SPEECHES OF DAVIS AND WIGFALL.

81

Northern States would understand that too well to make the effort." Не said that if they were allowed to go in peace, they would condescend to consider the Free-labor States as "a favored nation, and give them all the advantages of commercial and amicable treaties." He referred to the hostile feeling in the Senate as a type of that of the sections. "You sit, upon your side," he said, "silent and gloomy. We sit, upon ours, with knit brows and portentous scowls ;" and added, wickedly or ignorantly, "I believe that the Northern people hate the South worse than ever the English people hated France; and I can tell my brethren over there, that there is no love lost upon the part of the South." He concluded with angry voice and gesture, saying, "I do not believe there will be any war; but if war is to come, let it We will meet the Senator from New Hampshire, and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism and Black Republicanism everywhere, upon our own soil; and, in the language of a distinguished member from Ohio in relation to the Mexican War, we will welcome you with bloody hands to hospitable graves.'

come.

6

Senator Jefferson Davis followed with a few words, soft, but significant of treason in his purpose. "I am here," he said, "to perform the functions of a Senator of the United States. Before a declaration of war is made against the State of which I am a citizen, I expect to be out of this Chamber; that when that declaration of war is made, the State of which I am a citizen will be found ready and quite willing to meet it. While we remain here, acting as embassadors of Sovereign States, at least under the form of friendship, held together by an alliance as close as it is possible for Sovereign States to stand to each other, threats from one to the other seem to be wholly inappropriate." Wigfall, of Texas, a truculent debater, of ability and ready speech, of whom it might have been truthfully said, in Shakspeare's words:

"Here's a large mouth, indeed,

That spits forth death, and mountains, rocks, and seas;

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions

As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs,"

did not seem to agree with the cautious, wily, and polished Mississippi Senator. After declaring that State after State would soon leave the Union, and that, so far as he was concerned, he chose not to give a "reason for the high sovereign act,' he said, "Now, Sir, I admit that a constitutional majority has a right to govern. ..... If we proposed to remain in this Union, we should undoubtedly submit to the inauguration of any man who was elected by a constitutional majority. We propose nothing of that sort. We simply say that a man who is distasteful to us has been elected, and we choose to consider that as a sufficient ground for leaving the Union, and we intend to leave the Union.

LOUIS T. WIGFALL.

Then, if you desire it," he said, with a half sneering, half defiant tone, "bring us back. When you undertake that, and have accomplished it, you may be

VOL. I.-6

82

COTTON PROCLAIMED KING.

like the man who purchased the elephant-you will find it rather difficult to decide what you will do with the animal."

Some days later, the same speaker, in a few sentences, revealed the mainspring of the hopes of success in their treasonable work, entertained by the conspirators. It was the cotton crop of the planting coast States, upon which England, France, and the States north of the Potomac, chiefly depended for the supply of their mills. For fifty years the orators and publicists of the Cotton-growing States had proclaimed the power of cotton in the preservation of peace between the United States and Great Britain, because of the commanding influence of the commercial and manufacturing interests in the politics of the latter country, to which American cotton had become almost an indispensable commodity. It had, indeed, become a power, both social and political, yet not so absolutely omnipotent as the conspirators believed it to be. So palpable was its commercial importance, however, and so evident was it that the mills of Europe, and those of the Free-labor States in America, with their five millions of spindles, were, and must continue to be, mostly dependent upon the product of only an inconsiderable portion of ten of the States of our Republic, that its puissance was generally conceded. In the Senate of the United States, in March, 1858, Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, said, exultingly:-"You dare not make war upon Cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is KING. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws, as usual, the Fall before last, on the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that Cotton is supreme ?"

Cotton is KING! shouted the great land and slave holders of the Gulf States, whose fields were hoary with his bounteous gifts, when they thought of rebellion, and revolution, and independent empire; for they believed that his scepter had made England and France their dependents, and that they must necessarily be the allies of the cotton-growers, in the event of war. Cotton is KING! echoed back submissively the spindles of Old and New England.

"Old Cotton will pleasantly reign
When other kings painfully fall,
And ever and ever remain

The mightiest monarch of all,"

sang an American bard' years before; and now, a Senator (Wigfall) of the Republic, with words of treason falling from his lips, like jagged hail, in the very sanctuary where loyalty should be adored exclaimed:-"I say that Cotton is KING, and that he waves his scepter, not only over these thirtythree States, but over the Island of Great Britain and over Continental Europe; and that there is no crowned head upon that island, or upon the continent, that does not bend the knee in fealty, and acknowledge allegiance to that monarch. There are five millions of people in Great Britain who live upon cotton. You may make a short crop of grain, and it will never affect them; but you may cram their granaries to bursting; you may cram them

1 The late George P. Morris, whose son, Brigadier-General William H. Morris, gallantly fought some of the Cotton-lords and their followers on the Peninsula, in the "Wilderness," and in the open fields of Spottsylvania, in Virginia, where he was wounded.

until the corn actually is lifting the shingles from the roofs of their barns, and exhaust the supply of cotton for one week, and all England is starving." Then referring to threats of war, and expectations of negro insurrections that might follow, Wigfall said:"I tell you, Senators, that next year you will see the negroes working as quietly and contentedly as if their masters were not leaving that country for a foreign land, as they did, a few years ago, when they were called upon to visit the Republic of Mexico." The cotton crop, he said, was worth two hundred and fifty millions of dollars a year, and would never be less. That amount, the people of the new Confederacy would export, and it would bring the same amount of imports into the country,

"not through Boston, and New York, and Philadelphia," but through their own ports. "What tariff we shall adopt as a war tariff," he said, "I expect to discuss in a few months later, in another chamber. I tell you that Cotton is KING!"

1 The production of cotton for commerce has hitherto been confined to a portion of ten States, as indicated on the accompanying map, the northern limit of the profitable culture of the plant being, it is said, the northern boundary of Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The entire area of the ten Cotton-producing States, in 1860, was 666,196 square miles, of which only 10,888 square miles were devoted to the cotton culture in that year. On those 10,888 square miles, 4,675,770 bales of cotton, weighing 400 pounds each, were raised in 1859-60. Of this amount Great Britain took 2,019,252 bales, or more than one-third of the entire crop; France took 450,696 bales, and the States north of the Potomac took 760,218 bales.

The accompanying map is a reduced copy of a part of one, prefixed to a Report to the Boston Board of Trade on the Cotton Manufacture of 1862, by Edward Atkinson. The solid black lines inclose the principal cotton regions in the ten States alluded to. The limit of cotton culture in 1860 is indicated by a dotted line, thus .... The isothermal line of mean summer temperature is shown by dotted lines, thus

It was the continual boast of the politicians in the Cotton-producing States, that the money value of their staple was greater than that of all the other agricultural productions of the whole country. This assertion went from lip to lip, uncontradicted, and fixed the impression on the public mind that Cotton really was King. Every census contradicted it, but the people in the Slave-labor States were allowed to know very little about the

84

THE INTENTIONS OF THE CONSPIRATORS.

How utterly fallacious were all the promises, hopes, and expectations founded upon the assumption that Cotton was KING, will be seen hereafter.

December 13, eracy."

1360.

It was plain to some of the least discerning, that the whole scheme of revolt had been deliberately planned long before the assembling of Congress, and that the talk about guaranties, and concessions, and compromises, on the part of the conspirators, was sheer hypocrisy, intended to deceive their constituents, and to lull the suspicions of the loyal people of the Republic. "You talk about concessions," exclaimed the out-spoken Iverson. "You talk about repealing the Personal Liberty Bills, as a concession to the South! Repeal them all to-morrow, Sir, and it would not stop the progress of this revolution. . . . It is the existence and the action of the public sentiment of the Northern States that are opposed to this institution of Slavery, and are determined to break it down-to use all the power of the Federal Government, as well as every other power in their hands, to bring about its ultimate and speedy extinction. That is what we apprehend, and what, in part, moves us to look for security and protection in secession and a Southern Confed.”—-“ Before this day next week," said Wigfall," "I hazard the assertion that South Carolina, in convention assembled, will have revoked the ratification of the treaty which makes her one of these United States. Having revoked that ratification, she will adopt an amendment to her constitution, by which she will have vested in the government of South Carolina all those powers which she, conjointly with the other States, had previously exercised through this foreign department; and in the government of South Carolina will be vested the right to declare war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to enter into alliances, and to do all other matters and things which Sovereign States may of right do. When that is done, a minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary will be sent to present his credentials; and when they are denied, or refused to be recognized by this Government, I say to you, that the sovereignty of her soil will be asserted, and it will be maintained at the point of the bayonet." Then, referring to a threat that "seceding States would be coerced into submission," he expressed a hope that such Democrats as Vallandigham, and Richardson, and Logan, and Cox, and McClernand, and Pugh, of Ohio--members of the House of Representatives-would stand by the Slave power in this matter, and pre

census.

That of 1860 shows that the wheat crop alone (raised mostly in the Free-labor States), in that year, far exceeded in value, at the current price, that of the entire cotton crop. The aggregate value of the cotton was $153,000,000, and that of wheat was $240,000,000, or $57,000,000 greater. The aggregate value of the wheat, corn, hay, and oats crops alone, that year, was over $1,100,000,000. As an article of export, cotton was largely in excess of any other item of agricultural production. The total value of these productions of the United States exported to foreign countries, for the year ending the 30th of June, 1859, was $222.909,718. That of cotton was $161,434,923, or sixty-two and a half millions of dollars less than that of other agricultural exports. The value of the cotton crop was not an eighth part of that of the whole agricultural products of the country; and yet, politicians, in order to deceive the Southern people with false notions of their strength and independence, and the absolute sovereignty of Cotton, declared it to be greater than all others. When the trial came, and the claim of Cotton to kingship was tested, the result justifled the poet in writing, that

"Cotton and Corn were mighty Kings,
Who differed at times on certain things,
To the country's dire confusion:

Corn was peaceable, mild, and just,
But Cotton was fond of saying. You must:
So, after he'd boasted, and bullied, and cussed,
He got up a Revolution.

But, in course of time, the bubble is bursted,
And Corn is King, and Cotton is-worsted."

APATHY OF THE ADMINISTRATION.

85

vent the erection of (what he was pleased to call the armed power of the United States) "a military despotism." "The edifice is not yet completed," he said. "South Carolina, thank God! has laid her hands upon one of the pillars, and she will shake it until it totters first, and then topples. She will destroy that edifice, though she perish amid the ruins."

Such were some of the ravings of conspirators in the Senate of the Republic, who possessed only the "guinea stamp" of statesmen. They were counterfeit coin, made of the basest metal, and lacking every ingredient of true statesmanship. They had been palmed off upon the confiding inhabitants of the Southern States by the arrogant Slave interest, as men fitted for the high and holy work of legislating for a free people. They were mere demagogues-instruments chosen for their known usefulness as such, to an interest which had resolved to rule the Republic with relentless rigor, and crush out from its political and social systems every element of Democracy, or to lay that Republic in ruins.

It will forever appear incredible-an inconsistent tale of romance-that these men should have thus played the traitor, undisturbed by competent authority, upon the very proscenium of the great theater of National legislation, with the Chief Magistrate of the Republic and his constitutional advisers sitting quietly as a part of the audience, while holding in their hands the lightning of the sovereign power of the people, which might, at their bidding, have consumed in a moment those enemies of the Constitution and violators of the law. Why were they permitted thus to play the traitor, undisturbed? Perhaps only at the Great Assize will the question be answered.