cotton.  Whitney’s invention increased the efficiency of this labor hundreds of times, and it became evident at once that the South enjoyed a practical monopoly of the production of cotton.  The effect on the slavery policy of the South was immediate and unhappy.  Since 1865, it has been found that the cotton monopoly of the South is even more complete under a free than under a slave labor system, but mere theory could never have convinced the Southern people that such would be the case.  Their whole prosperity hinged on one product; they began its cultivation under slave labor; and the belief that labor and prosperity were equally dependent on the enslavement of the laboring race very soon made the dominant race active defenders of slavery.  From that time the system in the South was one of slowly but steadily increasing rigor, until, just before 1860, its last development took the form of legal enactments for the re-enslavement of free negroes, in default of their leaving the State in which they resided.  Parallel with this increase of rigor, there was a steady change in the character of the system.  It tended very steadily to lose its original patriarchal character, and take the aspect of a purely commercial speculation.  After 1850, the commercial aspect began to be the rule in the black belt of the Gulf States.  The plantation knew only the overseer; so many slaves died to so many bales of cotton; and the slave population began to lose all human connection with the dominant race.

The acquisition of Louisiana in 1803 more than doubled the area of the United States, and far more than doubled the area of the slave system.  Slavery had been introduced into Louisiana, as usual, by custom, and had then been sanctioned by Spanish and French law.  It is true that Congress did not forbid slavery in the new territory of Louisiana; but Congress did even worse than this; under the guise of forbidding the importation of slaves into Louisiana, by the act of March 26, 1804, organizing the territory, the phrase “except by a citizen of the United States, removing into said territory for actual settlement, and being at the time of such removal bona fide owner of such slave or slaves,” impliedly legitimated the domestic slave trade to Louisiana, and legalized slavery wherever population should extend between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.  The Congress of 1803-05, which passed the act, should rightfully bear the responsibility for all the subsequent growth of slavery, and for all the difficulties in which it involved the South and the country.

There were but two centres of population in Louisiana, New Orleans and St. Louis.  When the southern district, around New Orleans, applied for admission as the slave State of Louisiana, there seems to have been no surprise or opposition on this score; the Federalist opposition to the admission is exactly represented by Quincy’s speech in the first volume.  When the northern district, around St. Louis, applied