but takes refuge in the suggestion that postage is derived from the business of the country. This is mere hypothesis, and may be well answered by the suggestion that the North cultivates letters which are prohibited to the slave, transacts most of the business, and that half our letters are letters of friendship. With respect to the national debt, I have shown the principal and interest were paid for value received for a full equivalent. As respects the pensions, have they not been paid on rigid proof to those who served their country? and if the North furnished but three soldiers to one at the South, and drew four to one in pensions, is not this susceptible of easy explanation, either that the service of some militia men in the South was too brief to warrant pensions, or that some who fought for freedom in the South, chose to emigrate to the free States? Under no respect has our compact been violated, unless the expenditures have been made (as is not pretended) in violation of that compact. Another point urged by Mr. Garnett to show the aggressive policy of the North, is this: that the North did not furnish her proportionate share of men and money during the war of the Revolution. I might well urge that any such deficiency before our national compact, was incompetent to prove its breach. It was anterior in point of time. This would be a sufficient answer. But there is another one quite as conclusive, and still more honorable to the North, adverted to in my reply that she actually did supply more than her share of men and treasure. The official records cited by Mr. McCulloch, a standard authority throughout the world, prove the North, compared with the South, furnished more than three men for one, and this is confirmed by the proofs in the pension office. But Mr. Garnett harps upon a crude estimate of General Knox. It is easily enough explained. The rolls and proof of service remained in the several States until the general pension act was passed, when they were transferred to Washington, and this within twenty years, long after the decease of General Knox. Of what value is an estimate, formed without statistics and data, in determining a question, when the same has been settled by satisfactory proof. Is the patriotic service and devotion of the best blood of States to be disproved by conjecture? And are they, thereupon, to be arraigned as recreants from their duty? The payment of the national debt show alike who rendered service, and who furnished funds and supplies, and it is a little singular that after the North has been arraigned for her want of patriotism, she should be again condemned for receiving more than her share of the national debt and military pensions, for the one charge is a refutation of the other. But the main aggression of the North is the diversion of the southern trade to northern cities, and the circuitous voyage from the South to Europe. Mr. Garnett seems to think if he can check this, the palaces of New York are to be transferred to the Chesapeake, and a loan of one hundred and forty millions is to be recovered. Upon this topic Mr. Garnett dilates, and to this he constantly recurs, but he virtually concedes in the discussion, that the South selling for cash and buying for credit, owes the North forty millions; a fact somewhat inconsistent with this imaginary loan. The true solution of the indirect trade between the South and Europe, may be found in the greater energy, industry and frugality of the North, in the devotion of capital to trade instead of new plantations, to the honor in which industry is held, and its comparative degradation at the South, to the harsh and more invigorating climate of the North, stimulating Navigation, Commerce and Capital. The capital of the North, and her admirable lines of packets, facilitate the transit and the freight by the indirect, is often as low as by the direct route to Europe, and sometimes actually less.* The northern cities present the largest assortment and the greatest attractions. But Mr. Garnett ascribes their growth to the loan of Government funds. How can he reconcile this with their rapid growth since the Sub Treasury absorbed the public revenue? He ascribes it to discriminating duties on ships, but those have long since passed away, and northern shipping still increases. He says the coastwise navigation is protected, and the charge from Boston to New Orleans is higher than the freight from the same port to Canton. But is he not aware of the fact that the coastwise freights are regulated by the foreign trade, to which all ships are admitted; for no American ship will take freight from the South to Liverpool, if she can do better with freight to New York. As respects the Canton voyage, the position is somewhat amusing. Our vessels have usually sailed in ballast for Canton, or with domestic goods at low rates of freight, because China wants few of our productions; while our ships earn from $20 to $40 per ton in the run to San Francisco, or the Sandwich Islands, but little further. For New Orleans they take ice, granite and merchandise, at freights of two to three dollars per ton, because those articles are wanted there, and it would be as reasonable to say the freights were low to New Orleans, because they were high to the Sandwich Islands, as to urge they were high to the Mississippi, because ships sail in ballast for tea to China. The trade to the South is doubtless beneficial, or it would not be pursued; but Mr. Garnett overrates its importance, if he ascribes to it alone the vast growth and prosperity of our northern cities, or takes newspaper paragraphs for more than they are worth. The Commerce of the North with the West, by canal and railway, greatly exceeds her Commerce with the South. Her trade with California, begun but two years since, already employs nearly as much shipping as the whole Commerce of the South, by sea. In the years 1849 and 1850, no less than twelve hundred and seventy-four vessels sailed from the Atlantic ports, for California, and at least three hundred more have assembled there from other places-few of these have yet returned. In January last, no less than five hundred and fifty were at anchor in Colifornia. These vessels average over three hundred tons, and present an aggregate of a half a million tons of American shipping. An equal amount of tonnage in the southern trade, making, as it does, at least two voyages per annum, suffices for the convey ance of all the cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar and molasses of the South, and the imports exchanged for them. Of the whole shipping of the Union, less than one-fourth is engaged in southern Commerce. Far be it from me to disparage the trade of the South, or to derogate from its importance; but in the essay and reply of Mr. Garnett, it seems to be overrated, both in amount and relative importance. Let me refer, for instance, to his fallacious tables, on which he rests both his very reply. In table 1. he gives us the exports of the United States for 1848, and states them as follows: essay and At the present moment, April 25, 1851, the freight on cotton from New Orleans direct to Liver pool is d. per pound; while the freight from New Orleans to New York is $1 624 per bale, and less than 3-16d. per pound from New York to Liverpool. The indirect route exhibits the lowest rate of freight. Total exports of southern produce, 1848. Total...... $98,085,183 34,878,938 $132,964,021 But how does he arrive at such results? By a process more singular than convincing; certainly a very weak basis for all his deductions against the North. Let us examine the data. The exports of the United States, for 1848, (see Merchants' Magazine for May, 1849,) are as follows:- From these Mr. Garnett takes, of course, all the rice, cotton and tobacco, $71,881,240, and then he adds to it $26,203,943, or forty-four per cent of all the other exported produce of the Union, not quite sixty millions. And he does this upon the vague assumption that the southern force, principally three million slaves, have raised, per capita, beside all the rice, cotton and tobacco, as much, or more, of other exports than the free men of the Union. But how does this bear investigation? Have the free men been asleep? Did the slave pursue the mackerel to the coast of Labrador, or harpoon the whale in the Polar Sea? What has he to do with the produce of the fisheries? What had he or his master to do with the manufactures exported, $12,774,480? Did he make the furniture, cloth, apparel, boots and shoes exported? Surely Mr. Garnett has no claim to the fourteen and three-fourths millions, the produce of the sea and manufactures, from which he takes six and a half millions—with the ice, coal, lead and miscellanies, he has little or no connection. The lumber is shipped principally from Maine; but concede that the slave States export two millions of the produce of the forest, and one-fourth the provisions and cereal products, and we must remember New Orleans exports principally the provisions and grain of the free States, and the twenty six millions dwindle down to eleven, leaving a sum of $15,203,943, to be added to the exports of the free States, and deducted from the share of the South. The exports of the South for 1848 thus fall to.... Less... Reduced estimate for South....... $98,085,183 15,203,943 $82,881,240 $34,878,938 15,203,943 $50,082,881 While the exports of the North are. Increased estimate for North....... But to the $50,082,881 exports of the North, we must add at least twenty-five millions for freights and profits of northern industry, five millions more for the extra amount of northern stocks and bonds sent out to Europe, and at least four and a half millions more, or three sovereigns per head, for the means supplied by 300,000 foreign emigrants. In all, $34,500,000. We thus at once increase the exports of the North, from $50,082,881, to $84,582,881. How then stands the account. Which forms a basis for Mr. Garnett's deductions. We have A discrepancy of sixty-five millions in a single year, to say nothing of southern exports, purchased by the North with oil, fish, granite, ice and other products, and nothing of the untold gold of California. This correetion, if carried through the tables of Mr. Garnett, would make a difference of many hundred millions. On such baseless fancies rest the tables of Mr. Garnett, on which he founds his charges of plunder against the free States of the North. Thus ends the chapter of aggression of the North against the South, and what is the summary of the evidence. It amounts only to this: that down to 1850, the Government of the Union, principally under the guidance of southern statesmen, has reduced the number of free States of the Northwest, from twelve to five, leaving a small selvage in a Siberean region. That it has also purchased three districts, out of which it has carved five slave and one free State. That it has drawn the line of future slavery through its vacant territory on that parallel where the freeman can toil through the summer solstice. That it has, at the instance of the South, engaged in wars which have since borne hard on northern enterprise and Commerce. That, notwithstanding this, the whole country has wonderfully prospered, and developed its resources, while the North, under the influence of freedom, with energies stimulated by a barren soil and harsh climate, has grown even more rapidly than the South. That southern States have imprisoned northern seamen, and forbid their appeal to the laws and courts of the Union, while, on the other hand, zealots, at the North, have preached sedi tion. That the North, itself, has passed laws and enforced their execution, to return the southern fugitive. Has the condu t of the North, on the whole, warranted a dissolution? and would a continuance of such aggressive deportment, on her part, warrant a dissolution of the Union? Let the verdict be upon the evidence. After a glowing picture of the aggressions I have analyzed, Mr. Garnett gives us a still more glowing picture of the new Republic of the South. Instead of presenting her exports as $82,881,240, the amount we find for 1848, he calls them a hundred millions. He then accumulates upon this forty millions more for a precarious rise in the price of cotton, then thirty millions more for sales to the North, and thirty millions more for profits on exports, and makes a grand total of two hundred millions. But if the South has no shipping, and is in debt forty millions to the North, how is she to make a profit of thirty millions on exports, without ships, or the capital to launch them upon the deep; and when the temporary rise in cotton has subsided, will not her exports at once subside to the $82,880,240 +30,000,000, or $112,880,240, little more than one-half the imaginary result of Mr. Garnett? Is his theory safe, that it will require less to defend a slave Republic than a free one? and how does he reconcile his theory of a sea front, vastly greater than that of the North, with a less expenditure for defense? and how is it to be defended without navigation, seamen, or a Take another view of the subject. Cotton forms, to-day, three-fourths of her exports. We live in a period of great discoveries and strange transitions. Assume that the experiments of England succeed, and that the worthless stalk of the flax, after yielding a luxuriant harvest of seed, is, by some chemical agent, applied in Europe or the North to be made a substitute for cotton, in what position does the South remain? Deduct cotton, and she has but twenty-three millions left for foreign exports, and what basis will that afford her for revenue? Will she not be doomed to tax the ice, granite, tools, sugar-mills, and other articles of necessity which now go free to her from the North, until she can turn her industry into some new and probably less productive channel. It is unnecessary further to answer this position of Mr. Garnett as to Southern revenue and commerce, which, after a dissolution, he assumes are "to grow like young corn after a shower." But let us not forget that he assures us he is opposed to dissolution. In my first review I have carefully considered the tenth proposition of Mr. Garnett, that the dissolution of the Union, while it left the South flourishing, would leave the North receding in agriculture, verging on radicalism, and destitute of breadstuffs, and would also impose direct taxes and break down her manufactures. While I am aware that such an event would materially check her progress and embarrass her action, and that it is most seriously to be deprecated by every true patriot-while, I trust, I appreciate the true benefits we derive from our Southern Commerce, it does strike me that Mr. Garnett, in his pictures of morning on the one side and evening on the other, has made his coloring in the one as brilliant and unnatural as his shading is sombre in the other. Does he appreciate either the "sunshine or the cucumbers" of the North? In his reply he informs us that Massachusetts herself has, in the last ten years, lost a portion of her annual produce in wheat, and a part of her swine and sheep. Let me concede these facts, although he gives us a table redundant with error, for these facts are indisputable they are sustained by returns from the assessors of our towns for the year 1850, and are now publi-hed under the sanction of our State--but it is refreshing to me to find by reference to these returns that, within the past ten years, Massachusetts has increased her horses and cattle, and her produce of corn; that she has built eight hundred miles of railway in a State which has seven thousand square miles of surface. That she has also erected 34,480 new houses of improved construction, and of the average value of $1,211 36 each; also, 8,132 new shops and warehouses.fo Extended her wharves from... Swelled her tonnage from 729,792 to 896,450 498,057 to 628,770 |