ssessed, besides, certain
other traits which fitted him peculiarly to his hard lot and task. He was
of laborers the most patient, the most submissive, the most faithful, the
most cheerful. He was capable of the strongest affection and of making the
greatest sacrifices for those to whom he belonged. In his simple and
untutored heart there was no desire for vengeance, and in his brave black
hands he bore nothing but gifts to the South--gifts of golden leisure,
untold wealth, baronial pleasure and splendor, infinite service, and
withal, a phenomenal effacement of himself. Economically weak, yet
singularly favored by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, slave
labor flourished and expanded until at length it came into rough contact
and rivalry with modern industrialism as it leaped into life under the
magical influence of free institutions in the non-slaveholding half of
the Union.

It might be said that modern industrialism in America had its rise in
certain causes and circumstances which existed at the beginning of the
present century. It is well known how at that time almost the entire
commerce of the civilized world outside of Great Britain and her colonial
possessions was carried on under the American flag, in American bottoms,
and also how among British orders in council, Napoleon's Berlin and Milan
decrees and our own embargo and non-intercourse acts, retaliatory measures
adopted by our government, this splendid commerce was speedily and
effectually destroyed, and how finally this catastrophe produced in turn
our first industrial crisis under the Constitution. New England found
herself, in consequence, in great and widespread public distress, and her
large capital, erstwhile engaged in commercial ventures at vast profit,
became suddenly idle and non-productive. But it is an ill wind which blows
no good. So it was in the case of New England at this period. For the ill
wind which carried ruin to her commerce and want to hundreds of thousands
of people, carried also the seeds and small beginnings of all her
subsequent manufacturing greatness and prosperity. With the development of
manufactures, which now followed, and the diversifying of American
industries in the northern section of the Union, modern industrialism as a
tremendously aggressive social factor and system of free labor was
thereupon launched upon its long and stormy rivalry and struggle with
slave institutions and slave labor for the possession of the r