James Henry Hammond,
On the Admission of Kansas, Under the Lecompton Constitution
("Cotton is King")
Speech Before the United States Senate,
4 March 1858
[Excerpts]
As I am disposed to see this question settled as soon
as possible, and am perfectly willing to have a final and conclusive settlement now,
after what the Senator from New York [William Seward] has said, I think it not
improper that I should attempt to bring the North and South face to face, and see
what resources each of us might have in the contingency of separate
organizations.
If we never acquire another foot of territory for the
South, look at her. Eight hundred and fifty thousand square
miles. As large as Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia and
Spain. Is not that territory enough to make an empire that shall
rule the world? With the finest soil, the most delightful climate,
whose staple productions none of those great countries can grow, we have
three thousand miles of continental sea-shore line so indented with bays and
crowded with islands, that, when their shore lines are added, we have twelve
thousand miles. Through the heart of our country runs the great
Mississippi, the father of waters, into whose bosom are poured thirty-six
thousand miles of tributary rivers; and beyond we have the desert prairie
wastes to protect us in our rear. Can you hem in such a territory
as that? You talk of putting up a wall of fire around eight hundred
and fifty thousand square miles so situated! How absurd.
But, in this territory lies the great valley of the
Mississippi, now the real, and soon to be the acknowledged seat of the empire
of the world. The sway of that valley will be as great as ever the
Nile knew in the earlier ages of mankind. We own the most of
it. The most valuable part of it belongs to us now; and
although those who have settled above us are now opposed to us, another
generation will tell a different tale. They are ours by all the
laws of nature; slave-labor will go over every foot of this great
valley where it will be found profitable to use it, and some of those who
may not use it are soon to be united with us by such ties as will make us
one and inseparable. The iron horse will soon be clattering over
the sunny plains of the South to bear the products of its upper tributaries
of the valley to our Atlantic ports, as it now does through the ice-bound
North. And there is the great Mississippi, a bond of union made
by Nature herself. She will maintain it forever.
On this fine territory we have a population four
times as large as that with which these colonies separated from the mother
country, and a hundred, I might say a thousand fold stronger. Our
population is now sixty per cent. greater than that of the whole United States
when we entered into the second war of independence. It is as
large as the whole population of the United States was ten years after the
conclusion of that war, and our own exports are three times as great as those
of the whole United States then. Upon our muster-rolls we have a
million of men. In a defensive war, upon an emergency, every
one of them would be available. At any time, the South can
raise, equip, and maintain in the field, a larger army than any Power of
the earth can send against her, and an army of soldiers -- men brought
up on horseback, with guns in their hands.
If we take the North, even when the two large
States of Kansas and Minnesota shall be admitted, her territory will be
one hundred thousand square miles less than ours. I do not speak
of California and Oregon; there is no antagonism between the South
and those countries, and never will be. The population of
the North is fifty per cent. greater than ours. I have nothing
to say in disparagement either of the soil of the North, or the people of
the North, who are a brave and energetic race, full of intellect.
But they produce no great staple that the South does not produce; while
we produce two or three, and these the very greatest, that she can never
produce. As to her men, I may be allowed to say, they have
never proved themselves to be superior to those of the South, either in
the field or in the Senate.
But the strength of a nation depends in a great
measure upon its wealth, and the wealth of a nation, like that of a man,
is to be estimated by its surplus production. You may go to
your trashy census books, full of falsehoods and nonsense -- they tell
you, for example, that in the State of Tennessee, the whole number of
house-servants is not equal to that of those in my own house, and such
things as that. You may estimate what is made throughout
the country from these census books, but it is no matter how much is made
if it is all consumed. If a man possess millions of dollars
and consumes his income, is he rich? Is he competent to
embark in any new enterprises? Can he long build ships or
railroads? And could a people in that condition build ships
and roads or go to war without a fatal strain on capital? All
the enterprises of peace and war depend upon the surplus productions
of a people. They may be happy, they may be comfortable,
they may enjoy themselves in consuming what they make; but they are
not rich, they are not strong. It appears, by going to the
reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, which are authentic, that last
year the United States exported in round numbers $279,000,000 worth of
domestic produce, excluding gold and foreign merchandise
re-exported. Of this amount $158,000,000 worth is the clear
produce of the South; articles that are not and cannot be made at
the North. There are then $80,000,000 worth of exports of
products of the forest, provisions and breadstuffs. If we
assume that the South made but one third of these, and I think that is
a low calculation, our exports were $185,000,000, leaving to the North
less than $95,000,000.
In addition to this, we sent to the North
$30,000,000 worth of cotton, which is not counted in the
exports. We sent to her $7 or $8,000,000 worth of tobacco,
which is not counted in the exports. We sent naval stores,
lumber, rice, and many other minor articles. There is no
doubt that we sent to the North $40,000,000 in addition; but
suppose the amount to be $35,000,000, it will give us a surplus
production of $220,000,000. But the recorded exports of the
South now are greater than the whole exports of the United States in any
year before 1856. They are greater than the whole average
exports of the United States for the last twelve years, including the
two extraordinary years of 1856 and 1857. They are nearly
double the amount of the average exports of the twelve preceding
years. If I am right in my calculations as to $220,000,000
of surplus produce, there is not a nation on the face of the earth, with
any numerous population, that can compete with us in produce per
capita. It amounts to $16.66 per head, supposing that we
have twelve millions of people. England with all her
accumulated wealth, with her concentrated and educated energy, makes
but sixteen and a half dollars of surplus production per head.
I have not made a calculation as to the North, with her $95,000,000
surplus; admitting that she exports as much as we do, with her
eighteen millions of population it would be but little over twelve
dollars a head. But she cannot export to us and abroad
exceeding ten dollars a head against our sixteen dollars. I
know well enough that the North sends to the South a vast amount of the
productions of her industry. I take it for granted that she,
at least, pays us in that way for the thirty or forty million dollars
worth of cotton and other articles we send her. I am willing
to admit that she sends us considerably more; but to bring her up
to our amount of surplus production -- to bring her up to $220,000,000
a year, the South must take from her $125,000,000; and this, in
addition to our share of the consumption of the $330,000,000 worth
introduced into the country from abroad, and paid for chiefly by our
own exports. The thing is absurd; it is impossible;
it can never appear anywhere but in a book of statistics, or a Congress
speech.
With an export of $220,000,000 under the
present tariff, the South organized separately would have $40,000,000
of revenue. With one-fourth the present tariff, she would
have a revenue with the present tariff adequate to all her wants,
for the South would never go to war; she would never need an
army or a navy, beyond a few garrisons on the frontiers and a few
revenue cutters. It is commerce that breeds war.
It is manufactures that require to be hawked about the world, and that
give rise to navies and commerce. But we have nothing to
do but to take off restrictions on foreign merchandise and open our
ports, and the whole world will come to us to trade. They
will be too glad to bring and carry us, and we never shall dream of a
war. Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war
except with the North. Every time she has drawn her sword
it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been
mainly loyalty to her sister colonies and sister States, who have ever
since plundered and calumniated her.
But if there were no other reason why we should
never have war, would any sane nation make war on cotton?
Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war
on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. The South
is perfectly competent to go on, one, two, or three years without planting
a seed of cotton. I believe that if she was to plant but half
her cotton, for three years to come, it would be an immense advantage to
her. I am not so sure but that after three years' entire
abstinence she would come out stronger than ever she was before, and
better prepared to enter afresh upon her great career of enterprise.
What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I
will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is
certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole
civilized world with her, save the South. No, you dare not
make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon
it. Cotton is king. Until lately the Bank of
England was king; but she tried to put her screws as usual, the
fall before last, upon the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The
last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked
at recent events, that cotton is supreme? When the abuse of
credit had destroyed credit and annihilated confidence; when
thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming
down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property evaporating
in thin air; when you came to a dead lock, and revolutions were
threatened, what brought you up? Fortunately for you it
was the commencement of the cotton season, and we have poured in upon
you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton just at the crisis
to save you from destruction. That cotton, but for the
bursting of your speculative bubbles in the North, which produced the
whole of this convulsion, would have brought us $100,000,000. We
have sold it for $65,000,000 and saved you. Thirty-five
million dollars we, the slaveholders of the South, have put into the
charity box for your magnificent financiers, your "cotton lords,"
your "merchant princes."
But, sir, the greatest strength of the South
arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions.
This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and an
extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as no
other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth. Society
precedes government; creates it, and ought to control it; but
as far as we can look back in historic times we find the case
different; for government is no sooner created than it becomes
too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls
it. In later centuries the progress of civilization and of
intelligence has made the divergence so great as to produce civil wars
and revolutions; and it is nothing now but the want of harmony
between governments and societies which occasions all the uneasiness and
trouble and terror that we see abroad. It was this that brought
on the American Revolution. We threw off a Government not
adapted to our social system, and made one for ourselves. The
question is, how far have we succeeded? The South, so far as
that is concerned, is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous, but demands
to be let alone.
In all social systems there must be a class to do
the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is,
a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little
skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity.
Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which
leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes
the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you
might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the
one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the
South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A
race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in
docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her
purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them
slaves. We found them slaves by the common "consent of mankind,"
which, according to Cicero, "lex naturae est." The highest proof
of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South
yet; slave is a word discarded now by "ears polite;" I will
not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have
it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal.
The Senator from New York [William Seward] said
yesterday that the whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the
name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish
that. God only can do it when he repeals the fiat, "the poor
ye always have with you;" for the man who lives by daily labor, and
scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market,
and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling
class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially
slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired
for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging,
no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment
either. Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily
compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour
in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars
in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet
in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not think that whites
should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are
black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have
placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition
in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None
of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of
the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly
incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their
aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are
brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment
of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our
slaves do not vote. We give them no political power.
Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositaries [sic] of
all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret,
that the ballot-box is stronger than "an army with banners," and could
combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed,
your government overthrown, your property divided, not as they have mistakenly
attempted to initiate such proceedings by meeting in parks, with arms in their
hands, but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You have been
making war upon us to our very hearthstones. How would you like
for us to send lecturers and agitators North, to teach these people this, to
aid in combining, and to lead them? . . . .
Transient and temporary causes have thus far been
your preservation. The great West has been open to your surplus
population, and your hordes of semi-barbarian immigrants, who are crowding
in year by year. They make a great movement, and you call it
progress. Whither? It is progress; but it is
progress toward Vigilance Committees. The South have sustained you
in great measure. You are our factors. You fetch and
carry for us. One hundred and fifty million dollars of our
money passes annually through your hands. Much of it sticks;
all of it assists to keep your machinery together and in motion.
Suppose we were to discharge you; suppose we were to take our business
out of your hands; -- we should consign you to anarchy and poverty.
You complain of the rule of the South; that has been another cause that
has preserved you. We have kept the Government conservative to
the great purposes of the Constitution. We have placed it, and kept
it, upon the Constitution; and that has been the cause of your peace and
prosperity. The Senator from New York says that that is about to be
at an end; that you intend to take the Government from us; that it
will pass from our hands into yours. Perhaps what he says is
true; it may be; but do not forget -- it can never be forgotten --
it is written on the brightest page of human history -- that we, the
slaveholders of the South, took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling
her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, we surrendered her
to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in prosperity, incalculable
in her strength, the wonder and admiration of the world. Time
will show what you will make of her; but no time can diminish our glory
or your responsibility.
SOURCE: Reprinted in Selections from the
Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond, of South Carolina
(New York: John F. Trow & Co., 1866), pages 311-322.
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