products
was $70,000,000; that 100,000 male and female operatives were employed,
and that quite 700,000 bales of cotton, worth at least $35,000,000, were
spun and woven. America possessed, also, a number of woolen
manufactories, which employed about the same period 39,252 hands.

The American people, then as now, believed in religion and education as
the corner-stones of liberty's temple. The population of 23,000,000 in
1850 had 36,221 churches and chapels, with accommodation for 13,967,449
persons--a large accommodation for a new country whose population had
spread so rapidly over so extensive an area. Of the youth nearly
4,000,000 were receiving instruction in the various educational
institutions. The teachers numbered 115,000, and colleges and schools
nearly 100,000. America had upward of seventy theological schools;
forty-four medical and surgical schools; nineteen schools of law, and ten
schools of practical science and extensive libraries were attached to
nearly all of these institutions.

Never had the future of our nation seemed more promising than at the very
time when the cloud of slavery began to darken the bright horizon,
gradually overspreading the heavens until it burst in the storm of
secession.

The Slavery Conflict.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Aggressiveness of Slavery--The Cotton States and Border States--The
Fugitive Slave Law--Nullified in the North--Negroes Imported from
Africa--The Struggle in Kansas--John Brown--Abraham Lincoln Pleads for
Human Rights--Treason in Buchanan's Cabinet--Citizens Stop Guns at
Pittsburg--Conditions at the Beginning of the Struggle--Southern
Advantages--The Soldiers of Both Armies Compared--Conscription in the
Confederacy--Southern Resources Limited--The North at a Disadvantage at
First, but Its Resources Inexhaustible--Conscription in the North--
Popular Support of the War--Unfriendliness of Great Britain and
France--Why They Did Not Interfere.

Slavery could not stand still. The Cotton States, so-called, which
suffered least from the escape of slaves were the most aggressive in
demanding a Fugitive Slave Law, while the Border States, where escapes
were frequent, were not nearly as aggressive as their Southern neighbors.
Attachment to slavery in the Cotton States had become a passion,
springing from self-interest, but stronger than self-interest; while in
the Border States the slaveholders were affected by propinquity to free
communities, and the calculation