vailed in
Missouri, these lands would soon be cultivated in cotton by free labor,
and its immense superiority over the servile system would soon be
demonstrated. Such a proof of the superiority of free over slave labor,
even in the culture of cotton, would soon have an immense effect in
reconciling the South to the disappearance of a system so fatal to her
own prosperity, and endangering so much the harmony and perpetuity of
the Union. This Missouri cotton would be nearer the North and Northwest
than that grown in any other part of the Southwest, and thus supplied at
a cheaper rate to our manufacturers, while opening new and augmented
markets for the provisions and breadstuffs of the Northwest. This cotton
would, in part, pass up the Ohio to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and
thence to New York, Philadelphia, and New England. It would also in part
pass through Indiana and Ohio by their railroads and canals. The great
central railroad of Illinois would carry large portions of it also from
Cairo to Chicago; but perhaps the largest portion eventually would pass
up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and enlarged canals to Chicago,
and thence eastward. With the proposed enlargement of the canal
connecting the Illinois river with Lake Michigan, and the enlargement of
the locks of the great Erie canal, extended by a similar enlargement of
the Chenango branch, and down the Susquehanna to tide water, cotton
steam propellers would carry the great staple by this route to the
Hudson and New England, to Baltimore or Philadelphia, at a rate much
lower than any other Southwestern cotton. The Mississippi would thus
have a _quintuple_ outlet, as well into the lakes and the Hudson, the
St. Lawrence, the Delaware, and Chesapeake, as into the Gulf of Mexico,
and Missouri would be united by new ties with the North, and Northwest,
as well as with the Middle States. Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo would become considerable
cotton depots, and slave labor would cease to monopolize the cotton
culture. But there are other considerations still more momentous.
Missouri extends from the 36th parallel to 40-1/2, and from the 89th
meridian to the 96th, thus embracing four degrees and a half of
latitude, and seven degrees of longitude. She fronts for many hundred
miles upon the great Mississippi, and commands its western shore; she
commands also the mouth of the Missouri river, and both its banks for
several hundred