FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[4]The total number of square miles in Indian Reservations in 1918 was 53,490 as against 241,800 square miles in 1880. (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1918, p. 8.)[5]"The Indian of To-day," C. A. Eastman. New York, Doubleday, 1915, p. 4.[6]"The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 23.[7]Ibid., p. 24.[8]Ibid., p. 10.[9]"Referring to your inquiry of November 20, 1919, concerning the Cherokee Indian Reservation, you are advised that the Cherokee Indian country in the northeastern part of Oklahoma aggregated 4,420,068 acres."Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots, or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries, etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as provided by law."The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of."In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."—Letter from the Office of Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."[10]"The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 24.[11]See Bulletin 184, New York State Museum, Albany, 1916, p. 61.

[4]The total number of square miles in Indian Reservations in 1918 was 53,490 as against 241,800 square miles in 1880. (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1918, p. 8.)

[5]"The Indian of To-day," C. A. Eastman. New York, Doubleday, 1915, p. 4.

[6]"The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 23.

[7]Ibid., p. 24.

[8]Ibid., p. 10.

[9]"Referring to your inquiry of November 20, 1919, concerning the Cherokee Indian Reservation, you are advised that the Cherokee Indian country in the northeastern part of Oklahoma aggregated 4,420,068 acres."Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots, or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries, etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as provided by law."The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of."In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."—Letter from the Office of Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."

"Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots, or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries, etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as provided by law.

"The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of.

"In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."—Letter from the Office of Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."

[10]"The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 24.

[11]See Bulletin 184, New York State Museum, Albany, 1916, p. 61.

The American colonists took the land which they required for settlement from the Indians. The labor necessary to work this land was not so easily secured. The colonists had set themselves the task of establishing European civilization upon a virgin continent. In order to achieve this result, they had to cut the forests; clear the land; build houses; cultivate the soil; construct ships; smelt iron, and carry on a multitude of activities that were incidental to setting up an old way of life in a new world. The one supreme and immediate need was the need for labor power. From the earliest days of colonization there had been no lack of harbors, fertile soil, timber, minerals and other resources. From the earliest days the colonists experienced a labor shortage.

The labor situation was trebly difficult. First, there was no native labor; second, passage from Europe was so long and so hazardous that only the bold and venturesome were willing to attempt it, and third, when these adventurers did reach the new world, they had a choice between taking up free land and working it for themselves and taking service with a master. Men possessing sufficient initiative to leave an old home and make a journey across the sea were not the men to submit themselves to unnecessary authority when they might, at will, become masters of their own fortunes. The appeal of a new life was its own argument, and the newcomers struck out for themselves.

Throughout the colonies, and particularly in the South where the plantation culture of rice and tobacco, and later of cotton, called for large numbers of unskilled workers, the labor problem was acute. The abundance of raw materials and fertile land; the speedy growth of industry inthe North and of agriculture in the South; the generous profits and expanding markets created a labor demand which far outstripped the meager supply,—a demand that was met by the importation of black slaves from Africa.

The "Slave Coast" from which most of the Negroes came was discovered by Portuguese navigators, who were the first Europeans to venture down the West coast of Africa, and, rounding the "lobe" of the continent, to sail East along the "Gold Coast." The trade in gold and ivory which sprang up as a result of these early explorations led other nations of Europe to begin an eager competition which eventually brought French, Dutch, German, Danish and English commercial interests into sharp conflict with the Portuguese.

Ships sailing from the Gold Coast for home ports made a practice of picking up such slaves as they could easily secure. By 1450 the number reaching Portugal each year was placed at 600 or 700.[12]From this small and quite incidental beginning there developed a trade which eventually supplied Europe, the West Indies, North America and South America with black slaves.

Along the "Slave Coast," which extended from Cape Verde on the North to Cape St. Martha on the South, and in the hinterland there lived Negroes of varying temperaments and of varying standards of culture. Some of them were fierce and warlike. Others were docile and amenable to discipline. The former made indifferent slaves; the latter were eagerly sought after. "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and submissive."[13]

The natives of the Slave Coast had made some notable cultural advances. They smelted metals; made pottery; wove; manufactured swords and spears of merit; built houses of stone and of mud, and made ornaments of some artistic value. They had developed trade with the interior, taking salt from the coast and bartering it for gold, ivory and other commodities at regular "market places."

The native civilization along the West coast of Africa was far from ideal, but it was a civilization which had established itself and which had made progress during historic times. It was a civilization that had evolved language; arts and crafts; tribal unity; village life, and communal organization. This native African civilization, in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was confronted by an insatiable demand for black slaves. The conflicts that resulted from the efforts to supply that demand revolutionized and virtually destroyed all that was worthy of preservation in the native culture.

When the whites first went to the Slave Coast there was comparatively little slavery among the natives. Some captives, taken in war; some debtors, unable to meet their obligations, and some violators of religious rites, were held by the chief or the headman of the tribe. On occasion he would sell these slaves, but the slave trade was never established as a business until the white man organized it.

The whites came, and with guile and by force they persuaded and compelled the natives to permit the erection of forts and of trading posts. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1482, the whites began their work with rum and finished it with gun-powder. Rum destroyed the stamina of the native; gun-powder rendered his intertribal wars more destructive. These two agencies of European civilization combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal life.

The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of cruelty, but they could anddid give them lessons in cunning, trickery and double dealing. Early in the history of the Gold Coast the whites began using the natives to make war on commercial rivals. In one famous instance, "the Dutch had instigated the King of Fetu to refuse the Assins permission to pass through his territory. These people used to bring a great deal of gold to Cape Coast Castle (English), and the Dutch hoped in this way to divert the trade to their own settlements. The King having complied and plundered some of the traders on the way down, the Assins declared war against him and were assisted by the English with arms and ammunition. The King of Sabol was also paid to help them, and the allied army (20,000 strong) inflicted a crushing defeat on the Fetus."[14]

On another occasion, the Dutch were worsted in a war with some of the native tribes. Realizing that if they were to maintain themselves on the Coast they must raise an army as quickly as possible, they approached the Fetus and bargained with them to take the field and fight the Komendas until they had utterly exterminated them, on payment of $4,500. But no sooner had this arrangement been made than the English paid the Fetus an additional $4,500 to remain neutral![15]

Before 1750, when the competition for the slaves was less keen, and the supply came nearer to meeting the demand, the slavers were probably as honest in this as they were in any other trade with the natives. The whites encouraged and incited the native tribes to make war upon one another for the benefit of the whites. The whites fostered kidnaping, slavery and the slave trade. The natives were urged to betray one another, and the whites took advantage of their treachery. During the four hundred years that the African slave trade was continued, it was the whites who encouraged it; fostered it; and backed it financially. The slave trade was a white man's trade,carried on under conditions as far removed from the conditions of ordinary African life as the manufacturing and trading of Europe were removed from the manufacturing and trading of the Africans.

With the pressing demand from the Americas for a generous supply of black slaves, the business of securing them became one of the chief commercial activities of the time. "The trade bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective sovereign."[16]

The catching, holding and shipping of Negroes on the African coast was the means by which the demand for slaves was met. With a few minor exceptions, the whites did not engage directly in slave catching. In most instances they bought their slaves from native brokers who lived in the coast towns. The brokers, in turn, received their slaves from the interior, where they were captured during wars, by professional raiding parties, well supplied with arms and ammunition. Slave-catching, begun as a kidnaping of individuals, developed into a large-scale traffic that provided the revenue of the more war-like natives. Villages were attacked and burned, and whole tribes were destroyed or driven off to the slave-pens on the coast. After 1750, for nearly a hundred years, the demand for slaves was so great and the profits were so large that no pains were spared to secure them.

The Slave Coast native was compelled to choose between being a slave-catcher or a slave. As a slave-catcher he spread terror and destruction among his fellows, seized them and sold them to white men. As a slave he made the long journey across the Atlantic.

The number of slaves carried away from Africa is variously estimated. Claridge states that "the Guinea Coast as a whole supplied as many as from 70,000 to 100,000 yearly" in 1700.[17]Bogart estimates the number of slaves secured as 2,500 per year in 1700; 15,000 to 20,000 per year from 1713 to 1753; in 1771, 47,000 carried by British ships alone; and in 1768 the slaves shipped from the African coast numbered 97,000.[18]Add to these numbers those who were killed in the raids; those who died in the camps, where the mortality was very high, and those who committed suicide. The total represents the disturbing influence that the slave trade introduced into the native African civilization.

In the early years of the trade the ships were small and carried only a few hundred Negroes at most. As the trade grew, larger and faster ships were built with galleries between the decks. On these galleries the blacks were forced to lie with their feet outboard—ironed together, two and two, with the chains fastened to staples in the deck. "They were squeezed so tightly together that the average space allowed to each one was but 16 inches by five and a half feet."[19]The galleries were frequently made of rough lumber, not tightly joined. Later, when the trade was outlawed, the slaves were stowed away out of sight on loose shelves over the cargo. "Where the 'tween decks space was two feet high or more, the slaves were stowed sitting up in rows, one crowded into the lap of another, and with legs on legs, like rider on a crowded toboggan." (Spears, p. 71.) There they stayed for the weeks or the months of the voyage. "In storms the sailors had to put on the hatches and seal tight the openings into the infernal cesspool." (Spears, p. 71.) The odor of a slaver was often unmistakable at a distance of five miles down wind.

The terrible revolt of the slaves in the West Indies, beginning in 1781, gave the growing anti-slavery sentiment an immense impetus. It also gave the slave owners pause. The cotton-gin had not yet been invented. Slavery was on a shifty economic basis in the South. Great Britain passed the first law to limit the slave trade in 1788; the United States outlawed the trade in 1794. In 1824 Great Britain declared the slave trade piracy. During these years, and during the years that followed, until the last slaver left New York Harbor in 1863, the trade continued under the American flag, in swift, specially constructed American-built ships.

As the restrictions upon the trade became more severe in the face of an increasing demand for slaves, "the fitting out of slavers developed into a flourishing business in the United States, and centered in New York City."The New York Journal of Commercenotes in 1857 that "down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption for an indefinite number of years." A writer in theContinental Monthlyfor January, 1862, says:—"The city of New York has been until of late the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Boston and Portland, are only second to her in distinction." During the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have fitted out in New York Harbor and these ships alone had a capacity to transport from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves a year.[20]

The merchants of the North pursued the slave trade so relentlessly because it paid such enormous profits on the capital outlay. Some of the voyages went wrong, but the trade, on the whole, netted immense returns. At the end of the eighteenth century a good ship, fitted to carry from 300 to 400 slaves, could be built for about $35,000. Such a ship would make a clear profit of from $30,000 to $100,000 in a single voyage. Some of them made as many as fivevoyages before they became so foul that they had to be abandoned.[21]While some voyages were less profitable than others, there was no avenue of international trade that offered more alluring possibilities.

Sanctioned by potentates, blessed by the church, and surrounded with the garments of respectability, the slave trade grew, until, in the words of Samuel Hopkins (1787), "The trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has depended.... By it the inhabitants have gotten most of their wealth and riches." (Spears, p. 20.) After the vigorous measures taken by the British Government for its suppression, the slave trade was carried on chiefly in American-built ships; officered by American citizens; backed by American capital, and under the American flag.

The slave trade was the business of the North as slavery was the business of the South. Both flourished until the Proclamation of Emancipation in 1863.

Slavery and the slave trade date from the earliest colonial times. The first slaves in the English colonies were brought to Jamestown in 1619 by a Dutch ship. The first American-built slave ship was theDesire, launched at Marblehead in 1636. There were Negro slaves in New York as early as 1626, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the colonies prior to 1650.

Since slave labor is economical only where the slaves can be worked together in gangs, there was never much slavery among the farmers and small business men of the North. On the other hand, in the South, the developing plantation system made it possible for the owner to use large gangs of slaves in the clearing of new land; in the raising oftobacco, and in caring for rice and cotton. The plantation system of agriculture and the cotton gin made slavery the success that it was in the United States. "The characteristic American slave, indeed, was not only a Negro, but a plantation workman."[22]

The opening years of the nineteenth century found slavery intrenched over the whole territory of the United States that lay South of the Mason and Dixon line. In that territory slave trading and slave owning were just as much a matter of course as horse trading and horse owning were a matter of course in the North. "Every public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each city there were brokers, buying them to sell again, and handling them on commission."[23]

The position of the broker is indicated in the following typical bill of sale which was published in Charleston, S. C., in 1795. "Gold Coast Negroes. On Thursday, the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the exchange ... the remainder of the cargo of negroes imported in the shipSuccess, Captain John Conner, consisting chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to the climate."[24]

Such a bill of sale attracted no more attention at that time than a similar bill advertising cattle attracts to-day.

During the early colonial days, the slaves were better fed and provided for than were the indentured servants. They were of greater money value and, particularly in the later years when slavery became the mainstay of Southern agriculture, a first class Negro, acclimated, healthy, willing and trustworthy, was no mean asset.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century slavery began to show itself unprofitable in the South. The best and mostaccessible land was exhausted. Except for the rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia, slavery was not paying. The Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention, with the exception of the delegates from these states, were prepared to abolish the slave trade. Some of them were ready to free their own slaves. Then came the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of the cotton kingdom. The amount of raw cotton consumed by England was 13,000 bales in 1781; 572,000 bales in 1820; and 3,366,000 bales in 1860. During that period, the South was almost the sole source of supply.

The attitude of the South, confronted by this wave of slave prosperity, underwent a complete change. Her statesmen had consented, between 1808 and 1820, to severe restrictive laws directed towards the slave trade. After cotton became king, slaves rose rapidly in price; land, once used and discarded, was again brought under cultivation; cotton-planting spread rapidly into the South and Southwest; Texas was annexed; the Mexican War was fought; an agitation was begun for the annexation of Cuba, and Calhoun (1836) declared that he "ever should regret that this term (piracy) had been applied" to the slave trade in our laws.[25]

The change of sentiment corresponded with the changing value of the slaves. Phillips publishes a detailed table of slave values in which he estimates that an unskilled, able-bodied young slave man was worth $300 in 1795; $500 to $700 in 1810; $700 to $1200 to in 1840; and $1100 to $1800 in 1860.[26]The factors which resulted in the increased slave prices were the increased demand for cotton, the increased demand for slaves, and the decrease in the importation of negroes due to the greater severity of the prohibitions on the slave trade.

The American colonists needed labor to develop the wilderness. White labor was scarce and high, so the colonists turned to slave labor performed by imported blacks. The merchants of the North built the ships and carried on the slave trade at an immense profit. The plantation owners of the South exploited the Negroes after they reached the states.

The continuance of the slave trade and the provision of a satisfactory supply of slaves for the Southern market depended upon slave-catching in Africa, which, in turn, involved the destruction of an entire civilization. This work of destruction was carried forward by the leading commercial nations of the world. During nearly 250 years the English speaking inhabitants of America took an active part in the business of enslaving, transporting and selling black men. These Americans—citizens of the United States—bought stolen Negroes on the African coast; carried them against their will across the ocean; sold them into slavery, and then, on the plantations, made use of their enforced labor.

Both slavery and the slave trade were based on a purely economic motive—the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the American people helped to depopulate villages,—to devastate, burn, murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an impassable barrier to alien shores.

FOOTNOTES:[12]"History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 39.[13]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1908, p. 43.[14]"A History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 144.[15]Ibid., p. 150.[16]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 20.[17]"History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 172.[18]"Economic History of the U. S.," E. L. Bogart. New York, Longmans, 1910 ed., p. 84-5.[19]"The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 69.[20]"The Suppression of the American Slave Trade," W. E. B. DuBois. New York, Longmans, 1896, p. 178-9.[21]"The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 84-5.[22]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. VII.[23]Ibid., p. 190.[24]Ibid., p. 40.[25]Benton, "Abridgment of Debates." XII, p. 718.[26]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 370.

[12]"History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 39.

[13]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1908, p. 43.

[14]"A History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 144.

[15]Ibid., p. 150.

[16]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 20.

[17]"History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 172.

[18]"Economic History of the U. S.," E. L. Bogart. New York, Longmans, 1910 ed., p. 84-5.

[19]"The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 69.

[20]"The Suppression of the American Slave Trade," W. E. B. DuBois. New York, Longmans, 1896, p. 178-9.

[21]"The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 84-5.

[22]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. VII.

[23]Ibid., p. 190.

[24]Ibid., p. 40.

[25]Benton, "Abridgment of Debates." XII, p. 718.

[26]"American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 370.

The English colonists in America occupied only the narrow strip of country between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic Ocean. The interior was inhabited by the Indians, and claimed by the French, the Spanish and the British, but neither possession nor legal title carried weight with the stream of pioneers that was making a path into the "wilderness," crying its slogan,—"Westward, Ho!" as it moved toward the setting sun. The first objective of the pioneers was the Ohio Valley; the second was the valley of the Mississippi; the third was the Great Plains; the fourth was the Pacific slope, with its golden sands. Each one of these objectives developed itself out of the previous conquest.

The settlers who made their way across the mountains into the valley of the Ohio, found themselves in a land of plenty. The game was abundant; the soil was excellent, and soon they were in a position to offer their surplus products for sale. These products could not be successfully transported across the mountains, but they could be floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi—a natural roadway to the sea. But beside the Indians, who claimed all of the land for their own, there were the Spaniards at New Orleans, doing everything in their power to prevent the American Colonists from building up a successful river commerce.

The frontiersmen were able to push back the Indians. The Spanish garrisons presented a more serious obstacle. New Orleans was a well fortified post that could be provisioned from the sea. Behind it, therefore, lay the whole power of the Spanish fleet. The right of navigation was finally obtained in the Treaty of 1795. Still frictioncontinued with the Spanish authorities and serious trouble was averted only by the transfer of Louisiana, first to the French (1800) and then by them to the United States (1803). Napoleon had agreed, when he secured this territory from the Spaniards, not to turn it over to the United States. A pressing need of funds, however, led him to strike an easy bargain with the American government which was negotiating for the control of the mouth of the Mississippi. Napoleon insisted that the United States take, not only the mouth of the river, but also the territory to the West which he saw would be useless without this outlet. After some hesitation, Jefferson and his advisers accepted the offer and the Louisiana Purchase was consummated.

The Louisiana Purchase gave the young American nation what it needed—a place in the sun. The colonists had taken land for their early requirements from the Indians who inhabited the coastal plain. They had enslaved the Negroes and thus had secured an ample supply of cheap labor. Now, the pressure of population, and the restless, pioneer spirit of those early days, led out into the West.

Until 1830 immigration was not a large factor in the increase of the colonial population, but the birth-rate was prodigious. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, Franklin estimated that the average family had eight children. There were sections of the country where the population doubled, by natural increase, once in 23 years. Indeed, the entire population of the United States was increasing at a phenomenal rate. The census of 1800 showed 5,308,483 persons in the country. Twenty years later the population was 9,638,453—an increase of 81 per cent. By 1840 the population was reported as 17,069,453—an increase of 77 per cent over 1820, and of 221 per cent over 1800.

The small farmers and tradesmen of the North were settling up the Northwest Territory. The plantation owners of the South, operating on a large scale, and with the wasteful methods that inevitably accompany slavery, were clamoring for new land to replace the tracts that had beenexhausted by constant recropping with no attempt at fertilization.

Cotton had been enthroned in the South since the invention of the cotton gin in 1792. With the resumption of European trade relations in 1815 the demand for cotton and for cotton lands increased enormously. There was one, and only one logical way to meet this demand—through the possession of the Southwest.

The pioneers had already broken into the Southwest in large numbers. While Spain still held the Mississippi, there were eager groups of settlers pressing against the frontier which the Spanish guarded so jealously against all comers. The Louisiana Purchase met the momentary demand, but beyond the Louisiana Purchase, and between the settlers and the rich lands of Texas lay the Mexican boundary. The tide of migration into this new field hurled itself against the Mexican border in the same way that an earlier generation had rolled against the frontier of Louisiana.

The attitude of these early settlers is described with sympathetic accuracy by Theodore Roosevelt. "Louisiana was added to the United States because the hardy backwoods settlers had swarmed into the valleys of the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio by hundreds of thousands.... Restless, adventurous, hardy, they looked eagerly across the Mississippi to the fertile solitudes where the Spaniard was the nominal, and the Indian the real master; and with a more immediate longing they fiercely coveted the Creole provinces at the mouth of the river."[27]This fierce coveting could have only one possible outcome—the colonists got what they wanted.

The speed with which the Southwest rushed into prominence as a factor in national affairs is indicated by its contribution to the cotton-crop. In 1811 the states and territories from Alabama and Tennessee westward produced one-sixteenth of the cotton grown in the United States. In 1820 they produced a third; in 1830, a half; and by 1860, three-quarters of the cotton raised. At the same time, the population of the Alabama-Mississippi territory was:—

Thus thirty years saw an increase of nearly seven-fold in the population of this region.[28]

Meanwhile, slavery had become the issue of the day. The slave power was in control of the Federal Government, and in order to maintain its authority, it needed new slave states to offset the free states that were being carved out of the Northwest.

Here were three forces—first the desire of the frontiersmen for "elbow room"; second the demand of King Cotton for unused land from which the extravagant plantation system might draw virgin fertility and third, the necessity that was pressing the South to add territory in order to hold its power. All three forces impelled towards the Southwest, and it was thither that population pressed in the years following 1820.

Mexico lay to the Southwest, and therefore Mexico became the object of American territorial ambitions. The district now known as Texas had constituted a part of the Louisiana Purchase (1803); had been ceded to Spain (1819); had been made the object of negotiations looking towards itspurchase in 1826; had revolted against Mexico and been recognized as an independent state in 1835.

Texas had been settled by Americans who had secured the permission of the Mexican Government to colonize. These settlers made no effort to conceal their opposition to the Mexican Government, with which they were entirely out of sympathy. Many of them were seeking territory in which slavery might be perpetuated, and they introduced slaves into Texas in direct violation of the Mexican Constitution. The Americans did not go to Texas with any idea of becoming Mexican subjects; on the contrary, as soon as they felt themselves strong enough, they declared their independence of Mexico, and began negotiations for the annexation of Texas to the United States.

The Texan struggle for independence from Mexico was cordially welcomed in all parts of the United States, but particularly in the South. Despite the protests of Mexico, public meetings were held; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted and equipped, and supplies and munitions were sent for the assistance of the Texans in ships openly fitted out in New Orleans.

No sooner had the Texans established a government than the campaign for annexation was begun. The advocates of annexation—principally Southerners—argued in favor of adding so rich and so logical a prize to the territory of the United States, citing the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida as precedents. Their opponents, first on constitutional grounds and then on grounds of public policy, argued against annexation.

Opinion in the South was greatly aroused. Despite the fact that many of her foremost statesmen were against annexation, some of the Southern newspapers even went so far as to threaten the dissolution of the Union if the treaty of ratification failed to pass the Senate.

The campaign of 1844 was fought on the issue of annexation and the election of James K. Polk was a pledge that Texas should be annexed to the United States. Duringthe campaign, the line of division on annexation had been a party line—Democrats favoring; Whigs opposing. Between the election and the passage of the joint resolution by which annexation was consummated, it became a sectional issue,—Southern Whigs favoring annexation and Northern Democrats opposing it.

So strong was the protest against annexation, that the treaty could not command the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate. The matter was disposed of by the passage of a joint resolution (March 1, 1845) which required only a majority vote in both houses of Congress. President Polk therefore took office with the mandate of the country and the decision of both houses of the retiring Congress, in favor of annexation.

Mexico, in the meantime, had offered to recognize the independence of Texas and to make peace with her if the Texas Congress would reject the joint resolution, and refuse the proffered annexation. This the Texas Congress refused, and with the passage, by that body, of an act providing for annexation, the Mexican minister was withdrawn from Washington, and Mexico began her preparations for war.

President Polk had taken office with the avowed intention of buying California from Mexico. The rupture threatened to prevent him from carrying this plan into effect. He therefore sent an unofficial representative to Mexico in an effort to restore friendly relations. Failing in that, he and his advisers determined upon war as the only feasible method of obtaining California and of settling the diplomatic tangle involved in the annexation of Texas.

The Polk Administration made the Mexican War as a part of its expansionist policy.

"Although that unfortunate country (Mexico) had officially notified the United States that the annexation ofTexas would be treated as a cause of war, so constant were the internal quarrels in Mexico that open hostilities would have been avoided had the conduct of the Administration been more honorable. That was the opinion of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and Tyler.... Mexico was actually goaded on to war. The principle of the manifest destiny of this country was invoked as a reason for the attempt to add to our territory at the expense of Mexico."[29]

After the annexation of Texas it became the duty of the United States to defend that state against the threatened Mexican invasion.

Mexican troops had occupied the southern bank of the Rio Grande. General Zachary Taylor with a small force, moved to a position on the Nueces River. Between the two rivers lay a strip of territory the possession of which was one of the sources of dispute between Mexico and Texas. What followed may be stated in the words of one of the officers who participated in the expedition: "The presence of the United States troops on the edge of the territory farthest from the Mexican settlements was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico begin it" (p. 41). "Mexico showing no willingness to come to the Nueces to drive the invaders from her soil, it became necessary for the 'invaders' to approach to within a convenient distance to be struck. Accordingly, preparations were begun for moving the army to the Rio Grande, to a point near Matamoras. It was desirable to occupy a position near the largest center of population possible to reach without actually invading territory to which we set up no claim whatever" (p. 45).[30]

The occupation, by the United States troops, of the disputed territory soon led to a clash in which several United States soldiers were killed. The incident was taken by the President as a sufficient cause for the declaration of astate of war. The House complied readily with his wishes, passing the necessary resolution. Several members of the Senate begged for a delay during which the actual state of affairs might be ascertained. The President insisted, however, and the war was declared (May 13, 1846).

The declaration of war was welcomed with wild enthusiasm in the South. Meetings were called; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted, equipped and despatched in all haste to the scene of the conflict.

The North was less eager. There were protests, petitions, demonstrations. Many of the leaders of northern opinion took a public stand against the war. But the news of the first victories sent the country mad with an enthusiasm in which the North joined the South.

The United States troops, during the Mexican War, won brilliant—almost unbelievable successes—against superior forces and in the face of immense natural obstacles. Had the war been less of a military triumph there must have been a far more widely-heard protest from Polk's enemies in the North. Successful beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters, the victorious war carried its own answer to those who questioned the worthiness of the cause. Within two years, the whole of Mexico was under the military control of the United States, and that country was in a position to dictate its own terms.

The demands of the United States were mild to the extent of generosity. Under the treaty the annexation of Texas was validated; New Mexico and Upper California were ceded to the United States; the lower Rio Grande was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas, and in considerations of these additions to its territory, the United States agreed to pay Mexico fifteen millions of dollars.

Under this plan, Mexico was paid for territory that she did not need and could not use, while the United States gave a money consideration for the title to land that was already hers by right of conquest, and of which she was in actual possession.

The details of the treaty are relatively unimportant. The outstanding fact is that Mexico was in possession of certain territory that the ruling power in the United States wanted, and that ruling power took what it wanted by force of arms. "The war was one of conquest in the interest of an institution." It was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."[31]

Congressman A. P. Gardner of Massachusetts summarized the matter very pithily in his debate with Morris Hillquit (New York, April 2, 1915), "We assisted Texas to get away from Mexico and then we proceeded to annex Texas. Plainly and bluntly stated, our purpose was to get some territory for American development." (Stenographic report in theNew York Call, April 11, 1915.)

The work of conquering the Southwest was not completed by the termination of the war. Mexico ceded the territory—in the neighborhood of a million square miles—but she was giving away something that she had never possessed. Mexico claimed title to land that was occupied by the Indians. She had never conquered it; never settled it; never developed it. Her sovereignty was of the same shadowy sort that Spain had exercised over the country before the Mexican revolution.

The new owners of the Southwest had a very different purpose in mind. No empty title would satisfy them. They intended to use the land. The Indians—already in possession—resented the encroachments of the invaders, but they fared no better than the Mexicans, or than their red-skinned brothers who had contended for the right to fish and hunt along their home streams in the Appalachians. The Indians of the Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to them were the merestpastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the trader and the settler.

The Mexican War was a slight affair, involving a relatively small outlay in men and money. The total number of American soldiers killed in the war was 1,721; the wounded were 4,102; the deaths from accident and disease were 11,516, making total casualties of 5,823 and total losses of 15,618.[32]

The money cost of the Mexican War—the army and navy appropriations for the years 1846 to 1849 inclusive—was $119,624,000. Obviously the net cost of the war was less than this gross total,—how much less it is impossible to say.

No satisfactory figures are available to show the cost in men and money of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. "From 1849 to 1865, the government expended $30,000,000 in the subjugation of the Indians in the territories of New Mexico and Arizona."[33]Their character may be gauged by noting from the "Historical Register" (Vol. 2, p. 281-2) the losses sustained in the four Indian Wars of which a record is preserved. In the Northwest Indian Wars (1790 to 1795) 896 persons were killed and 436 were wounded; in the Seminole War (1817 to 1818) 46 were killed and 36 were wounded; in the Black Hawk War (1831-2) the killed were 26 and the wounded 39; in the Seminole War (1835-1842) 383 were killed and 557 wounded. These were among the most serious of the Indian Wars and in all of them the cost in life and limb was small. Judged on this standard, the losses in the Southwest, during the Indian Wars, were, at most, trifling. The total outlay that was involved in the conquest of the vast domain would not have covered one first class battle of the Great War, and yet this outlay addedto the territory of the United States something like a million square miles containing some of the richest and most productive portions of the earth's surface.

This domain was won by a process of military conquest; it was taken from the Mexicans and the Indians by force of arms. In order to acquire it, it was necessary to drive whole tribes from their villages; to burn; to maim; to kill. "St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen and Spaniards; we did not found them but we conquered them." "The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners" (p. 26). "The winning of the West and the Southwest is a stage in the conquest of a continent" (p. 27). "This great westward movement of armed settlers was essentially one of conquest, no less than of colonization" (p. 370).[34]None of the possessors of this territory were properly armed or equipped for effective warfare. All of them fell an easy prey to the organized might of the Government of the United States.

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