The earlier railroad trains were crude affairs. The locomotives could not run on rainy days. When they did run, they sent out a continuous shower of sparks, so that the passengers were kept busy putting out fires in their clothing. The original coaches were simply ordinary coach bodies, on trucks designed to run on rails. Farmers complained, not only because the sparks set fire to their grass and buildings, but because the noise frightened the cows so that they ceased to give milk. Although improvements came quickly, the strictly modern railroad was not evolved until after the Civil War. The first telegraph line was opened in 1844, and by 1860 there were about fifty companies engaged in sending messages by telegraph. The invention was convenient for commercial use; it proved indispensable in running the railroads.

No other single invention did so much toward completing the process of national consolidation as the railroad. Calhoun became more and more fearful that the process would inevitably minimize the importance of the states, and magnify the federal government. He was right. Although the South tried to resist the tendency, it was finally brought into line with the rest of the country. After the Civil War, the national government assumed powers of which the framers of the Constitution had never dreamed.

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM

In the South, during this period, the outstanding economic and social factors were the plantation and slavery. Cotton had become more and more the dominant interest, the plantations grew larger and larger, and in the cotton areas the small farmer was almost unknown. The cotton planters became the ruling class in the South. Because of its concentration on cotton growing, the South neither raised nor manufactured enough to supply its own needs. Moreover the southern system made the accumulation of capital almost impossible, so it was dependent upon the North, or upon Europe, for its capital for banking, insurance, and for building railroads. Even the shipping which transported the cotton to market was supplied by the North or by England. While the other sections were working out a highly complex and diversified economic life, or a thoroughly modern farming system, the South clung to the more primitive institutions of the plantation and slave labor.

During the two or three decades preceding the Civil War the South

became more and more firmly convinced that slavery was essential to profitable cotton. This belief of theirs was in no way concerned with the ethical question of slavery. To the successive generations born in the South, unaffected by any abolitionist agitation, slavery did not appear in the guise of a moral wrong. They saw it as a part of the established order, one of the provisions which an all-wise Creator had ordained for the benefit of mankind. It was just as inevitable to them as the wage system is to the majority of people at the present time, and they resented attacks upon it just as some people resent socialist attacks upon the established order to-day. Mankind in general always finds it easier to accept the world as it is, than to work for the introduction of new, untried schemes of more or less doubtful merit. For the northern generations brought up on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Abolitionism, and the conviction that slavery was a crying evil, it may be hard to visualize the matter-offact attitude toward slavery which originally prevailed all over the country, and which continued to prevail in the South.

Taken as a whole, slavery had little resemblance to the picture of it in the minds of reformers like William Lloyd Garrison, of fanatics like John Brown, or even of imaginative novelists like Harriet Beecher Stowe. Usually the slaves were well treated and well cared for, in the majority of cases because the owners were humane, and in other cases because the slaves were valuable financial investments, not to be abused any more than expensive reapers or mowers. Most of them were reasonably happy, and many of them were devoted to their owners. The examples of slavery that attracted northern attention were inevitably the extreme and the spectacular, the kind that naturally attain publicity and notoriety. There were of course fugitive slaves, who ran away for various reasons. For that matter, every society, even to-day, has its fugitives, for one cause or another. It is not necessary to sympathize with the slavery system but it is desirable to understand how it looked from the southern as well as from the northern point of view. Partly, perhaps largely, because of abolitionist activities, which will be discussed later, the South adopted a definite attitude in defense of slavery, in much the same way that enlightened governments defend themselves against “radicalism" to-day. Because of the feeling engendered, the whole question persisted in thrusting itself into politics, at the most inopportune times and in the most disconcerting fashion.

IMMIGRATION

Another factor in this mid-century growth of the United States was immigration. Various causes combined to stimulate this movement from Europe. After the recovery from the panic of 1837 the remarkable prosperity attracted Europeans. Besides, Europe with its revolutions was none too comfortable a place in which to.live, at least for those of republican tendencies, so numerous political refugees became permanent residents in the New World. Of the new comers between 1840 and 1860 the two largest groups were the Germans and Irish. The Germans for the most part settled in the Middle West, making portions of some of the states, notably Wisconsin, genuine German communities. The Irish on the other hand preferred the cities and industrial towns of the East. Finding employment at first in the railroad construction gangs, they soon entered the factories. In course of time they almost monopolized the police and fire departments in some eastern cities, and at the same time they showed remarkable aptitude in municipal politics and government.

Practically none of these immigrants went into the South. There were few openings for white laborers there, and the cost of getting established as a cotton or tobacco grower was greater than the cost of beginning farming in the Northwest. Because of this the white population in the South remained more homogeneous than that in any other part of the country.

The steady opening of new farms in the West and new plantations in the South meant a heavy increase in the production of grain and cotton. Some of this, especially cotton, had to find a market abroad. This in turn stimulated foreign commerce, which in 1860, for the export trade, was valued at $333,576,057. Ordinarily the value of the cotton exports was half that of the total, while sometimes it was twice that of all the rest of the export trade.

Never before nor since this period have the shipping interests, both builders and owners, seen such extensive or unbroken prosperity. American vessels went all over the world, carrying the products of other nations as well as their own. By 1860 the tonnage of the American merchant marine equaled that of the British nation. Moreover in 1845, an American naval architect designed and built the first clipper ship, an innovation in maritime transportation. Vessels of this type were the fastest sailing ships ever built, and with

a fair wind they were speedier than the contemporary steamboats.

There was no doubt that the United States was not only holding its own in economic competition with the rest of the world, but in some respects it was developing more rapidly than other nations. The hopes of the founders of the republic were being realized. Unfortunately, with all these assets, there was a steadily growing liability: the refusal of the North and the South to agree upon the slavery issue.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE ABOLITIONIST CRUSADE

THE ERA OF REFORM

For the student of history who is interested in human behavior, as well as in economics, politics, and government these same three decades preceding 1860 are full of fascinating material. It was a time of reform, and nothing reveals man as he is like a series of reforms. The period has been called by various titles. One historian describes it as "the intellectual and moral renaissance," another as "the hot-air period in American History." Both characterizations are accurate and apt. It was a time of awakening, in literature and religion, as well as in morals; it was a time of humanitarian reform. Almost every department of life was apparently being examined, for the purpose of making a new evaluation. During this process certain customs, practices, and beliefs were found wanting; these discoveries were followed by reforms, some good, some bad, some merely foolish. James Russell Lowell left a brief but very vivid description of this extraordinary enthusiasm for change.

"Every possible form of intellectual and physical dyspepsia brought forth its gospel. . . . Everybody had a mission (with a capital M) to attend to everybody-else's business. No brain but had its private maggot, which must have found pitiably short commons sometimes. Not a few inpecunious zealots abjured the use of money (unless earned by other people), professing to live on the internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance of instant millenium so soon as hooks and eyes should be substituted for buttons. Communities were established where everything was to be common but common sense. . . . Many foreign revolutionists out of work added to the general misunderstanding their contribution of broken English in every most ingenious form of fracture. All stood ready at a moment's notice to reform everything but themselves."

Among the more creditable results of this eagerness for objective improvement perhaps the literary movement comes first. Emerson, Hawthorne, Bryant, Lowell, and Whittier vere in their prime then, while Cooper and Poe fit into the period in its beginning, and Whit