University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTORY.

The slaveholding States, fifteen in number, including the semislave
States of Delaware and Maryland, have an area of eight hundred
and fifty-one thousand, four hundred and forty-eight square
miles. In latitude, they extend from 25° to 40° north, and, in longitude,
from 75° to 107° west. This vast empire of nearly a thousand
miles square has a sea and gulf coast of seven thousand miles in
extent, and is drained by more than fifty navigable rivers. Through
its centre flows the longest river of the globe, with its thousands of
miles of navigable waters.

The free States, sixteen in number, have an area of six hundred
and twelve thousand five hundred and ninety-seven square miles.
Exclusive of California, they extend, in latitude, from 37° to 47°
north, and, in longitude, from 67° to 97° west. With California,
they constitute a territory of nearly eight hundred miles square, with
two thousand miles of Atlantic seacoast. A dozen navigable rivers
flow from this territory to the Atlantic, two of them finding a passage
to the sea through the far-extending bays of the slave States. By
the great lakes and their outlets, its northern products find their natural
channel to the ocean—ice-bound for several months in the year
—through the territory of a foreign power; while, borne on the Mississippi
for more than a thousand miles through the domain of slavery,
its western products seek a passage to the ocean by the Gulf of
Mexico. While the rivers of the slave States are never closed to
navigation by the rigors of climate, those of the free States are
closed by ice during the winter months of each year.

In climate, the slave States excel, and in soil equal, the free.
Certain productions, moreover, of great importance are mostly confined,
by the laws of temperature, to the slave States. Among these
are cotton, cane-sugar, rice, and tobacco.

Thus, for agriculture, the slave States have a fertile soil, a climate

adapted to the productions of tropical and temperate latitudes; for
manufactures, are exhaustless motive power distributed throughout
its whole extent, with the raw materials of cotton, wool, iron, lumber,
etc., abundant and readily accessible, while coal, salt, and other
precious metals are found in several of these States; for internal
commerce, numerous rivers drain the whole territory; for external
commerce, thousands of miles of sea and gulf coast with excellent
harbors.

The rigorous climate of all, and the sterile soil of some of the
free States, render them less fitted for agriculture than the slave
States, while the transportation of the raw material affects the success
of manufacturers. For the purposes of commerce, the North has a
moderate extent of seacoast and several good harbors, whose remoteness,
however, from the producing and consuming regions affect
disadvantageously the interests of trade. The great lakes, when not
closed by ice, furnish good facilities for internal commerce.

In the origin of their population and the date of their settlement,
the North and the South are pretty nearly alike.

Geographically, it will be seen that the old and new free States
are nearly separated by the projection of Canada and northern Virginia,
while the Pacific State of California is separated from the other
free States by two thousand miles of unsettled country. The slave
States, old and new, on the other hand, lie in a compact body. Resulting
from these different geographical positions were the facts that
the emigration from the older free States must seek, by extended
and circuitous routes, a passage to the new; while the emigration
from the slave States had only to cross a border line, of a thousand
miles in extent, to find itself at once on its new territory.