Conclusion
I have now nearly reached the close of my inquiry; hitherto, in speaking
of the future destiny of the United States, I have endeavored to divide
my subject into distinct portions, in order to study each of them with
more attention. My present object is to embrace the whole from one
single point; the remarks I shall make will be less detailed, but they
will be more sure. I shall perceive each object less distinctly, but I
shall descry the principal facts with more certainty. A traveller who
has just left the walls of an immense city, climbs the neighboring hill;
as he goes father off he loses sight of the men whom he has so recently
quitted; their dwellings are confused in a dense mass; he can no longer
distinguish the public squares, and he can scarcely trace out the
great thoroughfares; but his eye has less difficulty in following the
boundaries of the city, and for the first time he sees the shape of
the vast whole. Such is the future destiny of the British race in North
America to my eye; the details of the stupendous picture are overhung
with shade, but I conceive a clear idea of the entire subject.
The territory now occupied or possessed by the United States of America
forms about one-twentieth part of the habitable earth. But extensive as
these confines are, it must not be supposed that the Anglo-American race
will always remain within them; indeed, it has already far overstepped
them.
There was once a time at which we also might have created a great French
nation in the American wilds, to counterbalance the influence of the
English upon the destinies of the New World. France formerly possessed
a territory in North America, scarcely less extensive than the whole of
Europe. The three greatest rivers of that continent then flowed within
her dominions. The Indian tribes which dwelt between the mouth of the
St. Lawrence and the delta of the Mississippi were unaccustomed to any
other tongue but ours; and all the European settlements scattered over
that immense region recalled the traditions of our country. Louisbourg,
Montmorency, Duquesne, St. Louis, Vincennes, New Orleans (for such were
the names they bore) are words dear to France and familiar to our ears.
But a concourse of circumstances, which it would be tedious to
enumerate /10-88/, have deprived us of this magnificent inheritance. Wherever
the French settlers were numerically weak and partially established,
they have disappeared: those who remain are collected on a small extent
of country, and are now subject to other laws. The 400,000 French
inhabitants of Lower Canada constitute, at the present time, the remnant
of an old nation lost in the midst of a new people. A foreign population
is increasing around them unceasingly and on all sides, which already
penetrates amongst the ancient masters of the country, predominates in
their cities and corrupts their language. This population is identical
with that of the United States; it is therefore with truth that I
asserted that the British race is not confined within the frontiers of
the Union, since it already extends to the northeast.
To the northwest nothing is to be met with but a few insignificant
Russian settlements; but to the southwest, Mexico presents a barrier to
the Anglo-Americans. Thus, the Spaniards and the Anglo-Americans are,
properly speaking, the only two races which divide the possession of the
New World. The limits of separation between them have been settled by
a treaty; but although the conditions of that treaty are exceedingly
favorable to the Anglo-Americans, I do not doubt that they will
shortly infringe this arrangement. Vast provinces, extending beyond
the frontiers of the Union towards Mexico, are still destitute of
inhabitants. The natives of the United States will forestall the
rightful occupants of these solitary regions. They will take possession
of the soil, and establish social institutions, so that when the legal
owner arrives at length, he will find the wilderness under cultivation,
and strangers quietly settled in the midst of his inheritance.
The lands of the New World belong to the first occupant, and they are
the natural reward of the swiftest pioneer. Even the countries which are
already peopled will have some difficulty in securing themselves from
this invasion. I have already alluded to what is taking place in the
province of Texas. The inhabitants of the United States are perpetually
migrating to Texas, where they purchase land; and although they conform
to the laws of the country, they are gradually founding the empire of
their own language and their own manners. The province of Texas is still
part of the Mexican dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans;
the same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-Americans have come into
contact with populations of a different origin.
It cannot be denied that the British race has acquired an amazing
preponderance over all the other European races in the New World; and
that it is very superior to them in civilization, in industry, and in
power. As long as it is only surrounded by desert or thinly peopled
countries, as long as it encounters no dense populations upon its route,
through which it cannot work its way, it will assuredly continue to
spread. The lines marked out by treaties will not stop it; but it will
everywhere transgress these imaginary barriers.
The geographical position of the British race in the New World is
peculiarly favorable to its rapid increase. Above its northern frontiers
the icy regions of the Pole extend; and a few degrees below its southern
confines lies the burning climate of the Equator. The Anglo-Americans
are, therefore, placed in the most temperate and habitable zone of the
continent.
It is generally supposed that the prodigious increase of population in
the United States is posterior to their Declaration of Independence. But
this is an error: the population increased as rapidly under the colonial
system as it does at the present day; that is to say, it doubled in
about twenty-two years. But this proportion which is now applied to
millions, was then applied to thousands of inhabitants; and the same
fact which was scarcely noticeable a century ago, is now evident to
every observer.
The British subjects in Canada, who are dependent on a king, augment and
spread almost as rapidly as the British settlers of the United States,
who live under a republican government. During the war of independence,
which lasted eight years, the population continued to increase without
intermission in the same ratio. Although powerful Indian nations allied
with the English existed at that time upon the western frontiers, the
emigration westward was never checked. Whilst the enemy laid waste the
shores of the Atlantic, Kentucky, the western parts of Pennsylvania, and
the States of Vermont and of Maine were filling with inhabitants. Nor
did the unsettled state of the Constitution, which succeeded the war,
prevent the increase of the population, or stop its progress across the
wilds. Thus, the difference of laws, the various conditions of peace and
war, of order and of anarchy, have exercised no perceptible influence
upon the gradual development of the Anglo-Americans. This may be readily
understood; for the fact is, that no causes are sufficiently general
to exercise a simultaneous influence over the whole of so extensive a
territory. One portion of the country always offers a sure retreat from
the calamities which afflict another part; and however great may be the
evil, the remedy which is at hand is greater still.
It must not, then, be imagined that the impulse of the British race in
the New World can be arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and
the hostilities which might ensure, the abolition of republican
institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it,
may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately
fulfilling the destinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon
earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness which offers
resources to all industry, and a refuge from all want. Future events,
of whatever nature they may be, will not deprive the Americans of their
climate or of their inland seas, of their great rivers or of their
exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to
obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise
which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to
extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way.
Thus, in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at least is sure.
At a period which may be said to be near (for we are speaking of the
life of a nation), the Anglo-Americans will alone cover the immense
space contained between the polar regions and the tropics, extending
from the coasts of the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The
territory which will probably be occupied by the Anglo-Americans at
some future time, may be computed to equal three-quarters of Europe in
extent /10-89/. The climate of the Union is upon the whole preferable to
that of Europe, and its natural advantages are not less great; it
is therefore evident that its population will at some future time be
proportionate to our own. Europe, divided as it is between so many
different nations, and torn as it has been by incessant wars and the
barbarous manners of the Middle Ages, has notwithstanding attained a
population of 410 inhabitants to the square league /10-90/. What cause can
prevent the United States from having as numerous a population in time?
Many ages must elapse before the divers offsets of the British race in
America cease to present the same homogeneous characteristics: and the
time cannot be foreseen at which a permanent inequality of conditions
will be established in the New World. Whatever differences may arise,
from peace or from war, from freedom or oppression, from prosperity or
want, between the destinies of the different descendants of the great
Anglo-American family, they will at least preserve an analogous social
condition, and they will hold in common the customs and the opinions to
which that social condition has given birth.
In the Middle Ages, the tie of religion was sufficiently powerful
to imbue all the different populations of Europe with the same
civilization. The British of the New World have a thousand other
reciprocal ties; and they live at a time when the tendency to equality
is general amongst mankind. The Middle Ages were a period when
everything was broken up; when each people, each province, each
city, and each family, had a strong tendency to maintain its distinct
individuality. At the present time an opposite tendency seems to
prevail, and the nations seem to be advancing to unity. Our means of
intellectual intercourse unite the most remote parts of the earth; and
it is impossible for men to remain strangers to each other, or to be
ignorant of the events which are taking place in any corner of the
globe. The consequence is that there is less difference, at the present
day, between the Europeans and their descendants in the New World, than
there was between certain towns in the thirteenth century which were
only separated by a river. If this tendency to assimilation brings
foreign nations closer to each other, it must a fortiori prevent the
descendants of the same people from becoming aliens to each other.
The time will therefore come when one hundred and fifty millions of men
will be living in North America /10-91/, equal in condition, the progeny of
one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same
civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the
same manners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the
same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain; and it is a fact
new to the world—a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to
baffle the efforts even of the imagination.
There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which
seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different
points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have
grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed
elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place amongst the
nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at
almost the same time.
All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and
only to be charged with the maintenance of their power; but these are
still in the act of growth /10-92/; all the others are stopped, or continue
to advance with extreme difficulty; these are proceeding with ease and
with celerity along a path to which the human eye can assign no term.
The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose
him; the adversaries of the Russian are men; the former combats the
wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its
weapons and its arts: the conquests of the one are therefore gained by
the ploughshare; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American
relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free
scope to the unguided exertions and common-sense of the citizens;
the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm: the
principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude.
Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same;
yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway
the destinies of half the globe.
The text of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville continues in Volume One Conclusion
Notes
/10-1/
The native of North America retains his opinions and the
most insignificant of his habits with a degree of tenacity which has
no parallel in history. For more than two hundred years the wandering
tribes of North America have had daily intercourse with the whites, and
they have never derived from them either a custom or an idea. Yet the
Europeans have exercised a powerful influence over the savages: they
have made them more licentious, but not more European. In the summer of
1831 I happened to be beyond Lake Michigan, at a place called Green Bay,
which serves as the extreme frontier between the United States and the
Indians on the north-western side. Here I became acquainted with an
American officer, Major H., who, after talking to me at length on the
inflexibility of the Indian character, related the following fact:—"I
formerly knew a young Indian," said he, "who had been educated at a
college in New England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and
had acquired the external appearance of a member of civilized society.
When the war broke out between ourselves and the English in 1810, I saw
this young man again; he was serving in our army, at the head of the
warriors of his tribe, for the Indians were admitted amongst the ranks
of the Americans, upon condition that they would abstain from their
horrible custom of scalping their victims. On the evening of the battle
of . . ., C. came and sat himself down by the fire of our bivouac. I
asked him what had been his fortune that day: he related his exploits;
and growing warm and animated by the recollection of them, he concluded
by suddenly opening the breast of his coat, saying, 'You must not betray
me—see here!' And I actually beheld," said the Major, "between his body
and his shirt, the skin and hair of an English head, still dripping with
gore."
/10-2/
In the thirteen original States there are only 6,273
Indians remaining. (See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117,
p. 90.)
/10-3/
Messrs. Clarke and Cass, in their Report to Congress on
February 4, 1829, p. 23, expressed themselves thus:—"The time when
the Indians generally could supply themselves with food and clothing,
without any of the articles of civilized life, has long since passed
away. The more remote tribes, beyond the Mississippi, who live where
immense herds of buffalo are yet to be found and who follow those
animals in their periodical migrations, could more easily than any
others recur to the habits of their ancestors, and live without the
white man or any of his manufactures. But the buffalo is constantly
receding. The smaller animals, the bear, the deer, the beaver, the
otter, the muskrat, etc., principally minister to the comfort and
support of the Indians; and these cannot be taken without guns,
ammunition, and traps. Among the Northwestern Indians particularly, the
labor of supplying a family with food is excessive. Day after day is
spent by the hunter without success, and during this interval his family
must subsist upon bark or roots, or perish. Want and misery are around
them and among them. Many die every winter from actual starvation."
The Indians will not live as Europeans live, and yet they can neither
subsist without them, nor exactly after the fashion of their fathers.
This is demonstrated by a fact which I likewise give upon official
authority. Some Indians of a tribe on the banks of Lake Superior had
killed a European; the American government interdicted all traffic
with the tribe to which the guilty parties belonged, until they were
delivered up to justice. This measure had the desired effect.
/10-4/
"Five years ago," (says Volney in his "Tableau des
Etats-Unis," p. 370) "in going from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, a territory
which now forms part of the State of Illinois, but which at the time
I mention was completely wild (1797), you could not cross a prairie
without seeing herds of from four to five hundred buffaloes. There are
now none remaining; they swam across the Mississippi to escape from the
hunters, and more particularly from the bells of the American cows."
/10-5/
The truth of what I here advance may be easily proved by
consulting the tabular statement of Indian tribes inhabiting the United
States and their territories. (Legislative Documents, 20th Congress,
No. 117, pp. 90-105.) It is there shown that the tribes in the centre
of America are rapidly decreasing, although the Europeans are still at a
considerable distance from them.
/10-6/
"The Indians," say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report
to Congress, p. 15, "are attached to their country by the same feelings
which bind us to ours; and, besides, there are certain superstitious
notions connected with the alienation of what the Great Spirit gave to
their ancestors, which operate strongly upon the tribes who have made
few or no cessions, but which are gradually weakened as our intercourse
with them is extended. 'We will not sell the spot which contains
the bones of our fathers,' is almost always the first answer to a
proposition for a sale."
/10-7/
See, in the Legislative Documents of Congress (Doc. 117),
the narrative of what takes place on these occasions. This curious
passage is from the above-mentioned report, made to Congress by Messrs.
Clarke and Cass in February, 1829. Mr. Cass is now the Secretary of War.
"The Indians," says the report, "reach the treaty-ground poor and almost
naked. Large quantities of goods are taken there by the traders, and
are seen and examined by the Indians. The women and children become
importunate to have their wants supplied, and their influence is
soon exerted to induce a sale. Their improvidence is habitual and
unconquerable. The gratification of his immediate wants and desires is
the ruling passion of an Indian. The expectation of future advantages
seldom produces much effect. The experience of the past is lost, and
the prospects of the future disregarded. It would be utterly hopeless
to demand a cession of land, unless the means were at hand of gratifying
their immediate wants; and when their condition and circumstances are
fairly considered, it ought not to surprise us that they are so anxious
to relieve themselves."
/10-8/
On May 19, 1830, Mr. Edward Everett affirmed before the
House of Representatives, that the Americans had already acquired by
treaty, to the east and west of the Mississippi, 230,000,000 of acres.
In 1808 the Osages gave up 48,000,000 acres for an annual payment of
$1,000. In 1818 the Quapaws yielded up 29,000,000 acres for $4,000.
They reserved for themselves a territory of 1,000,000 acres for a
hunting-ground. A solemn oath was taken that it should be respected: but
before long it was invaded like the rest. Mr. Bell, in his Report of the
Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, has these words:—"To
pay an Indian tribe what their ancient hunting-grounds are worth to
them, after the game is fled or destroyed, as a mode of appropriating
wild lands claimed by Indians, has been found more convenient, and
certainly it is more agreeable to the forms of justice, as well as more
merciful, than to assert the possession of them by the sword. Thus the
practice of buying Indian titles is but the substitute which humanity
and expediency have imposed, in place of the sword, in arriving at the
actual enjoyment of property claimed by the right of discovery, and
sanctioned by the natural superiority allowed to the claims of civilized
communities over those of savage tribes. Up to the present time
so invariable has been the operation of certain causes, first in
diminishing the value of forest lands to the Indians, and secondly in
disposing them to sell readily, that the plan of buying their right of
occupancy has never threatened to retard, in any perceptible degree, the
prosperity of any of the States." (Legislative Documents, 21st Congress,
No. 227, p. 6.)
/10-9/
This seems, indeed, to be the opinion of almost all
American statesmen. "Judging of the future by the past," says Mr.
Cass, "we cannot err in anticipating a progressive diminution of their
numbers, and their eventual extinction, unless our border should become
stationary, and they be removed beyond it, or unless some radical change
should take place in the principles of our intercourse with them, which
it is easier to hope for than to expect."
/10-10/
Amongst other warlike enterprises, there was one of the
Wampanaogs, and other confederate tribes, under Metacom in 1675, against
the colonists of New England; the English were also engaged in war in
Virginia in 1622.
/10-11/
See the "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," by Charlevoix,
and the work entitled "Lettres edifiantes."
/10-12/
"In all the tribes," says Volney, in his "Tableau des
Etats-Unis," p. 423, "there still exists a generation of old warriors,
who cannot forbear, when they see their countrymen using the hoe, from
exclaiming against the degradation of ancient manners, and asserting
that the savages owe their decline to these innovations; adding, that
they have only to return to their primitive habits in order to recover
their power and their glory."
/10-13/
The following description occurs in an official document:
"Until a young man has been engaged with an enemy, and has performed
some acts of valor, he gains no consideration, but is regarded nearly as
a woman. In their great war-dances all the warriors in succession
strike the post, as it is called, and recount their exploits. On these
occasions their auditory consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades
of the narrator. The profound impression which his discourse produces on
them is manifested by the silent attention it receives, and by the loud
shouts which hail its termination. The young man who finds himself
at such a meeting without anything to recount is very unhappy; and
instances have sometimes occurred of young warriors, whose passions had
been thus inflamed, quitting the war-dance suddenly, and going off alone
to seek for trophies which they might exhibit, and adventures which they
might be allowed to relate."
/10-14/
These nations are now swallowed up in the States of
Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. There were formerly in the
South four great nations (remnants of which still exist), the Choctaws,
the Chickasaws, the Creeks, and the Cherokees. The remnants of these
four nations amounted, in 1830, to about 75,000 individuals. It is
computed that there are now remaining in the territory occupied
or claimed by the Anglo-American Union about 300,000 Indians. (See
Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of New York.) The official
documents supplied to Congress make the number amount to 313,130. The
reader who is curious to know the names and numerical strength of all
the tribes which inhabit the Anglo-American territory should consult the
documents I refer to. (Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No.
117, pp. 90-105.)
/10-15/
I brought back with me to France one or two copies of this singular publication.
/10-16/
See in the Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, 21st
Congress, No. 227, p. 23, the reasons for the multiplication of Indians
of mixed blood among the Cherokees. The principal cause dates from the
War of Independence. Many Anglo-Americans of Georgia, having taken the
side of England, were obliged to retreat among the Indians, where they
married.
/10-17/
Unhappily the mixed race has been less numerous and less
influential in North America than in any other country. The American
continent was peopled by two great nations of Europe, the French and
the English. The former were not slow in connecting themselves with the
daughters of the natives, but there was an unfortunate affinity between
the Indian character and their own: instead of giving the tastes and
habits of civilized life to the savages, the French too often grew
passionately fond of the state of wild freedom they found them in. They
became the most dangerous of the inhabitants of the desert, and won the
friendship of the Indian by exaggerating his vices and his virtues. M.
de Senonville, the governor of Canada, wrote thus to Louis XIV in 1685:
"It has long been believed that in order to civilize the savages we
ought to draw them nearer to us. But there is every reason to suppose we
have been mistaken. Those which have been brought into contact with us
have not become French, and the French who have lived among them are
changed into savages, affecting to dress and live like them." ("History
of New France," by Charlevoix, vol. ii., p. 345.) The Englishman, on the
contrary, continuing obstinately attached to the customs and the most
insignificant habits of his forefathers, has remained in the midst of
the American solitudes just what he was in the bosom of European cities;
he would not allow of any communication with savages whom he despised,
and avoided with care the union of his race with theirs. Thus while the
French exercised no salutary influence over the Indians, the English
have always remained alien from them.
/10-18/
There is in the adventurous life of the hunter a certain
irresistible charm, which seizes the heart of man and carries him away
in spite of reason and experience. This is plainly shown by the memoirs
of Tanner. Tanner is a European who was carried away at the age of six
by the Indians, and has remained thirty years with them in the woods.
Nothing can be conceived more appalling that the miseries which he
describes. He tells us of tribes without a chief, families without
a nation to call their own, men in a state of isolation, wrecks of
powerful tribes wandering at random amid the ice and snow and desolate
solitudes of Canada. Hunger and cold pursue them; every day their life
is in jeopardy. Amongst these men, manners have lost their empire,
traditions are without power. They become more and more savage. Tanner
shared in all these miseries; he was aware of his European origin; he
was not kept away from the whites by force; on the contrary, he came
every year to trade with them, entered their dwellings, and witnessed
their enjoyments; he knew that whenever he chose to return to civilized
life he was perfectly able to do so—and he remained thirty years in the
deserts. When he came into civilized society he declared that the rude
existence which he described, had a secret charm for him which he
was unable to define: he returned to it again and again: at length he
abandoned it with poignant regret; and when he was at length fixed among
the whites, several of his children refused to share his tranquil and
easy situation. I saw Tanner myself at the lower end of Lake Superior;
he seemed to me to be more like a savage than a civilized being. His
book is written without either taste or order; but he gives, even
unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions, the
vices, and, above all, of the destitution in which he lived.
/10-19/
The destructive influence of highly civilized nations
upon others which are less so, has been exemplified by the Europeans
themselves. About a century ago the French founded the town of Vincennes
up on the Wabash, in the middle of the desert; and they lived there
in great plenty until the arrival of the American settlers, who first
ruined the previous inhabitants by their competition, and afterwards
purchased their lands at a very low rate. At the time when M. de Volney,
from whom I borrow these details, passed through Vincennes, the number
of the French was reduced to a hundred individuals, most of whom were
about to pass over to Louisiana or to Canada. These French settlers were
worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted many of
the habits of savages. The Americans, who were perhaps their inferiors,
in a moral point of view, were immeasurably superior to them in
intelligence: they were industrious, well informed, rich, and accustomed
to govern their own community.
I myself saw in Canada, where the intellectual difference between the
two races is less striking, that the English are the masters of commerce
and manufacture in the Canadian country, that they spread on all sides,
and confine the French within limits which scarcely suffice to contain
them. In like manner, in Louisiana, almost all activity in commerce and
manufacture centres in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.
But the case of Texas is still more striking: the State of Texas is a
part of Mexico, and lies upon the frontier between that country and the
United States. In the course of the last few years the Anglo-Americans
have penetrated into this province, which is still thinly peopled; they
purchase land, they produce the commodities of the country, and supplant
the original population. It may easily be foreseen that if Mexico takes
no steps to check this change, the province of Texas will very shortly
cease to belong to that government.
If the different degrees—comparatively so slight—which exist
in European civilization produce results of such magnitude, the
consequences which must ensue from the collision of the most perfect
European civilization with Indian savages may readily be conceived.
/10-20/
See in the Legislative Documents (21st Congress, No. 89)
instances of excesses of every kind committed by the whites upon the
territory of the Indians, either in taking possession of a part of their
lands, until compelled to retire by the troops of Congress, or carrying
off their cattle, burning their houses, cutting down their corn, and
doing violence to their persons. It appears, nevertheless, from all
these documents that the claims of the natives are constantly
protected by the government from the abuse of force. The Union has a
representative agent continually employed to reside among the Indians;
and the report of the Cherokee agent, which is among the documents
I have referred to, is almost always favorable to the Indians. "The
intrusion of whites," he says, "upon the lands of the Cherokees would
cause ruin to the poor, helpless, and inoffensive inhabitants." And he
further remarks upon the attempt of the State of Georgia to establish
a division line for the purpose of limiting the boundaries of the
Cherokees, that the line drawn having been made by the whites, and
entirely upon ex parte evidence of their several rights, was of no
validity whatever.
/10-21/
In 1829 the State of Alabama divided the Creek territory
into counties, and subjected the Indian population to the power of
European magistrates.
In 1830 the State of Mississippi assimilated the Choctaws and Chickasaws
to the white population, and declared that any of them that should take
the title of chief would be punished by a fine of $1,000 and a year's
imprisonment. When these laws were enforced upon the Choctaws, who
inhabited that district, the tribe assembled, their chief communicated
to them the intentions of the whites, and read to them some of the laws
to which it was intended that they should submit; and they unanimously
declared that it was better at once to retreat again into the wilds.
/10-22/
The Georgians, who are so much annoyed by the proximity of
the Indians, inhabit a territory which does not at present contain
more than seven inhabitants to the square mile. In France there are one
hundred and sixty-two inhabitants to the same extent of country.
/10-23/
In 1818 Congress appointed commissioners to visit the
Arkansas Territory, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and
Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly,
M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the different reports of the
commissioners, and their journal, in the Documents of Congress, No. 87,
House of Representatives.
/10-24/
The fifth article of the treaty made with the Creeks in
August, 1790, is in the following words:—"The United States solemnly
guarantee to the Creek nation all their land within the limits of the
United States."
The seventh article of the treaty concluded in 1791 with the Cherokees
says:—"The United States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee nation all
their lands not hereby ceded." The following article declared that if
any citizen of the United States or other settler not of the Indian race
should establish himself upon the territory of the Cherokees, the United
States would withdraw their protection from that individual, and give
him up to be punished as the Cherokee nation should think fit.
/10-25/
This does not prevent them from promising in the most
solemn manner to do so. See the letter of the President addressed to the
Creek Indians, March 23, 1829 (Proceedings of the Indian Board, in the
city of New York, p. 5): "Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a
part of your nation has gone, your father has provided a country large
enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it. There your
white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the
land, and you can live upon it, you and all your children, as long as
the grass grows, or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be
yours forever."
The Secretary of War, in a letter written to the Cherokees, April 18,
1829, (see the same work, p. 6), declares to them that they cannot
expect to retain possession of the lands at that time occupied by them,
but gives them the most positive assurance of uninterrupted peace if
they would remove beyond the Mississippi: as if the power which
could not grant them protection then, would be able to afford it them
hereafter!
/10-26/
To obtain a correct idea of the policy pursued by the
several States and the Union with respect to the Indians, it is
necessary to consult, 1st, "The Laws of the Colonial and State
Governments relating to the Indian Inhabitants." (See the Legislative
Documents, 21st Congress, No. 319.) 2d, The Laws of the Union on the
same subject, and especially that of March 30, 1802. (See Story's "Laws
of the United States.") 3d, The Report of Mr. Cass, Secretary of War,
relative to Indian Affairs, November 29, 1823.
/10-27/
December 18, 1829.
/10-28/
The honor of this result is, however, by no means due to
the Spaniards. If the Indian tribes had not been tillers of the ground
at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they would unquestionably
have been destroyed in South as well as in North America.
/10-29/
See, amongst other documents, the report made by Mr. Bell
in the name of the Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, in
which is most logically established and most learnedly proved, that "the
fundamental principle that the Indians had no right by virtue of
their ancient possession either of will or sovereignty, has never been
abandoned either expressly or by implication." In perusing this report,
which is evidently drawn up by an experienced hand, one is astonished
at the facility with which the author gets rid of all arguments founded
upon reason and natural right, which he designates as abstract and
theoretical principles. The more I contemplate the difference between
civilized and uncivilized man with regard to the principles of justice,
the more I observe that the former contests the justice of those rights
which the latter simply violates.
/10-30/
It is well known that several of the most distinguished
authors of antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and Terence, were, or had
been slaves. Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and
the chances of war reduced highly civilized men to servitude.
/10-31/
To induce the whites to abandon the opinion they have
conceived of the moral and intellectual inferiority of their former
slaves, the negroes must change; but as long as this opinion subsists,
to change is impossible.
/10-32/
See Beverley's "History of Virginia." See also in
Jefferson's "Memoirs" some curious details concerning the introduction
of negroes into Virginia, and the first Act which prohibited the
importation of them in 1778.
/10-33/
The number of slaves was less considerable in the North,
but the advantages resulting from slavery were not more contested there
than in the South. In 1740, the Legislature of the State of New York
declared that the direct importation of slaves ought to be encouraged
as much as possible, and smuggling severely punished in order not to
discourage the fair trader. (Kent's "Commentaries," vol. ii. p. 206.)
Curious researches, by Belknap, upon slavery in New England, are to be
found in the "Historical Collection of Massachusetts," vol. iv. p. 193.
It appears that negroes were introduced there in 1630, but that the
legislation and manners of the people were opposed to slavery from the
first; see also, in the same work, the manner in which public opinion,
and afterwards the laws, finally put an end to slavery.
/10-34/
Not only is slavery prohibited in Ohio, but no free negroes
are allowed to enter the territory of that State, or to hold property in
it. See the Statutes of Ohio.
/10-35/
The activity of Ohio is not confined to individuals, but
the undertakings of the State are surprisingly great; a canal has been
established between Lake Erie and the Ohio, by means of which the valley
of the Mississippi communicates with the river of the North, and the
European commodities which arrive at New York may be forwarded by water
to New Orleans across five hundred leagues of continent.
/10-36/
The exact numbers given by the census of 1830 were: Kentucky, 688,-844; Ohio, 937,679.
/10-37/
Independently of these causes, which, wherever free workmen
abound, render their labor more productive and more economical than that
of slaves, another cause may be pointed out which is peculiar to the
United States: the sugar-cane has hitherto been cultivated with success
only upon the banks of the Mississippi, near the mouth of that river in
the Gulf of Mexico. In Louisiana the cultivation of the sugar-cane is
exceedingly lucrative, and nowhere does a laborer earn so much by his
work, and, as there is always a certain relation between the cost of
production and the value of the produce, the price of slaves is very
high in Louisiana. But Louisiana is one of the confederated States, and
slaves may be carried thither from all parts of the Union; the price
given for slaves in New Orleans consequently raises the value of slaves
in all the other markets. The consequence of this is, that in the
countries where the land is less productive, the cost of slave labor
is still very considerable, which gives an additional advantage to the
competition of free labor.
/10-38/
A peculiar reason contributes to detach the two
last-mentioned States from the cause of slavery. The former wealth of
this part of the Union was principally derived from the cultivation of
tobacco. This cultivation is specially carried on by slaves; but within
the last few years the market-price of tobacco has diminished, whilst
the value of the slaves remains the same. Thus the ratio between the
cost of production and the value of the produce is changed. The natives
of Maryland and Virginia are therefore more disposed than they were
thirty years ago, to give up slave labor in the cultivation of tobacco,
or to give up slavery and tobacco at the same time.
/10-39/
The States in which slavery is abolished usually do what
they can to render their territory disagreeable to the negroes as
a place of residence; and as a kind of emulation exists between the
different States in this respect, the unhappy blacks can only choose the
least of the evils which beset them.
/10-40/
There is a very great difference between the mortality
of the blacks and of the whites in the States in which slavery is
abolished; from 1820 to 1831 only one out of forty-two individuals
of the white population died in Philadelphia; but one negro out of
twenty-one individuals of the black population died in the same space of
time. The mortality is by no means so great amongst the negroes who are
still slaves. (See Emerson's "Medical Statistics," p. 28.)
/10-41/
This is true of the spots in which rice is cultivated;
rice-grounds, which are unwholesome in all countries, are particularly
dangerous in those regions which are exposed to the beams of a tropical
sun. Europeans would not find it easy to cultivate the soil in that part
of the New World if it must be necessarily be made to produce rice; but
may they not subsist without rice-grounds?
/10-42/
These States are nearer to the equator than Italy and
Spain, but the temperature of the continent of America is very much
lower than that of Europe.
The Spanish Government formerly caused a certain number of peasants
from the Acores to be transported into a district of Louisiana called
Attakapas, by way of experiment. These settlers still cultivate the soil
without the assistance of slaves, but their industry is so languid as
scarcely to supply their most necessary wants.
/10-43/
We find it asserted in an American work, entitled "Letters
on the Colonization Society," by Mr. Carey, 1833, "That for the last
forty years the black race has increased more rapidly than the white
race in the State of South Carolina; and that if we take the average
population of the five States of the South into which slaves were first
introduced, viz., Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina,
and Georgia, we shall find that from 1790 to 1830 the whites have
augmented in the proportion of 80 to 100, and the blacks in that of 112
to 100."
In the United States, in 1830, the population of the two races stood as
follows:—
States where slavery is abolished, 6,565,434 whites; 120,520 blacks.
Slave States, 3,960,814 whites; 2,208,102 blacks.
/10-44/
This opinion is sanctioned by authorities infinitely
weightier than anything that I can say: thus, for instance, it is stated
in the "Memoirs of Jefferson" (as collected by M. Conseil), "Nothing is
more clearly written in the book of destiny than the emancipation of the
blacks; and it is equally certain that the two races will never live in
a state of equal freedom under the same government, so insurmountable
are the barriers which nature, habit, and opinions have established
between them."
/10-45/
If the British West India planters had governed themselves,
they would assuredly not have passed the Slave Emancipation Bill which
the mother-country has recently imposed upon them.
/10-46/
This society assumed the name of "The Society for
the Colonization of the Blacks." See its annual reports; and more
particularly the fifteenth. See also the pamphlet, to which allusion has
already been made, entitled "Letters on the Colonization Society, and on
its probable Results," by Mr. Carey, Philadelphia, 1833.
/10-47/
This last regulation was laid down by the founders of
the settlement; they apprehended that a state of things might arise
in Africa similar to that which exists on the frontiers of the United
States, and that if the negroes, like the Indians, were brought into
collision with a people more enlightened than themselves, they would be
destroyed before they could be civilized.
/10-48/
Nor would these be the only difficulties attendant upon
the undertaking; if the Union undertook to buy up the negroes now in
America, in order to transport them to Africa, the price of slaves,
increasing with their scarcity, would soon become enormous; and the
States of the North would never consent to expend such great sums for a
purpose which would procure such small advantages to themselves. If the
Union took possession of the slaves in the Southern States by force, or
at a rate determined by law, an insurmountable resistance would arise in
that part of the country. Both alternatives are equally impossible.
/10-49/
In 1830 there were in the United States 2,010,327 slaves
and 319,439 free blacks, in all 2,329,766 negroes: which formed about
one-fifth of the total population of the United States at that time.
/10-50/
See the conduct of the Northern States in the war of 1812.
"During that war," says Jefferson in a letter to General Lafayette,
"four of the Eastern States were only attached to the Union, like so
many inanimate bodies to living men."
/10-51/
The profound peace of the Union affords no pretext for a
standing army; and without a standing army a government is not prepared
to profit by a favorable opportunity to conquer resistance, and take the
sovereign power by surprise.
/10-52/
Thus the province of Holland in the republic of the Low
Countries, and the Emperor in the Germanic Confederation, have sometimes
put themselves in the place of the union, and have employed the federal
authority to their own advantage.
/10-53/
See "Darby's View of the United States," p. 435.
/10-54/
It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that by the
expression Anglo-Americans, I only mean to designate the great majority
of the nation; for a certain number of isolated individuals are of
course to be met with holding very different opinions.
/10-55/
Census of 1790, 3,929,328; 1830, 12,856,165; 1860,
31,443,321; 1870, 38,555,983; 1890, 62,831,900.
/10-56/
This indeed is only a temporary danger. I have no doubt
that in time society will assume as much stability and regularity in the
West as it has already done upon the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
/10-57/
Pennsylvania contained 431,373 inhabitants in 1790.
/10-58/
The area of the State of New York is 49,170 square miles.
/10-59/
If the population continues to double every twenty-two
years, as it has done for the last two hundred years, the number of
inhabitants in the United States in 1852 will be twenty millions; in
1874, forty-eight millions; and in 1896, ninety-six millions. This may
still be the case even if the lands on the western slope of the Rocky
Mountains should be found to be unfit for cultivation. The territory
which is already occupied can easily contain this number of inhabitants.
One hundred millions of men disseminated over the surface of the
twenty-four States, and the three dependencies, which constitute the
Union, would only give 762 inhabitants to the square league; this would
be far below the mean population of France, which is 1,063 to the square
league; or of England, which is 1,457; and it would even be below the
population of Switzerland, for that country, notwithstanding its lakes
and mountains, contains 783 inhabitants to the square league. See "Malte
Brun," vol. vi. p. 92.
/10-60/
See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, p. 105.
/10-61/
3,672,317—Census of 1830.
/10-62/
The distance from Jefferson, the capital of the State of
Missouri, to Washington is 1,019 miles. ("American Almanac," 1831, p. 48.)
/10-63/
The following statements will suffice to show the
difference which exists between the commerce of the South and that of
the North:—
In 1829 the tonnage of all the merchant vessels belonging to Virginia,
the two Carolinas, and Georgia (the four great Southern States),
amounted to only 5,243 tons. In the same year the tonnage of the vessels
of the State of Massachusetts alone amounted to 17,322 tons. (See
Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, 2d session, No. 140, p. 244.) Thus
the State of Massachusetts had three times as much shipping as the
four above-mentioned States. Nevertheless the area of the State of
Massachusetts is only 7,335 square miles, and its population amounts
to 610,014 inhabitants [2,238,943 in 1890]; whilst the area of the four
other States I have quoted is 210,000 square miles, and their population
3,047,767. Thus the area of the State of Massachusetts forms only
one-thirtieth part of the area of the four States; and its population
is five times smaller than theirs. (See "Darby's View of the United
States.") Slavery is prejudicial to the commercial prosperity of the
South in several different ways; by diminishing the spirit of enterprise
amongst the whites, and by preventing them from meeting with as numerous
a class of sailors as they require. Sailors are usually taken from the
lowest ranks of the population. But in the Southern States these lowest
ranks are composed of slaves, and it is very difficult to employ them at
sea. They are unable to serve as well as a white crew, and apprehensions
would always be entertained of their mutinying in the middle of the
ocean, or of their escaping in the foreign countries at which they might
touch.
/10-64/
"Darby's View of the United States," p. 444.
/10-65/
It may be seen that in the course of the last ten years
(1820-1830) the population of one district, as, for instance, the State
of Delaware, has increased in the proportion of five per cent.; whilst
that of another, as the territory of Michigan, has increased 250 per
cent. Thus the population of Virginia had augmented thirteen per cent.,
and that of the border State of Ohio sixty-one per cent., in the same
space of time. The general table of these changes, which is given in the
"National Calendar," displays a striking picture of the unequal fortunes
of the different States.
/10-66/
It has just been said that in the course of the last term
the population of Virginia has increased thirteen per cent.; and it is
necessary to explain how the number of representatives for a State may
decrease, when the population of that State, far from diminishing, is
actually upon the increase. I take the State of Virginia, to which
I have already alluded, as my term of comparison. The number of
representatives of Virginia in 1823 was proportionate to the total
number of the representatives of the Union, and to the relation which
the population bore to that of the whole Union: in 1833 the number of
representatives of Virginia was likewise proportionate to the total
number of the representatives of the Union, and to the relation which
its population, augmented in the course of ten years, bore to the
augmented population of the Union in the same space of time. The new
number of Virginian representatives will then be to the old numver, on
the one hand, as the new numver of all the representatives is to the old
number; and, on the other hand, as the augmentation of the population of
Virginia is to that of the whole population of the country. Thus, if
the increase of the population of the lesser country be to that of the
greater in an exact inverse ratio of the proportion between the new
and the old numbers of all the representatives, the number of the
representatives of Virginia will remain stationary; and if the
increase of the Virginian population be to that of the whole Union in a
feeblerratio than the new number of the representatives of the Union
to the old number, the number of the representatives of Virginia
must decrease.
/10-67/
See the report of its committee to the Convention which
proclaimed the nullification of the tariff in South Carolina.
/10-68/
The population of a country assuredly constitutes the
first element of its wealth. In the ten years (1820-1830) during which
Virginia lost two of its representatives in Congress, its population
increased in the proportion of 13.7 per cent.; that of Carolina in the
proportion of fifteen per cent.; and that of Georgia, 15.5 per cent.
(See the "American Almanac," 1832, p. 162) But the population of Russia,
which increases more rapidly than that of any other European country,
only augments in ten years at the rate of 9.5 per cent.; in France, at
the rate of seven per cent.; and in Europe in general, at the rate of
4.7 per cent. (See "Malte Brun," vol. vi. p. 95)
/10-69/
It must be admitted, however, that the depreciation which
has taken place in the value of tobacco, during the last fifty years,
has notably diminished the opulence of the Southern planters: but this
circumstance is as independent of the will of their Northern brethren as
it is of their own.
/10-70/
In 1832, the district of Michigan, which only contains
31,639 inhabitants, and is still an almost unexplored wilderness,
possessed 940 miles of mail-roads. The territory of Arkansas, which
is still more uncultivated, was already intersected by 1,938 miles of
mail-roads. (See the report of the General Post Office, November 30,
1833.) The postage of newspapers alone in the whole Union amounted to
$254,796.
/10-71/
In the course of ten years, from 1821 to 1831, 271
steamboats have been launched upon the rivers which water the valley
of the Mississippi alone. In 1829 259 steamboats existed in the United
States. (See Legislative Documents, No. 140, p. 274.)
/10-72/
See in the Legislative Documents, already quoted in
speaking of the Indians, the letter of the President of the United
States to the Cherokees, his correspondence on this subject with his
agents, and his messages to Congress.
/10-73/
The first act of session was made by the State of New York
in 1780; Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, South and North Carolina,
followed this example at different times, and lastly, the act of cession
of Georgia was made as recently as 1802.
/10-74/
It is true that the President refused his assent to this
law; but he completely adopted it in principle. (See Message of December 8, 1833.)
/10-75/
The present Bank of the United States was established in
1816, with a capital of $35,000,000; its charter expires in 1836. Last
year Congress passed a law to renew it, but the President put his veto
upon the bill. The struggle is still going on with great violence on
either side, and the speedy fall of the bank may easily be foreseen.
/10-76/
See principally for the details of this affair, the
Legislative Documents, 22d Congress, 2d Session, No. 30.
/10-77/
That is to say, the majority of the people; for the
opposite party, called the Union party, always formed a very strong and
active minority. Carolina may contain about 47,000 electors; 30,000 were
in favor of nullification, and 17,000 opposed to it.
/10-78/
This decree was preceded by a report of the committee
by which it was framed, containing the explanation of the motives and
object of the law. The following passage occurs in it, p. 34:—"When
the rights reserved by the Constitution to the different States are
deliberately violated, it is the duty and the right of those States
to interfere, in order to check the progress of the evil; to resist
usurpation, and to maintain, within their respective limits, those
powers and privileges which belong to them as independent sovereign
States. If they were destitute of this right, they would not be
sovereign. South Carolina declares that she acknowledges no tribunal
upon earth above her authority. She has indeed entered into a solemn
compact of union with the other States; but she demands, and will
exercise, the right of putting her own construction upon it; and when
this compact is violated by her sister States, and by the Government
which they have created, she is determined to avail herself of the
unquestionable right of judging what is the extent of the infraction,
and what are the measures best fitted to obtain justice."
/10-79/
Congress was finally decided to take this step by the
conduct of the powerful State of Virginia, whose legislature offered
to serve as mediator between the Union and South Carolina. Hitherto the
latter State had appeared to be entirely abandoned, even by the States
which had joined in her remonstrances.
/10-80/
This law was passed on March 2, 1833.
/10-81/
This bill was brought in by Mr. Clay, and it passed in four
days through both Houses of Congress by an immense majority.
/10-82/
The total value of goods imported during the year which
ended on September 30, 1832, was $101,129,266. The value of the cargoes
of foreign vessels did not amount to $10,731,039, or about one-tenth of
the entire sum.
/10-83/
The value of goods exported during the same year amounted
to $87,176,943; the value of goods exported by foreign vessels amounted
to $21,036,183, or about one quarter of the whole sum. (Williams's
"Register," 1833, p. 398.)
/10-84/
The tonnage of the vessels which entered all the ports of
the Union in the years 1829, 1830, and 1831, amounted to 3,307,719 tons,
of which 544,571 tons were foreign vessels; they stood, therefore,
to the American vessels in a ratio of about 16 to 100. ("National
Calendar," 1833, p. 304.) The tonnage of the English vessels which
entered the ports of London, Liverpool, and Hull, in the years 1820,
1826, and 1831, amounted to 443,800 tons. The foreign vessels which
entered the same ports during the same years amounted to 159,431 tons.
The ratio between them was, therefore, about 36 to 100. ("Companion
to the Almanac," 1834, p. 169.) In the year 1832 the ratio between the
foreign and British ships which entered the ports of Great Britain was
29 to 100.
/10-85/
Materials are, generally speaking, less expensive in
America than in Europe, but the price of labor is much higher.
/10-86/
It must not be supposed that English vessels are
exclusively employed in transporting foreign produce into England, or
British produce to foreign countries; at the present day the merchant
shipping of England may be regarded in the light of a vast system of
public conveyances, ready to serve all the producers of the world, and
to open communications between all peoples. The maritime genius of the
Americans prompts them to enter into competition with the English.
/10-87/
Part of the commerce of the Mediterranean is already
carried on by American vessels.