"Farewell, dear Van,

You're not our man;
To guard the ship

We'll try old Tip."

And they voted as they sang.

FACTS AND DATES

1829-1837. Jackson's Administrations.

1829. First Railroad in the United States.

1830. The Great Debate, Webster against Hayne. 1832.

Nullification.

1837-1841. Van Buren's Administration.

1837. Panic.

CHAPTER XXVI

SLAVERY AND THE MISSOURI STRUGGLE

373. The Struggle over Slavery Extension begins. The greatest political struggle America ever experienced was over the extension of slavery. In this long struggle the first serious difference arose in 1820, when, for the first time since the adoption of the Constitution, the slavery question was brought prominently into national politics. This came about over the admission of Missouri, when a dispute over slavery extension arose that was destined finally to bring on secession and civil

war.

When the Constitution was made in 1787, and for some time after, it seems to have been expected by both North and South that slavery would soon disappear; that as soon as the foreign slave trade was prohibited, as was done in The 1808, and the supply of slaves was thus cut off, slavery fathers expected would die a natural death. It was gradually dis- slavery to appearing in the Northern states. Leading Southern men, such as Washington, Jefferson, George Mason, and Patrick Henry, condemned the institution severely. They looked forward to its abolition and sought to prevent its extension.

disappear.

But by 1820 conditions had changed. In 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a machine for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton. This machine enabled one slave to

do the work that hundreds had been required for Cotton before. The result of this was that cotton culture culture increased greatly increased. Cotton raising became very profit- the slave able, and thousands of slave owners, in order to raise cotton, moved from the seaboard states to the virgin soil of the Southwest, to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Negro

interest.

field hands rose in value; moral opposition was allayed; slavery was extended; and the social and economic life of the South was coming more and more to be built on the slavery system. 374. Slave States and Free are admitted Alternately to maintain the "Equilibrium." - There was another important aspect of the matter. Whether it was intended to be so or not, slave

THE FIRST COTTON GIN (1793).

Its influence upon cotton growing and the history of the United States was tremendous. By hand a slave could separate the seeds from only about a pound of cotton fiber, but with the aid of the cotton gin he could separate about a thousand pounds in a day. Before the cotton can be made into cloth the seeds must be taken out.

states and free states had been admitted into the Union alternately since the adoption of the Constitution. By 1819 the balance was even between the slave states and the free. Missouri was ready to apply for admission. The preservation of the political balance, of the equilibrium of political power, had now become a fixed and positive principle with the South. By 1820 the free states had one hundred and five members of Congress while

the slave states had only eighty-one, and since the North was thus seen to be increasing more rapidly than the South in population and wealth, the only hope of the South in maintaining the "equilibrium of power" was to keep an even balance in the Senate where each state had equal weight with every other. They came to consider a balance between the sections as necessary to the Union.

375. Louisiana Territory comes to the United States with Slavery already Established. This sectional rivalry for political power had been suggested at the time of the admission of Louisiana, the first state admitted from the Louisiana Pur

Cotton planters no longer gin their cotton with little gins of their own, but mills are established at railroad centers to do the ginning for the neighborhood. A modern cotton-ginning establishment contains, besides the gin, the telescope, the elevator, the exhaust fan, the feeder, the seed conveyer, the flue, the condenser, and the press. The machine which separates the fibers from the seed is the gin. All the other machines in the gin mill, except the engine and the boiler, are intended to get the seed cotton to the gin or to take care of the lint and seeds after they leave the gin. The three essential elements of Whitney's gin - the saws, ribs, and brush — are still retained, but the steam roller gin has increased the capacity many times.