hand, other parts of the country did not wish to spend money in this way. It seemed to them like taxing one part of the country to help another. It wasn't always easy to see that what helped the new parts of the country would in the long run help the older parts also.

union

Nevertheless there were many forces at work which Forces were constantly bringing about a greater union between promoting all parts of the country. First of these was the provision of the Constitution for free trade between all (1) Trade the states. No state could lay any tax upon goods brought in from another state. This was the first time in modern history that this method of free trade had been tried on such a large scale. Europe was divided up into a great many states and each had its system of duties or customs levied on all goods brought in from abroad. The amount of the tax might not be so great an obstacle in itself, but it was a great irritation to have to submit to an examination of all luggage and goods of all sorts. From the time of the adoption of the Constitution there has been a steadily increasing development of trade between all parts of our enlarging country. And when we trade with people we are more likely to be friends with them.

The second great agency for promoting union has (2) Inbeen the inventions which have made possible better ventions knowledge and easy communication. The Constitution itself provided that Congress should have power to establish a post office. At first the rates of postage were high, and people could not afford to write often nor to have many newspapers. It was the great invention of the steam engine as applied to steamboats, railways, and printing presses that made the post office the great agency which it now is, so well described in the inscription on the Washington Post Office.

Slavery the great

strain upon the Union

Cotton

became king

INSCRIPTION ON THE WASHINGTON POST OFFICE

Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
of Peace and Good will
Among Men and Nations.

When we know people we are far more likely to remain
friends. The less we know them the more likely we are
to be suspicious. If it had not been for the railroad
connecting the Pacific states with the eastern part of
the country, it is very doubtful whether we could have
remained one nation. In still more recent times the
telegraph and telephone have come to strengthen the
bonds of union between city and country, and between
various sections of the Union.

But while all these forces were steadily making for greater union, one great cause of division was left in the Constitution. This was slavery. In early colonial times slaves were held in all parts of the country, and in 1790, when the first federal census was taken, slavery existed in all the states and territories except Vermont, Massachusetts, and the district of Maine. There were very few slaves in New England, but there were almost as many in proportion to the population in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware as in Georgia and Kentucky.

But in most parts of the country slaves had been chiefly house-servants or personal servants. A new epoch came when great cotton plantations in the lower

South and the Mississippi Valley proved the most profitable enterprise of the time. "The plantation owners increased their exports alone from $25,000,000 in 1815 to $250,000,000 in 1860, which gave them almost twice as great an income as all other exporters combined."

Thomas Jefferson was a Virginian, but he was strongly opposed to slavery and hoped to provide in the new government for its abolition. Gradually, however, the great Democratic Party, which was at first largely a party of peasant farmers, came to be more and more identified with the great plantation interest. On the other hand, people in the Northern States became increasingly opposed to slavery. At first there was little disposition to question the right of slavery within the region where it had been established, but there was strong objection raised to its spread into the newer Northwest country acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Missouri, Kansas, and the neighboring region were the seat of contention. The North was gradually building up industries on a system of free labor. Many believed that the increase of slavery would make it harder for the independent farmer and laborer to prosper. Finally an increasing number of Northern people came to believe that slavery was wrong. The great Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches divided on this. The Northern churches condemned slavery, the Southern churches upheld it. One of the fairest statements as to the sincerity of both sides in this great issue was that of Lincoln in 1854:

They (the Southerners) are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. I surely will not blame

Webster

as

advocate

of the Union

Liberty and

Union

them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.

The great point for our purpose is that it was the question of slavery which was the greatest strain upon the unity of the nation. At first, statesmen like Daniel Webster made great efforts to exalt the sentiment for union without going into the radical causes of separate interest. Webster insisted that the Union was not a mere matter of profit and loss, that it was not to be preserved "while it suits local and temporary purposes to preserve it; and to be sundered whenever it shall be found to thwart such purposes." He believed "that the union of the States is essential to the prosperity and safety of the States." (First Reply to Hayne.)

"It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influence, these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings. . . . It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness." (Second Reply to Hayne.)

Some of the Southern leaders had set off liberty against union. They had stood for what seemed to them the liberty of their own part of the country to manage its affairs as it pleased and had regarded the Union as interfering with that liberty. As contrasted with any attempt to calculate the exact profit and loss or to oppose liberty and union, Webster ended his address with words which became classic and stirred a

great depth of feeling for the Union. He prayed that his last look might be upon the flag of the Republic,

66

not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory 'what is all this worth?' Nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards' but... that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" (Second Reply to Hayne.)

Henry Clay was known as the Great Compromiser because he sought to compromise between the North and South in the division of the new territory which from time to time was being added to the nation. But gradually the conviction increased which was expressed by Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free;" and the Civil War was the outcome.

can do great

Few in the South would now wish to have two nations A united instead of one even if this were possible. The fact is people that the great interests of trade, of common ancestry, and common purpose, are so strong that the country things is naturally adapted for one great nation. The interests of each part are so bound up with the interests of the rest that all gain from union. The tasks which lie before us are tasks which we can only accomplish as a united people. Only through mutual help and coöperation can we do the largest things.