the country was to be greatly increased; but individual opportunity was to become unequal, society was to exchange its simple for a complex structure, fruitful of new problems of life, full of new capacities for disorder and disease.

It is during this decade, accordingly, that labor organizations first assume importance in the United States, in Labor organ- opposition to "capital, banks, and monopoizations. lies." During the financial distresses of the period, when every hardship of fortune was accentuated, strikes, mobs, and riots became frequent, and spoke of a general social ferment.

53. Economic Changes and the South (1829-1841).

Irregular development of

the nation.

The rapid material development of the period had, moreover, this profound political significance, that it hastened the final sharp divergence between the North and the South. When it is considered that the power of steam upon iron rails and in the water, and the multiplied forces of industry created by invention in aid of the mechanic arts, meant the accelerated growth of the West, a still more rapid development and diversification of the undertakings of manufacture, a still huger volume and a still quicker pace for commerce, and that in almost none of these things did the South as a section have any direct share whatever, it will be seen how inevitable it was that political dissension should follow such an economic separation. The South of course made large contributions out of her wealth and the West and her population to the development of the West; but this movement of southern people did not extend the South into the West. The southerner mixed in the new country with men from the other sections, and their habits and preferences insensibly affected his own.

The South

He was forced either to adopt ways of life suitable to the task of subduing a new soil and establishing new communities under novel conditions, or to give over competing for a hold upon the West. He was in most sections of the new territory, moreover, hindered by federal law from employing slave labor. In spite of all preferences or prepossessions, he ceased to be a southerner, and became a 66 westerner; " and the South remained a peculiar section, with no real prospect of any territorial addition, except on the side of Texas.

54. Structure of Southern Society (1829-1841).

The existence of slavery in the South fixed classes there in a hard crystallization, and rendered it impossible Social effect that the industrial revolution, elsewhere workof slavery. ing changes so profound, should materially affect the structure of her own society. Wherever slaves perform all the labor of a community, and all free men refrain, as of course, from the meaner sorts of work, a stubborn pride of class privilege will exist, and a watchful jealousy of interference from any quarter, either with that privilege itself or with any part of the life which environs and supports it. Wherever there is a vast multitude of slaves, said Burke, with his habitual profound insight into political forces, "those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them

not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more liberal and noble. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of this senti ment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it;

but . . . the fact is so. . . . In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." Southern society Resistance had from the first resolutely, almost passion

to change.

ately, resisted change. It steadily retained the same organization, the same opinions, and the same political principles throughout all the period of seventytwo years that stretched from the establishment of the federal government to the opening of the war for its preservation.

The structure of southern society unquestionably created an aristocracy, but not such an aristocracy as the world had seen before. It was, so to say,

Southern aristocracy.

a democratic aristocracy.. It did not create a system which jeoparded liberty among those who were free, or which excluded democratic principles from the conduct of affairs. It was an aristocracy, not of blood, but of influence, and of influence exercised among equals. It was based upon wealth, but not upon the use of wealth. Wealth gave a man broad acres, numerous slaves, an easy, expansive life of neighborly hospitality, position, and influence in his county, and, if he chose to extend it, in his State; but power consisted of opportunity, and not of the pressure of the wealthy upon the poor, the coercive and corrupting efficacy of money. It was, in fact, not a money wealth: it was not founded upon a money economy. It was a wealth of resource and of leisured living.

The life of a southern planter was in no sense a life of magnificence or luxury. It was a life of simple and plain abundance: a life companioned with Simple life. books not infrequently, oftentimes ornamented with household plate and handsome family portraits; but there was none of the detail of luxury. A generous plenty of the larger necessaries and comforts and a leis

ure simply employed, these were its dominant features. There was little attention to the small comforts which we call conveniences. There were abounding hospitality and generous intercourse; but the intercourse was free, unstudied in its manners, straightforward, hearty, unconstrained, and full of a truly democratic instinct and sentiment of equality. Many of the most distinguished southern families were without ancient lineage; had gained position and influence by their own honorable successes in the New World; and the small farmer, as well as the great planter, enjoyed full and unquestioned membership in the free citizenship of the State.

As Burke said, all who were free enjoyed rank, and title to be respected. There was a body of privileged persons, but it could scarcely be called a class, for it embraced all free men of any substance or thrift. Of course not all of southern society was rural. There was

the population of the towns, the lawyers and doctors and tradesmen and master mechanics, among whom the professional men and the men of culture led and in a sense controlled, but where the mechanic and the tradesman also had full political privilege. The sentiments that characterized the rural population, however, also penetrated and dominated the towns. There was throughout southern society something like a reproducSolidarity. tion of that solidarity of feeling and of interest which existed in the ancient classical republics, set above whose slaves there was a proud but various democracy of citizenship and privilege. Such was the society which, by the compulsion of its own nature, had always resisted change, and was to resist it until change and even its own destruction were forced upon it by war. Although the population of the country increased in the decade 1830-1840 from thirteen to seventeen millions, and although immigration trebled between 1830 and 1837,

the population of the older southern States increased scarcely at all. In 1830 Virginia had 1,211,405 inhabitants; in 1840, 1,239,797. In 1830 South CarPopulation. olina had 581,000; in 1840, 594,000. North Carolina had 737,000 in 1830, 753,000 in 1840. Georgia had done better: had increased her population by more than one hundred and seventy-four thousand, and had gone up from tenth to ninth place in the ranking of the States by population. Mississippi and Alabama had grown like the frontier States they were. The increase of population in the northern States had in almost every case been very much greater; while an enormous growth had taken place in the West. population, and Indiana quite States also were admitted, and Michigan in January, 1837.

Ohio almost doubled her doubled hers. Two new Arkansas in June, 1836,

55. An Intellectual Awakening (1829-1841).

The same period witnessed a very notable development in the intellectual life and literary activity of the country. The world's It was a time when the world at large was movement. quivering under the impact of new forces, both moral and intellectual. The year 1830 marks not only a period of sharp political revolution in Europe, but also a season of awakened social conscience everywhere. Nowhere were the new forces more profoundly felt than in England, where political progress has always managed to be beforehand with revolution. In 1828 the Corporation and Test Acts were repealed; in 1829 Catholic emancipation was effected; in 1832 the first reform bill was passed; in 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire; in 1834 the system of poor relief was reformed; in 1835 the long needed reconstitution of the government of municipal corpora