North America-2 [51]
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, I believe, 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 So the compromise was repealed.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 2000 are 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