recovery of fugitive slaves. The third abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The report of the compromise (May 8) was instantly followed by the most impassioned debates. It seemed as if there could be no conciliation between parties so diverse and so inflamed.

Its adop

At the height of the controversy, President Taytion. lor sickened and died, (July 9.) He was succeeded by the vice president, Millard Fillmore, who called about him a new cabinet, Webster at the head, and threw the whole weight of the administration in favor of the compromise. It was at first rejected. But, on the substitution of separate bills for each of the measures proposed, they were successively adopted by both houses. California was admitted a state; New Mexico and Utah were constituted territories, and the payment of ten millions to Texas, on consideration of the boundary and other questions, was voted; all on the same day, (September 9.) Nine days after, the fugitive slave bill became a law, (September 18;) and two days later still, the slave trade in the District of Columbia was suppressed, (September 20.) So ended, as far as legislation was concerned, a strife begun with the proviso of David Wilmot, more than four years before, and kept up during the whole of the intervening period, in Congress and throughout the nation.

Continued contro

It did not yet cease. The president met Con

gress at the close of the year with the assurance versy. that 66 we have been rescued from the wide and boundless agitation that surrounded us, and have a firm, distinct, and legal ground to rest upon." Yet, on the floor of Congress, in all public places, at the tribunal and in the pulpit, as well as in private, around the table and at the hearth, the nation was disputing both about the points disposed of and about the manner in which they had been disposed. Unlike the compromises of earlier years, the compromise of 1850 did not bring peace.

Develop

CHAPTER X.

NATIONAL Development.

THE accession to the national territory followment of ing the annexation of Texas and the war with territory. Mexico has been described. Vast as it was, it was much less than the increase which had already taken place. At the close of the revolution, the United States, not then extending to the Mississippi, embraced upwards of eight hundred thousand square miles. There were nearly four times as many, or upwards of twenty-nine hundred thousand, at the period which we have reached. Of the twenty-one hundred thousand thus added to the original eight, nearly nine came with Louisiana, (1803,) nearly one with Florida, (1819,) more than three with Oregon, (1846,) making thirteen, in addition to which were the three of Texas, (1845,) and the five of Mexico, (1848.) Of popula- The increase of population was still more retion. markable. It did not spring from the extension of territory. All the twenty-one hundred thousand square miles, just mentioned, contained not two hundred thousand whites, even including the natives of the United States, who, as in Texas and Oregon, were but brought back to the fold of the nation. Yet the numbers of the United States had now swelled to upwards of twenty-three millions from the three millions at the end of the revolutionary period. Of the twenty-three millions, three were slaves, or five times as many as there were in 1783. The free population was

not merely five times, but eight times as numerous; twentyfour hundred thousand in 1783, and in 1850, full twenty millions. Of this great number, less than an eighth were of foreign birth, but of the other seven-eighths and more, a large number were children of foreign born parents. Immigration had added immensely to the population, especially in the last quarter of a century. In ten years of the preceding century, (1790-1800,) there were but fifty thousand arrivals; in one year of the present period, (1849-1850,) there were two hundred and eighty thousand. In summing up the population, we must add to the twenty-three millions, already stated, about four hundred thousand as the number of the Indians within the country. Rather less than half of these were dwellers in the more recently acquired territories ; rather less than a fourth probably were the descendants of those in the United States just after the revolution. To the east of the Mississippi, none but a few scattered families of the aboriginal race remained.

Of occu

With such an expansion in population, and in pation. territory, there was of necessity an expansion in occupation. Old pursuits were embraced by greater numbers, and followed out with greater resources to greater results. Such inventions as Eli Whitney's cotton gin, to separate cotton from the seed, (1793,) or Cyrus H. McCormick's reaper, to gather in a crop, (1847,) in ways no manual labor could compete with, enlarged the sphere of agricultural production. The earliest cotton mills were those of Rhode Island, (1790,) the earliest woollen, in which the power loom was used, were those of Massachusetts, (1807;) the beginnings of the manufactures that became a great political as well as industrial interest at a later time. The chief occupation of the early time was still chief; out of six millions free males above fifteen years old, two millions and a half were now engaged in agriculture and its kindred

labors. To this number must be added the larger proportion of the nearly one million slave males above fifteen, employed in the same way. Next to agriculture came the trades and the manufactures, employing not far from two millions. A million and a half remained for other occupations, including those of commerce, which, like agriculture and manufacture, was greatly extended beyond its former limits. Of the class set down as professional or educational, the numbers were estimated at from two to three hundred thousand; an immense increase, compared with the numbers of the past. New pursuits blended in with the old. There was a constant trial of means as yet untried, a constant striving after ends as yet unattained. Inventions multiplied, labors expanded; and not in any one direction, but on all sides.

Of invest

Increased toils led to increased returns, and these ments. to increased investments in the various branches of industry. To measure the investments by the annual results, we find the products of agriculture for a single year estimated at thirteen hundred millions of dollars. The total return for trades and manufactures was ten hundred millions. Commercial statistics exhibit imports to the value of above one hundred and seventy-five, and exports to that of above one hundred and fifty millions. Such figures are confusing from their very vastness. Nor are they altogether safe as indications of the actual capital in the country. No people ever trusted so little to capital and so much to credit, as the growing nation of the United States.

Of com

To make the resources and the exertions of the munica- nation effective, there had come into use new methtions. ods of communication. The early canals, of little extent or importance, were followed by a series of very remarkable works, foremost amongst which were the Erie Canal of New York, (1825,) and the Ohio Canal from Lake

Erie to the Ohio, (1832.) The first steamboat, the Clermont, the work of Robert Fulton, appeared upon the Hudson in 1807. After a long interval, the passage of the Atlantic was made by the Savannah steamer, (1819.) First of our railways was the Quincy in Massachusetts, a single track of between three and four miles, to transport granite from a quarry to the water's edge, (1827.) The first locomotive was used upon the Hudson and Mohawk Railroad, (1832.) More recently, the invention of the electric telegraph, first constructed between Washington and Baltimore, by Samuel F. B. Morse, (1844,) completed the means of communication. At the close of the period, there were in operation twenty thousand miles of telegraphic wires, sixteen thousand of railways, four thousand five hundred of canals, to say nothing of the countless spaces traversed by the steamers of our rivers, our lakes, and our seas.

Of educa

So much physical development was not unattended tion. by development of a higher sort. The system of public schools had extended from the places where the first were founded throughout most, but not all of the country. A national provision for their support in the new states of the west and the south was made by the appropriation of lands in every township of the public domain; a total of nearly fifty millions of acres being thus divided amongst the states and territories. Of the older states, the larger number had their school funds devoted to the same great object. The number of schools grew to be nearly one hundred thousand; that of their teachers was about the same. Private schools and colleges kept pace with the general increase; the former amounting to upwards of six thousand; the latter, including professional and scientific schools, to several hundred. Nor was it only in point of numbers that educational institutions were growing. They gave much better proof of progress in their studies and their