The crisis now upon the country, as a consequence of slavery having become dominant, demands that the highest wisdom should be brought to the management of national affairs. Slavery, nationalized, can now be managed only as a national concern. It can now be abolished only with the consent of those who sustain it. Their assent can be gained only by employing other agents to meet the wants it now supplies. It must be superseded, then, if at all, by means that will not injuriously affect the interests of commerce and agriculture, to which it is now so important an auxiliary. None other will be accepted, for a moment, by the slaveholder. To supply the existing demand for tropical products, except by the present mode, is impossible. To make the change, is not the work of a day, nor of a generation. Should the influx of foreigners continue, such a change may, one day, be possible. But to effect the transition from slavery to freedom, on principles that will be acceptable to the parties who control the question; to devise and successfully sustain such measures as will produce this result; must be left to statesmen of broader views and loftier conceptions than are to be found among those at present engaged in this great controversy.
Take a more particular view of this subject, in the light of the commercial operations of the United States, for the year 1859, as best indicating the relations of the North and the South, and their mutual dependence upon each other. The total value of the imports of foreign commodities, including specie, was $338,768,130.[96] Of this $20,895,077 were re-exported, leaving for home consumption, $317,873,053--an amount more than eleven times greater than the whole foreign commerce of Great Britain one hundred and fifty-six years ago, and more than four times greater than her exports eighty-six years ago.[97]
Let us inquire how this immense foreign commerce is sustained; how these $317,873,000 of foreign imports are paid for by the American people; and how far the Northern and Southern States respectively have contributed to its payment. More than one-half the amount, or $161,434,923, was paid in raw cotton, and more than one-third of the remainder, or $57,502,305, in the precious metals; leaving less than $100,000,000 to be paid in the other productions of the country. More than one-third of this remainder was paid in cotton fabrics, tobacco, and rice; while the products of the forest, of the sea, and of various minor manufactures, swelled up our credits, so that the exports of breadstuffs and provisions, needed to liquidate the debt, only amounted to a little over $38,000,000.[98] Of this amount the exports, from the Northern States, of wheat and wheat flour, made up only $15,262,769, and the corn and corn meal but $2,206,396. "King Hay," so much lauded for his magnitude and money value, never once ventured on board a merchant vessel, to seek a foreign land, so as to aid in paying for the commodities which we imported.[99] In a word, the products of the forest and of agriculture, exported by the free States, amounted in value to about $45,300,000; while the same classes of products, supplied for export by the Slave States, amounted to more than $193,400,000.[100]