor strenuously opposed the annexation of Texas and the resulting war with Mexico. The Mexican cession an accomplished fact, they strove to prevent the admission of slavery into the territories both north and south of the Missouri Compromise line. As the Democratic party fell Ingle, under the sway of Southern political leaders and became com Ch. IX. Brown, Lower South in Am. Hist., 83-112. the Age, I, 203-204. mitted to the policy of noninterference, the labor men transferred their allegiance to the Liberty party, with whose fight against slavery and with whose championship of free land they were in hearty accord. The Free-Soil Democracy, organThe Spirit of ized at Buffalo in 1848, combined the more moderate wing of the Liberty party, the malcontent Whigs and Democrats, with the elements of the Workingmen's party. The platform declared the prime object of this revolt to be to maintain"the rights of free labor against the aggression of the slave power and to secure free soil to a free people." The Massachusetts state convention more succinctly expressed the point of view of the wage-earners: Resolved, That labor is universally dishonored and its interests compromised by the existence of slavery in this country, and that the first step for its elevation must be the limitation and extinction of slavery." Van Buren, the nominee of the Free Soil Democrats, secured 291,000 votes, of which 120,000 were polled in New York, 38,000 in Massachusetts, and 35,000 in Ohio; but he was defeated by Zachary Taylor, a slave owner who had won popular favor by brilliant service in the Mexican War. In its platform of 1852 the Free Soil Democracy declared explicitly that slavery must be excluded from the territories, and that "the public land of the United States belongs to the people and should not be sold to individuals nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people and should be granted in limited quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers." The 156,000 votes cast for Hale and Julian fell far short of Van Buren's total, but represented a body of men thoroughly convinced on these two points. Julian, The utterances of the Republican party on the mooted questions of slavery and the public lands were more cautious, but its platform served as a rallying ground for the abolitionists, the free soilers, and the men who cared most of all for the preservation of the Union. Fremont, in 1856, secured the total electoral vote of New England together with that of New York, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin; and Lincoln in 1860 added to the list of Republican states New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, California, and Oregon. The triumph of the Republican party meant the exclusion of slavery from the territories and the ultimate ruin of the "peculiar institution." The proslavery men of the Southern states forced the issue. Six weeks after Lincoln's election, South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Secession, and her example was immediately followed by the six Gulf states. Maryland and Kentucky were the only slaveholding states that did not secede from the Union. The Cost of the War Each party to the controversy was fighting for the maintenance of a political principle on which depended the success of its peculiar economic and social order. The five years' conflict was waged with obstinate endurance and reckless expenditure of men and money by North and South alike. The issue of the war was determined by the final exhaustion of the Confederacy. The resources of the cotton kingdom were far less than those of the Northern states. The popu lation of the South was twelve million souls, of whom four millions were slaves. The North opposed a population of nineteen millions, all free. The taxable property of the South was, by the census of 1860, estimated at five billion dollars, of which two billions represented slaves and one billion and a half real estate devoted, in the main, to the growing of cotton. The property of the Northern states approximated eleven billion dollars, and consisted, in good part, of manufacturing, mining, and commercial plants whose products were more readily convertible into the sinews of war. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, his men were found utterly destitute of supplies and weak from lack of food. Confederate Finances. It was expected that the ex- Schwab, penses of the Confederate government would be met by Confederate customs revenue, but the effectual blockade maintained by the Federal navy stopped foreign trade, and the returns Ch. XI, XII. States of were disappointing. The individual states were then asked to levy a direct property tax of one half of one per cent, and to turn over the proceeds to the general treasury. No more than $18,000,000 resulted from this requisition, and payments were usually made, not in cash, but in state bonds. It speedily became evident that the augmenting military Schwab, III, IV. expenses must be met by loans. In the first year of the war the Confederate government issued bonds to the amount of $15,000,000 at eight per cent, interest and principal being secured by an export tax on cotton of one eighth of a cent a pound. This issue was taken up by Southern bankers, notably those of New Orleans and Charleston, and brought all the available specie in the Confederacy into the government treasury. The money was immediately sent abroad for military supplies. A bond issue of $150,000,000, ordered in the following year, was made payable in produce. By this loan the government came into possession of large stores of cotton, tobacco, wheat, rice, sugar, and molasses, commodities that were a drug in the market, together with $1,000,000 in paper currency. A foreign loan of $150,000,000 was negotiated in January, 1863, the bonds being made redeemable in cotton. Since cotton was selling at famine prices in England and on the Continent, these securities sold without difficulty. The government held against this pledge 350,000 bales of cotton, and the supply might have been doubled readily, but all efforts to ship the cotton to the foreign creditors failed. It soon became evident to Confederate financiers that but a fraction of the military expenditure could be met by bond issues and that recourse to credit money was inevitable. Treasury notes redeemable within the year and bearing interest at 3.65 per cent, had been issued in March, 1861; on the issue of April, 1862, the rate was raised to 7.3 per cent. Government notes, offering no interest and not to be redeemed till "six months after the ratification of a treaty of peace," were ordered at the same time. This paper currency was made receivable for taxes, but the Confederate Congress refrained from declaring it legal tender Schwab, Ch. V, VII, VIII. |