第191章

MISSOURI.

Missouri is a slave State, lying to the west of the Mississippi and to the north of Arkansas. It forms a portion of the territory ceded by France to the United States in 1803. Indeed, it is difficult to say how large a portion of the continent of North America is supposed to be included in that territory. It contains the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, as also the present Indian Territory; but it also is said to have contained all the land lying back from them to the Rocky Mountains, Utah, Nebraska, and Dakota, and forms no doubt the widest dominion ever ceded by one nationality to another.

Missouri lies exactly north of the old Missouri compromise line--that is, 36.30 north. When the Missouri compromise was made it was arranged that Missouri should be a slave State, but that no other State north of the 36.30 line should ever become slave soil.

Kentucky and Virginia, as also of course Maryland and Delaware, four of the old slave States, were already north of that line; but the compromise was intended to prevent the advance of slavery in the Northwest. The compromise has been since annulled, on the ground, Ibelieve, that Congress had not constitutionally the power to declare that any soil should be free, or that any should be slave soil.

That is a question to be decided by the States themselves, as each individual State may please. So the compromise was repealed. But slavery has not on that account advanced. The battle has been fought in Kansas, and, after a long and terrible struggle, Kansas has come out of the fight as a free State. Kansas is in the same parallel of latitude as Virginia, and stretches west as far as the Rocky Mountains, When the census of the population of Missouri was taken in 1860, the slaves amounted to ten per cent. of the whole number. In the Gulf States the slave population is about forty-five per cent. of the whole. In the three border States of Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland, the slaves amount to thirty per cent. of the whole population. From these figures it will be seen that Missouri, which is comparatively a new slave State, has not gone ahead with slavery as the old slave States have done, although from its position and climate, lying as far south as Virginia, it might seem to have had the same reasons for doing so. I think there is every reason to believe that slavery will die out in Missouri. The institution is not popular with the people generally; and as white labor becomes abundant--and before the war it was becoming abundant--men recognize the fact that the white man's labor is the more profitable. The heat in this State, in midsummer, is very great, especially in the valleys of the rivers. At St. Louis, on the Mississippi, it reaches commonly to ninety degrees, and very frequently goes above that.

The nights, moreover, are nearly as hot as the days; but this great heat does not last for any very long period, and it seems that white men are able to work throughout the year. If correspondingly severe weather in winter affords any compensation to the white man for what of heat he endures during the summer, I can testify that such compensation is to be found in Missouri. When I was there we were afflicted with a combination of snow, sleet, frost, and wind, with a mixture of ice and mud, that makes me regard Missouri as the most inclement land into which I ever penetrated.

St. Louis, on the Mississippi, is the great town of Missouri, and is considered by the Missourians to be the star of the West. It is not to be beaten in population, wealth, or natural advantages by any other city so far west; but it has not increased with such rapidity as Chicago, which is considerably to the north of it, on Lake Michigan. Of the great Western cities I regard Chicago as the most remarkable, seeing that St. Louis was a large town before Chicago had been founded.

The population of St. Louis is 170,000. Of this number only 2000are slaves. I was told that a large proportion of the slaves of Missouri are employed near the Missouri River in breaking hemp. The growth of hemp is very profitably carried on in that valley, and the labor attached to it is one which white men do not like to encounter. Slaves are not generally employed in St. Louis for domestic service as is done almost universally in the towns of Kentucky. This work is chiefly in the hands of Irish and Germans.

Considerably above one-third of the population of the whole city is made up of these two nationalities. So much is confessed; but if Iwere to form an opinion from the language I heard in the streets of the town, I should say that nearly every man was either an Irishman or a German.

St. Louis has none of the aspects of a slave city. I cannot say that I found it an attractive place; but then I did not visit it at an attractive time. The war had disturbed everything, given a special color of its own to men's thoughts and words, and destroyed all interest except that which might proceed from itself. The town is well built, with good shops, straight streets, never-ending rows of excellent houses, and every sign of commercial wealth and domestic comfort--of commercial wealth and domestic comfort in the past, for there was no present appearance either of comfort or of wealth. The new hotel here was to be bigger than all the hotels of all other towns. It is built, and is an enormous pile, and would be handsome but for a terribly ambitious Grecian doorway. It is built, as far as the walls and roof are concerned, but in all other respects is unfinished. I was told that the shares of the original stockholders were now worth nothing. A shareholder, who so told me, seemed to regard this as the ordinary course of business.