Diary in America, Series Two. Фредерик Марриет
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they will continue to advance in population, and to increase in wealth. I refer not to the Slave States bordering on the Mississippi, although I consider that they would suffer little from a war, as neither England, nor any other nation, will ever be so unwise in future as to attack in a quarter, where she would have extended the olive branch, even if it were not immediately accepted. Whether America is engaged in war, therefore, or remains in peace, the Western States must, and will soon be the arbiters, and dictate as they please to the Eastern.
At present, they may be considered as infants, not yet of age, and the Eastern States are their guardians; the profits of their produce are divided between them and the merchants of the Eastern cities, who receive at least thirty per cent. as their share. This must be the case at present, when the advances of the Eastern capitalists are required by the cotton growers, who are precisely in the same position with the Eastern States, as the West India planters used to be with the merchants of London and Liverpool, to whom they consigned their cargoes for advances received. But the Western States (to follow up the metaphor) will soon be of age, and no longer under control: even last year, vessels were freighted direct from England to Vicksburg, on the Mississippi; in a few years, there will be large importing houses in the Far West, who will have their goods direct from England at one half the price which they now pay for them, when forwarded from New York, by canal, and other conveyances. (See Note 4.) Indeed, a very little inquiry will prove, that the prosperity of the Eastern free States depends in a great measure upon the Western and Southern. The Eastern States are the receivers and transporters of goods, and the carriers of most of the produce of the Union. They advance money on the crops, and charge high interest, commissions, etcetera. The transport and travelling between the Eastern, Southern, and Western States, are one great source of this prosperity, from the employment on the canals, rail roads, and steam boats.
All these are heavy charges to the Western States, and can be avoided by shipping direct from, and sending their produce direct to, the Old Continent. As the Western States advance in wealth, so will they advance in power, and in proportion as they so do, will the Eastern States recede, until they will be left in a small minority, and will eventually have little voice in the Union.
Here, then, is a risk of convulsion; for the clashing of interests, next to a war, is the greatest danger to which a democracy can be exposed. In a democracy, every one legislates, and every one legislates for his own interests. The Eastern States will still be wealthy and formidable, from their population; but the commerce of the principal Eastern cities will decrease, and they will have little or no staple produce to return to England, or elsewhere, whereas the Western States can produce every thing that the heart of man can desire, and can be wholly independent of them. They have, in the West, every variety of coal and mineral, to a boundless extent; a rich alluvial soil, hardly to be exhausted by bad cultivation, and wonderful facilities of transport; independent of the staple produce of cotton, they might supply the whole world with grain; sugar they already cultivate; the olive flourishes; wine is already produced on the banks of the Ohio, and the prospect of raising silk is beyond calculation. In a few days, the manufactures of the Old World can find their way from the mouth of the Mississippi by its thousand tributary streams, which run like veins through every portion of the country, to the confines of Arkansas and Missouri, to the head of navigation at St. Peter’s, on again to Wisconsin, Michigan, and to the Northern lakes, at a much cheaper rate than they are supplied at present.
One really is lost in admiration when one surveys this great and glorious Western country, and contemplates the splendour and riches to which it must ultimately arrive.
As soon as the Eastern States are no longer permitted to remain the factors of the Western, they must be content to become manufacturing states, and probably will compete with England. The Western States, providentially, I may say, are not likely to be manufacturers to any great extent, since they have not water powers; the valley of the Mississippi is an alluvial flat, and although the Missouri and Mississippi are swift streams, in general the rivers are sluggish, and, at all events, they have not the precipitate falls of water necessary for machinery, and which abound in the North-eastern States; indeed, if the Western States were to attempt to manufacture, as well as to produce, they would spoil the market for their own produce. Whatever may be the result, whether the Eastern States submit quietly to be shorn of their greatness, (a change which must take place,) or to contest the point until it ends in a separation, this is certain, that the focus of American wealth and power will eventually be firmly established in the Free States on the other side of the Alleghany mountains.
Note 1. I was once conversing with one who was formerly very popular with the democrats, but who was likely to be outset by another demagogue, who “went the whole hog,” down to the Agrarian system. “Captain,” said he, with his fist clenched, “I’m the very personification of democracy, but I’m out-Heroded by this fellow. The emigrants are a pack of visionaries, who don’t know what they want. The born Americans I can deal with, but with these newcomers democracy is not sufficient; they want a mobocracy, and I suppose we must have it.”—“You have it now,” replied I.—“Well, captain, I believe you’re right.”
Note 2. I don’t know why, but there is no scrutiny of the votes in American elections, or if there be, I never heard of one being made.
Note 3. “The young men of New England migrate in large numbers to the west, leaving an over proportion of female population, the amount of which I never could learn. Statements were made to me, but so incredible that I withhold them. Suffice it, that there were more women than men in from six to nine States in the Union.”—Miss Martineau.
Note 4. To give the reader some idea of the price of European articles in the Western country, I will mention cloth. A coat which costs 4 pounds in England, is charged 7 pounds 10 shillings at New York; and at Cincinnati, in the West, upwards of 10 pounds.
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