he United States, and but 500,000 exported. Cotton never could have
become an article of much commercial importance under the old method of
preparing it for market. By hand-picking, or by a process strictly
_manual_, a cultivator could not prepare for market, during the year,
more than from 200 to 300 pounds; being only about one-tenth of what he
could cultivate to maturity in the field. In '93 Mr. Whitney invented
the Cotton-gin now in use, by which the labor of at least _one thousand_
hands under the old system, is performed by _one_, in preparing the crop
for market. Seven years after the invention (1800) 35,000,000 pounds
were raised, and 17,800,000 exported. In 1834, 460,000,000 were
raised--384,750,000 exported. Such was the effect of Mr. Whitney's
invention. It gave, at once, extraordinary value to the _land_ in that
part of the country where alone cotton could be raised; and to _slaves_,
because it was the general, the almost universal, impression that the
cultivation of the South could be carried on only by slaves. There being
no _free_ state in the South, competition between free and slave labor
never could exist on a scale sufficiently extensive to prove the
superiority of the former in the production of cotton, and in the
preparation of it for market.

Thus, it has happened that Mr. Whitney has been the innocent occasion of
giving to slavery in this country its present importance--of magnifying
it into the great interest to which all others must yield. How he was
rewarded by the South--especially by the planters of Georgia--the reader
may see by consulting Silliman's Journal for January, 1832, and the
Encyclopedia Americana, article, WHITNEY.

* * * * *

APPENDIX E.

It is impossible, of course, to pronounce with precision, how great
would have been the effect in favor of emancipation, if the effort to
resist the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding state had been
successful. We can only conjecture what it would have been, by the
effect its admission has had in fostering slavery up to its present huge
growth and pretensions. If the American people had shown, through their
National legislature, a _sincere_ opposition to slavery by the rejection
of Missouri, it is probable at least--late as it was--that the early
expiration of the 'system' would, by this time, have been discerned
by all men.

When the Constitution was formed, the state of public sentiment even in
the Sou