ays, "into a hive of industry." The then rapid demand for cotton
operated in time as a stimulus to its production in America. Increased
productivity raised the value of slave property and slave soil. But the
slow and tedious hand method of separating the fiber of the cotton bulb
from the seed greatly limited the ability of the Cotton States to meet
and satisfy the fast growing demand of the English manufacturers, until
Eli Whitney, in 1793, by an ingenious invention solved the problem of
supply for these States. The cotton gin was not long in proving itself
the other half--the other hand of the spinning machine.

From that year the slave interests of the South rose in market value,
and its industrial system assumed unexpected importance in the economic
world. The increased production of cotton led directly to increased
demand for slave labor and slave soil. The increased demand for slave
labor the Constitutional provision relating to the African slave trade
operated in part to satisfy. The increased demand for slave soil was
likewise satisfied by the cession to the United States by Georgia and
North Carolina of the Southwest Territory, with provisos practically
securing it to slavery. Out of this new national territory were
subsequently carved the slave States of Tennessee, Mississippi, and
Alabama.

Slave soil unlike free soil, is incapable of sustaining a dense
population. Slave labor calls for large spaces within which to multiply
and prosper. The purchase of Louisiana and the acquisition of Florida
met this agrarian necessity on the part of the South. Immense, unsettled
areas thus fell to the lot of the slave system at the crisis of its
material expansion and prosperity. The domestic slave-trade under the
impetus of settling these vast regions according to the plantation
principle, became an enormous and spreading industry. The crop of slaves
was not less profitable than the crop of cotton. A Southern white man
had but to buy a score of slaves and a few hundred acres to get "rich
beyond the dreams of avarice." So at least calculated the average
Southern man.

This revival of slavery disappointed the humane expectation of its
decline and ultimate extinction entertained by the founders of the
republic. It built up instead a growing and formidable slave class, and
interest in the Union. With the rise of giant slave interests, there
followed the rise of a power devoted to their encouragement and
protection.

Three