USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Federal Period 1783-1860, Volume II > Part 27
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* Is not this wonderful ? Is it not the hand of Him who has said, 'The wrath of man shall praise him and the remainder of wrath he will restrain' * * And now let me say to the American Tract Society that I have no doubt of our ability to distribute successfully at least six thousand tracts such as those to which you allude. *
* I have just sent to New York for another box of Helper's work to supply the increasing demand. A slaveholder who has read the book is now asking his neighbors what he must do with his slaves. Are not these blessed portents, my brother ?
Along with the renewal of slavery propaganda came a crisis in party supremacy, local and national. Within the
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state the whig organization was being revived, four whigs being elected to Congress in 1859. At the same time in the South and the West the republicans made great gains, electing 109 members to the Thirty-sixth Congress to 101 by the demo- crats. This gave the whigs and former Americans, with twenty-seven votes, a balance of power. When Congress met in December the democrats made a bid for the support of the southern whigs by introducing a resolution to the effect that no member who had endorsed Helper's "Impending Crisis" was fit to be Speaker-a blow at Sherman, the republican candidate for the position. But the whigs, realizing fully their strategical position, were not receptive. Gilmer, of North Carolina, moved as a substitute that all good citizens should oppose every attempt to renew the slavery agitation. In the prolonged contest for the Speakership, there was at first a deadlock. On the thirty-sixth ballot there was a decided move- ment to compromise on Gilmer, who received thirty-six votes. The North Carolina democrats were alarmed, for Gilmer was an uncompromising partisan whose influence the southern democrats greatly feared. Under the leadership of Warren Winslow, they threw their influence to another North Carolina whig, W. N. H. Smith, who received 112 votes on the thirty- ninth ballot. The republicans, alarmed at the prospect of the Speakership going to the South, then dropped Sherman for Pennington, a moderate republican, who swung sufficient northern whig votes to secure the election on the forty-fourth ballot. Throughout the contest there were many threats of violence. At one time L. O'B. Branch, of North Carolina, chal- lenged Mr. Grow, a Pennsylvania republican, to a duel, which Grow declined. Both were later arrested and placed under bond to keep the peace.
With such a political background-the rise of the advalo- rem issue, the revival of the whig organization, the excitement over abolition propaganda, the increase of republican votes in Congress-the presidential campaign of 1860 opened. In the democratic state convention radical sentiments dominated. The platform emphasized the right to take slaves into terri- tories, and declared that the people would resist any encroach- ment on their constitutional privileges. Governor Ellis
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declared that the existence of slavery in the states as well as the territories was at stake. But among the delegates to the national convention, which met at Charleston, there was a distinct cleavage between the radicals and the conservatives, with the latter in the majority. It was the hope of Yancey and the leaders from the far South to win the support of the delegation from North Carolina in order to force the accept- ance of a platform endorsing the Dred Scott decision and also to prevent the nomination of Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. As a step in this direction, William W. Avery, of Burke County, a radical, was made chairman of the com- mittee on resolutions. There was much caucusing for the pro- slavery cause in which the North Carolina conservatives, led by Bedford Brown and W. W. Holden, refused to participate. Wrote Mr. Holden :
When I reached Charleston, I was taken aside by a friend in whom I had full confidence, who said, "Holden, I know you want to do right; I have been here several days, and I have information of a purpose on the part of some of our Southern friends to dissolve the Union." I was greatly surprised and concerned. He said to me, "I give you tonight to listen and learn, and in the morning tell me what you think and what your purpose is."
The night of the day on which we all reached Charleston, we held a meeting in our delegation room and Mr. Senator Bayard of Dela- ware presided. A motion was made to appoint a committee from our delegation to visit the Southern delegations, and confer with them, mainly because some of them were natives of North Carolina. This motion was opposed by Bedford Brown, R. P. Dick, and myself, and voted down. We maintained that it would be a sectional act and under the circumstances would be improper. And there I saw the cropping out of the purpose of which my friend had just warned me. Colonel Bedford Brown had just said to me, "Mr. Holden, our dele- gation has very properly decided not to send officially any one to visit the Southern delegates, but we can go as individuals to a great meeting to be held to-night, near this place on Charleston Street. I propose to go, will you go?" William A. Moore of Edenton was standing by, and said he would go too. The meeting was held upstairs in a very large room which was filled. I heard several speeches and they were all for disunion, save the short speech made by Colonel Bedford Brown. Mr. William L. Yancey of Alabama spoke first, for a considerable time. He was followed by Mr. Glenn, Attorney General of Mississippi. Colonel Brown then took the floor, being called out by Mr. Glenn, who was his kinsman. He made a con- servative Union speech, and was interrupted, and scraped, and laughed down. An Arkansas Militia General whose name I have
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forgotten, and who was unknown in the conflict between the North and South, replied to Colonel Brown, and ridiculed his views, amid general and vehement applause. Colonel Brown then turned to me and said, "Mr. Holden, let us shake off the dust from our feet of this disunion conventicle and retire."
We returned to the Charleston Hotel, and very soon a large crowd with a band of music appeared at the front of the hotel. Speaking was going on at various points, and presently, some bold fellow in front of the hotel shouted, "Three cheers for the Star Spangled Banner !" and fled for his life. The reply was from the crowd, "Damn the Star Spangled Banner, tear it down."
The next morning I told my friend who had warned me of the danger of disunion, and of bolting the body, that my mind was made up, and that I would stand by the American Union at all hazards and to the last extremity.1
When the debate on the platform was held, the North Caro- lina delegation as a whole favored neither the majority nor the minority report, but simply a reaffirmation of the Cincin- nati platform of 1856. When it was evident that the minority report, reflecting the opinion of the Northern democracy, would be adopted, the protest of William S. Ashe and Bedford Brown caused the rejection of a clause referring the whole matter of slavery in territories to the Supreme Court. When the revised report was adopted, the North Carolina delegates refused to follow those of the cotton states who bolted the con- vention, and thereby restrained the Virginia delegation. Con- cerning this crisis Mr. Holden said :
A few days afterwards while the vote was going on, and while South Carolina and Georgia and Mississippi and Florida and Arkan- sas and other states south of us were bolting, another friend of mine, Mr. R. C. Pearson, of Burke, approached me from the rear, and said to me most earnestly, "You must make a speech and hold our delegations against going out." He had come for me through the Virginia delegation who sat in the rear, "for," said he, "from what I have heard, if our delegates go out, Virginia will go out also, and the convention will be broken up." I said, "Mr. Pearson, I am not in the habit of speaking very often-there are 600 delegates here, and a vast audience besides-it would be a piece of assurance on my part, to attempt to address this body at this time, especially amid this excite- ment, with Mr. Cushing, the president of the body, hostile to Mr. Douglas and his friends I can't get a hearing." "Yes, you can," said he, "I will go around and speak to the Indiana, the Illinois and the Ohio delegations, and ask them when you arise to speak, to insist on
1 Memoirs, pp. 9-11.
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North Carolina being heard." I then told him I would try as soon as Mr. Seward of Georgia took his seat. I arose and said, "Mr. Presi- dent, Mr. Holden of North Carolina." Mr. Cushing sat for twenty sec- onds and did not recognize me. Then the states mentioned arose and de- manded in a voice of thunder that North Carolina be heard. Mr. Cush- ing arose and bowed, and gave me the floor. I spoke for ten minutes. I told the convention I had been sent there by the state of North Caro- lina, one of the four state delegates; that I could not be a party to any steps looking to disunion ; that my party had sent me to maintain and preserve, and not to destroy the bonds of the Union; that by an immense majority the people of my state, with George Washington the Father of the Country, would frown indignantly on the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which link together the various points.
After ineffectual balloting for the presidential nomination, the convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore. There now' occurred a distinct movement in favor of Stephen A. Douglas. The Standard was outspoken for him, as were also four of the ten electors. Personal ties also favored him, his wife by his first marriage having been a lady of Rockingham County. But the policy of the Baltimore convention in seating Douglas delegations and rejecting all others caused another with- drawal of Southern members, among them all of the North Carolina delegates except three, Holden, R. P. Dick, and J. W. B. Watson. Douglas was nominated, but Holden and Watson did not vote. The sixteen bolting members then joined a new convention in which Avery was again chairman of the com- mittee on resolutions. The majority report of the Charleston convention was then adopted and Breckenridge was nominated for the presidency, but the North Carolina delegates cast their first ballot for Dickinson and Green. On the next ballot one of the North Carolina delegation nominated Lane for the vice- presidency, who was chosen.
But the state democracy was not yet united. There was still considerable sentiment for Douglas. Of the electors, Henry W. Miller resigned and refused to support Brecken- ridge. There was a demand that a party convention be called to decide the matter, but the state executive committee refused to take action. Thereupon the Standard proposed that the electors vote for either Breckenridge or Douglas, according to the chances for defeating Lincoln. On August 30 the Doug-
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las men held a convention at Raleigh which was addressed by Douglas himself, put out electors, and started a campaign newspaper, the National Democrat. But the tide of demo- cratic opinion drifted toward Breckenridge. The Standard failed to join the Douglas movement, and in the election he received less than 3,000 votes.
In contrast to the dissention among the democrats was the unanimity among the whigs. Their state convention, like the national one, avoided the slavery issue; in the latter, Governor Graham received the vote of the state delegation for the presidential nomination. The campaign was notable for a sense of sobriety and seriousness. The radicals were less extreme in their demands than in 1856. There was no threat of secession in case of Lincoln's election until October. In reply a great mass meeting was held at Salisbury toward the middle of the month under whig auspices. It lasted two days and was attended by prominent whig leaders. A notable incident was a speech by Zebulon B. Vance in behalf of union, of two hours' duration, delivered in a drizzling rain, which held the audience spell-bound. "But one sentiment pre- vailed," wrote a correspondent, "and that was, we will fight for the Constitution, the Union, and the laws, within the Union and the laws. We will not be influenced by seceders in the South or black Republicans in the North, and we will never give up our institutions until stern necessity compels us to believe that they, being no longer adequate to our protection, we must resort to that right of revolution which is inherent in every people."
With the assurance of a secession movement in case of a republican victory, the ultimate influence that determined the election in North Carolina was the choice between nationality and disunion. Undoubtedly the vast majority of the voters held no brief for secession, but between a president repre- senting the sectional ideals of the Northwest and one repre- senting those of the South, there could be no choice. More- over it was argued that the surest check to secession would be a victory for Breckenridge. Such an interpretation was war- ranted by the popular vote in November, which was: Breck- enridge, 48,539; Bell, 44,990; Douglas, 2,401. Breckenridge's
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majority over both opponents was thus 848. Suggestive also was the sectional character of the vote. Most of the extreme eastern counties gave Bell a majority, as did also most of the western counties. On the other hand, the middle eastern counties and those of the west where the tobacco and cotton industries were well established, also a group along the Ten- nessee line, gave a majority for Breckenridge. Thus the old alignment between whigs and democrats which characterized politics before 1850 was revived. In the months to come that party division, as well as the question of secession, was to be tested.
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CHAPTER XVII AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, MINING. TRANSPORTATION
The thirty years prior to 1860 mark a distinct epoch in the advance of agriculture, the utilization of natural re- sources, the expansion of industries, and the growth of trans- portation. Then appeared the foundations, somewhat rudi- mentary, for that economic life which received its greatest impetus after 1865.
In 1860 more than 98 per cent of the population was rural. The largest city was Wilmington, with 9,555 souls. Agricul- ture was the principal occupation. In several aspects it differed from conditions in other states. The average size of farms was 316 acres, to 352 for the South Atlantic states; the percentage of improved land was 27.4, less than in Georgia, South Carolina, or Virginia; the value per acre was $7.59, to $11.33 for the South Atlantic region. Yet between 1850 and 1860 the value of farm property increased 101.4 per cent and the value of implements from $78 per farm to $115.
For this relative backwardness the causes were patent. One was that North Carolina from its earliest days was a refuge for men of small property who hoped to improve their economic condition. Few had the financial resources or the knowledge to conserve or improve the land. The method of tillage was wasteful. The early settlers cleared the forests and tilled the virgin soil repeatedly, year after year, with little rotation of crops and no application of fertilizers, until its fertility was exhausted. Then the pioneers pushed on in search of new virgin lands. By this process the country was reclaimed from the savages, but for several generations there was no improvement in the method of cultivation.
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Gulleys, galls, and old fields marred a land naturally produc- tive. To these causes should be added the poor facilities for transportation. The long distance from market centers made for isolation; new ideas, inventions, and better methods slowly reached the people. Ignorance hung like a pall over the masses.
Although this picture is depressing, there was notable progress between 1850 and 1860 when the value of farm products increased 101 per cent. The reason for this im- provement was a general awakening in regard to agriculture throughout the state. Its first manifestation was the estab- lishment of agricultural journals. In 1839 John Sherwood began the publication of the Farmers' Advocate at James- town. In 1852 Dr. J. F. Tompkins of Bath founded the Farmers' Journal, which he removed to Raleigh in 1853. In the latter year two more publications were begun at Raleigh: the Arator, by the venerable and experienced jour- nalist, Thomas J. Lemay, and the Carolina Cultivator, by William D. Cooke, director of the Asylum for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. Later, in 1858, A. M. Gorman established the North Carolina Planter at Raleigh. In all these journals the prevalent methods of cultivation were attacked, and at- tention was called to the use of fertilizers, the value of deep plowing, terracing, and the chemistry of soils. Another phase of the agricultural revival was the foundation of the State Agricultural Society in 1852 and its annual fair, the first of which was held at Raleigh in 1853. Co-operating were county societies in every section of the state. Still another evidence of progress was the investigation of the state's agricultural resources, in which the guiding spirit was Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, state geologist from 1852 to 1863. Several of his reports touched on agriculture; the first, issued in 1852, included a study of the agriculture of the eastern coun- ties ; the third, in 1858, contained a general treatise on agricul- ture; the fourth and fifth, which appeared in 1860, consisted respectively of "Sketches of Lower North Carolina," by the foremost Virginia agriculturist, Edmund Ruffin, and a report on the swamp lands belonging to the Literary Fund. The Uni-
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1 versity was also responsive to the new movement, establishing a chair of Applied Chemistry in 1854.
There were some notable results from this intelligent interest in agricultural improvement. Said Chief Justice Ruffin before the Agricultural Society in 1855:
Of the counties ranging along our northern border, from Warren to Stokes, inclusive, I have had for about fifty years, considerable knowledge. That was the principal region of tobacco. culture. Ac- cording to the course of that culture, wherever it prevailed in our annals, the country was cut down rapidly, cropped mercilessly with a view to quantity rather than quality, then put into corn, and exhausted quickly and almost entirely. When I first knew it, and for a long time afterwards, there were abounding evidences of former fertility, and existing and sorrowful sterility. Corn and tobacco and oats were almost the only crops. But little wheat and no grasses were to be seen in the country. Warren and Granville bought the little flour they used from Orange wagons. Large tracts were disfigured by frightful galls and gulleys, turned out as "old fields," with pines and broom straws for their only vesture instead of their stately primeval forests, or rich crops for the use of man. This is a sad picture. But it is a true one; and there was more fact than figure in the saying by many, whose work of destruction rendered that region so desolate, and who then abandoned it, that it was "old and worn out." Hap- pily, some thought its condition not so hopeless, and cherishing this attachment for the spots of their nativity, within these few years- since the time of railroads and river navigation began-set about re- pairing the ravages of former days. Do you suppose they were content with less crops, and therefore that they cultivated less land than be- fore, leaving a larger portion for recovery by rest? That was not their course. They did not give up the cultivation of tobacco, but gradually increased it, and corn also; and they added to their rotation wheat, when so much more easily and cheaply carried to market. But they gradually increased the collection and application of manures from the stables and cattle yards, with considerable additions of the concen- trated manures obtained from abroad, and protected theland from wash- ing by judicious hill-side trenching and more thorough washing. The result has been that many old fields have been reclaimed and brought into cultivation. that lands generally much increased in fertility, and, of course, in actual and market value in a like proportion, while the production has probably doubled in quantity and value in all the range of counties mentioned.
The pioneer and presumably the banner county in agri- cultural improvement was Edgecombe. There, about 1847, the use of marl and fertilizers of various kinds was intro- duced on the plantations of the Battles', Bridges', Danceys',
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Norfleets', and others. Within six years production wonder- fully increased, until Edgecombe was widely known as the leading agricultural county of the state.
Among the principal crops there were both a notable increase of production and also tendencies toward concentra- tion. Tobacco culture is illustrative. It had its origin in the colonial period and followed the tide of immigration as it flowed into the piedmont region. Production almost trebled between 1850 and 1860, increasing from 11,984,786 pounds to 32,853,250 pounds. Yet in 1850 about eighty per cent of the crop was produced in Caswell, Granville, Person and Wayne counties; and in 1860 the same percentage held good for these counties and four others, Franklin, Orange, Rock- . ingham and Stokes. Rice culture was concentrated in Bruns- wick County, which produced over 6,700,000 of the 7,593,000 pounds yielded in 1860. Cotton culture did not expand rap- idly until after 1820; production in 1801 was around 10,000 bales ; it probably increased to 25,000 in 1821 and by 1840 had reached 129,815. In 1850 there was a sharp decline to 73,845 bales, but in 1860 production shot up to 145,514. The area of large production (over 1,000 bales per county) in- cluded the following counties: Anson, Cabarrus, Mecklen- burg, Montgomery, Rowan, Richmond, Surry, Union and Wake in the piedmont region; and Bertie, Duplin, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Hertford, Johnston, Martin, Nash, Northampton, Pitt, Robeson, Wayne, and Wilson in the east. It is notable that the production of cereals did not decline with the increase of tobacco and cotton. The wheat crop of 1860 was 4,743,706 bushels, an increase of over 2,500,000 compared with that of 1850. The corn crop of 1860 was over 30,000,000 bushels, likewise an increase of over 2,500,000 compared with that of 1850. In the production of peas and beans North Carolina was exceeded only by Mississippi.
In the development of manufactures there were three distinct periods. The first extended from colonial days through the first decade of the nineteenth century. Domestic and household production flourished. The eastern counties were notable for their naval stores and lumber. In the pied- mont and western counties the industrial genius of the Scotch-
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Irish and Germans was manifest in a number of industries. There in 1814 Tenche Coxe listed fifteen of the twenty fulling mills in the state, twenty-three iron works, three paper mills, and eight powder mills. In 1813 Michael Schenck established in Lincolnton a cotton mill, certainly the second, and probably the first, south of the Potomac River. In 1814 it was esti- mated that 23,750 fur hats were produced in the western region. In all sections distilleries and looms were plentiful. The former in 1814 numbered 5,426, with a product-estimated at 1,386,691 gallons. In the same year the 'looms numbered 40,798, producing 7,376,154 yards of cloth, far more than the woolen and cotton output of Massachusetts. Evidently in the early nineteenth century there was a strong tendency for North Carolina to become a manufacturing center. But with the advent of cotton culture after 1800, for almost a gen- eration agriculture dominated all other economic interests; leadership in manufacturing was taken by New England and the middle states, where machinery and the mill sup- planted domestic and home production.
There were two by-products of this predominance of agri- culture; one was the exhaustion of the soil and a steady emi- gration to other states in search of virgin lands; the other was the decline in the price of cotton after 1825, due to the increased production throughout the South. These facts contributed to the profound sense of economic depression, so notable in the criticisms of North Carolina during the period. In the legislature of 1827-28 resolutions were passed to inquire into the expediency of encouraging the growth of wool and of establishing cotton and woolen factories. The report of the committee to which the resolutions were referred declared that "a crisis is at hand, when our citizens must turn a portion of their labour and enterprise into the other channels of in- dustry ; otherwise, poverty and ruin will fall to every class in our community. * * The great fall in the prices of agricultural products has not only reduced the value of every species of property, but as a consequence, has in effect dou- bled the debts of individuals. * If the planter in North Carolina can barely afford to raise cotton at eight cents per pound, he must soon be driven from its culture
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