A journey through Texas; or, A saddle-trip on the south-western frontier: with a statistical appendix

Preface

This work is designed further to promote the mutual acquaintance of the North and South. The great extent and capacities of Texas, as well as its distinct position and history, have induced the author to devote to it a separate volume.

It has not been thought necessary to load the narrative with extended remarks and deductions upon the economical experience of the young State, but while the facts presented are suffered to speak for themselves, some of the more obvious conclusions to which their examination leads have been thrown into the form of a letter, for the reader's consideration.

Owing to the pressure of other occupations, the preparation of the volume from the author's journal has been committed, with free scope of expression and personality, to his brother, Dr. J. H. Olmsted, his companion upon the trip.

Note by the Editor.

The editor's motive for this journey was the hope of invigorating weakened lungs by the elastic power of a winter's saddle and tentlife. His present duty has been simply that of connecting, by a slender thread of reminiscence, the copious notes of facts placed in his hands, and in doing this he has drawn frankly upon memory for his own sensations. The lapse of two years may have breathed a. little dullness on the pictures thus recalled, but it has served, also, to cool and harden any glow in the statements.

A sort of alter-egotism in the book was unavoidable, and some details that may seem rather trivial and spiritless have been preserved, because a traveler's own impressions depend so much on those unconsidered but characteristic trifles. The notes upon slavery in the volume are incidental, but the extraordinary effect upon federal policy produced by fluctuation in the local market, where ownership in forced labor is the principal investment, imparts to observations within these new limits a peculiar interest.

In an appendix will be found condensed tables of such statistics as are most useful for reference.

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

New York, December 29^«, 1856.

My Dear Friend : — I regret that I cannot respond to the congratulatory, nor yet entirely to the conciliatory, expressions of your recent letter.

The character and reputation of the nation, and with it the character, the social claims, and the principles, of every individual citizen, have been seriously compromised in the eyes of the civilized world, by recent transactions growing out of the unsettled state of our policy with regard to slavery-extension. The recent Presidential election decided nothing with respect to this, as you seem to suppose, because the vital question which really divides the country was not presented in its integrity by the party which triumphed. No person, therefore, claiming for himself a respectable and responsible position in society, can, with decency, it seems to me, when brought near the field of discussion, affect to be indifferent, or avoid a respectfid expression of his own judgment uj)on the grave issues in debate. For instance, the extension of slavery into Texas, commenced, for good or evil, in our own day ; and when we of the North had the power and the constitutional right to prevent it. Our interest in its results cannot of course be deemed impertinent by its most jealous partisan. Offering to the public a volume of recent observations in Texas, I do not, therefore, see how I can, as you seem to suggest I should, avoid all discussion of slavery.

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At the same time, I do not desire to engage in it, as I hardly need assure you, in a spiiit at all inconsistent with a desirable friendship. Ratlier, in explaining the significance which, in my own mind, attaches to my narrative of facts, relative to the question upon which we have the misfortune to be divided in judgment, I shall hope to lessen, instead of aggravating, the causes of our difterence.

Many of the comforts demanded by people in a moderate state of civilization are necessarily purchased at a greater cost, in a newly-settled region, than in the midst of a long-established community. We cannot expect to find a grist-mill, much less a baker's shop, still less a printing-office or a bookseller's shop, in an actual wilderness. The cost of good bread, therefore, or of intellectual sustenance, will be greater than where the constant demand to be expected from a numerous population has induced .abor (or capital, which represents labor) to establish such conveniences.

For the same reason, the usual means of civilized education, both for young and for mature minds, will be procured with diffi culty in the early days of any country. Consequently, though we may perceive some compensations, certain fallings-short from the standard of comfort and of character in older communities are inevitable.

The prosperity of a young country or state is to be measured by the rapidity with which these deficiencies are supplied, and the completeness with which the opportunity for profitable labor is retained.

An illustration will best enable me to explain how slavery prolongs, in a young community, the evils which properly belong only to a frontier. Let us suppose two recent immigrants, one in Texas, the other in the young free State of Iowa, to have both, at the same time, a considerable sum of money — say five thousand dollars — at disposal. Land has been previously purchased, a hasty dwelling of logs constructed, and ample crops for sustenance harvested. Each has found communication with his market interrupted during a portion of the year by floods ;

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. IX

each needs an ampler and better house; each desires to engage a larger part of bis land in profitable production; each needs some agricultural machinery or implements ; in the neighborhood of each, a church, a school, a grist-mill, and a branch railroad are proposed.

Each may be supposed to have previously obtained the necessary materials for his desired constructions : and to need immediately the services of a carpenter. The Texan, unable to hire one in the neighborhood, orders his agent in Houston or New Orleans to buy him one : when he arrives, he has cost not less than two of the five thousand dollars. The lowan, in the same predicament, writes to a friend in the East or advertises in the newspapers, that he is ready to pay better wages than carpenters can get in the older settlements ; and a young man, whose only capital is in his hands and his wits, glad to come where there is a glut of food and a dearth of labor, soon presents himself. To construct a causeway and a bridge, and to clear, fence, and break up the land he desires to bring into cultivation, the Texan will need three more slaves — and he gets them as before, thereby investing all his money. The lowan has only to let his demand be known, or, at most, to advance a small sum to the public conveyances, and all the laborers he requires — independent, small capitalists of labor — gladly bring their only commodity to him and offer it as a loan, on his promise to pay a better interest, or wages, for it than Eastern capitalists are willing to do.

The lowan next sends for the implements and machinery which will enable him to make the best use of the labor he has engaged. The Texan tries to get on another year without them, or employs such rude substitutes as his stupid, uninstructed, , and uninterested slaves can readily make in his ill-furnished plantation work-shop. The lowan is able to contribute liberally to aid in the construction of the church, the school-house, the mill, and the railroad. His laborers, appreciating the value of the reputation they may acquire for honesty, good judgment,

X A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

skill and industry, do not need constant superintendence, and he is able to call on his neighbors and advise, encourage and stimulate them. Thus the church, the school, and the railroad are soon in operation, and with them is brought rapidly into play other social machinery, which makes much luxury common and cheap to all.

The Texan, if solicited to assist in similar enterprises, answers truly, that cotton is yet too low to permit him to invest money where it does not promise to be immediately and directly productive.

The lowan may still have one or two thousand dollars, to be lent to merchants, mechanics, or manufacturers, who are disposed to establish themselves near him. With the aid of this capital, not only ^'arious minor conveniences are brought into the neighborhood, but useful information, scientific, agricultural, and political ; and commodities, the use of which is educative of taste and the finer capacities of our nature, are attractively presented to the people.

The Texan mainly does without these things. He confines the imports of his plantation almost entirely to slaves, corn, bacon, salt, sugar, molasses, tobacco, clothing, medicine, hoes and plow-iron. Even if he had the same capital to spare, he would live in far less comfort than the lowan, because of the want of local shops and efficient systems of public conveyance which cheapen the essentials of comfort for the latter.

You will, perhaps, say that I neglect to pay the lowan laborers their wages. It is unnecessary that I should do so : those wages remain as capital to be used again for the benefit of the community in Iowa. Besides, the additional profit which has accrued to the farmer by reason of the more efficient tools and cattle he has acquired, the greater cheapness with which the railroad will transport his crops to be sold, the smaller subtractions from stock and crops he will have met with from the better employment of his neighbors, and the influence of the church and school upon them, will go far towards paying these debts.

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. XI

The difficulty of obtaining a profitable return for labor, applied with the disadvantages which thus result from slavery, is Buch that all but the simplest, nearest, and quickest promises of profit are neglected in its direction. As a general, almost universal, rule, the Texan planter, at the beginning of any Season, is in debt, and anxious to acquire money, or its equivalent, to meet his engagements. The quickest and surest method of getting it before the year ends, is to raise cotton — for cotton, almost alone, of all he can produce under these disadvantages, bears the cost of transportation to cash customers. He will rarely, as I have supposed, invest in a carpenter ; he will rarely undertake the improvement of a road. He will content himself with his pioneer's log-cabin, and wait the pleasure of nature at the swamp and the ford. His whole income will be reinvested in field-hands.

He plants cotton largely — quite all that his laborers can cultivate properly. Generally, a certain force will cultivate more than it can pick, pack, and transport to public conveyance. Unwilling to lose the overplus, he obtains, upon credit again, another addition to his slave force. Thus the temptation constantly recurs, and constantly the labor is directed to the quickest and surest way of sustaining credit for more slaves.

After a certain period, as his capital in slaves increases, and his credit remains unimpaired, the dread of failure, and the temptation to accumulate capital become less, and he may begin to demand the present satisfaction of his tastes and appetites. Habit, however, will have given him a low standard of comfort, and a high standard of payment for it ; and he will still be satisfied to dispense with many conveniences which have long before been acquired by the lowan ; and to pay a higher price for those he demands, than more recent, or less successful, immigrants to his vicinity can afford.

Thus he will have personally grown rich, perhaps ; but few, if any, public advantages will have accrued from his expenditures. It is quite possible that, before he can arrive at that

Xll A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

point of liberality in expenditure which the lowan started with, the fertility of his soil will have been so greatly reduced that the results of labor upon it are no longer accumulative of profit, but simply enable him to sustain the mode of life to which he and his slaves are accustomed.

This occurs, I again remind you, not merely because labor is applied to the end of immediately realizing a return in slaves, but because it continues constantly to be applied without the advantage of efficient machinery, and the cheapest means of marketing its results ; also, because the planter's mind, which, by a freer expenditure of capital at an early day, would have been informed and directed to a better method of agriculture, remains in ignorance of it, or locked against it by the prejudice of custom and habit.

I have described to you the real condition, and its historical rationale, of a majority of the better class of planters in Texas, as, after many favorable opportunities of acquaintance with them, I have apprehended it. My knowledge of lowan proprietors, of similar capital, is not personal, but inferential and from report. It may be there are none such, but it makes little difference in the end whether the five thousand dollars to be expended is held by one proprietor, or divided among a number. It is so much capital disengaged.

I have made circumstantial inquiry of several persons whc have resided both in Iowa and in Texas, and have ascertained, most distinctly, that the rapidity with which the discomforts of the frontier are overcome, the facility with which the most valuable conveniences, and the most im^Dortant luxuries, moral, mental, and animal, of old communities, are reobtained, is astonishingly greater in the former than the latter.

Comparing Texas with New York, I can speak entirely from personal observation. I believe it is a low estimate, that every dollar of the nominal capital of the substantial farmers of New York represents an amount of the most truly valuable comjnodities of civilization, equal to five dollars in the nominal wealth

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. Xlll

of Texas planters. And this, notwithstanding that the climate of Texas has a great siiperiority over that of New York or Iowa. I think that the hibor of one man in Texas will more easily produce adequate sustenance and shelter for a family and an ordinary farm-stock of working cattle, than that of two anywhere in the Free States.

And this, again, without regard to that quality of the climate which enables the Texan to share in the general monopoly of the South in the production of cotton — a quality so valuable that Texans sell scarcely anything out of the State but cotton, which they even find it profitable to exchange for corn raised in Ohio, and taxed with the expense of a great transportation, and several exchanges. Not that corn is produced with less labor in Ohio, but that cotton is produced with so much more profit in Texas. Corn, and every other valuable staple production of the soil of the Free States, except, perhaps, oats and potatoes, for which there are special substitutes, may be grown extensively, and with less expenditure of labor, in Texas. Nor did we — my medical companion and myself — have reason to retain the common opinion, after careful attention to the subject, that the health of white people, or their ability to labor, was less in the greater part of Texas than in the new Free States. We even saw much white and free labor applied to the culture of cotton with a facility and profit at least equal to that attending the labor of enslaved negroes, at the same distance from market.

All things considered, I believe that the prosperity of Texas, measured by the rapidity with which the inconveniences and discomforts, inevitable only in a wilderness or an unciv ilized state of society, are removed, would have been ten times greater than it is, had it been, at the date of its annexation, thrown open, under otherwise equally favorable circumstances, to a free immigration, with a prohibition to slavery. I think that its export of cotton "wouhl have been greater than it now is ; that its demand from, and contribution to, commerce would have been ten times what it

XIV A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

now Is ; that it would possess ten times the length of railroad ; ten times as many cliurches; ten times as many schools, and a Unmlied times as many school-children as it now has.

You may think it too soon to form a judgment of any value upon the prosperity of Texas, as measured by the other criterion I proposed — namely, " the completeness with which the opportunity for profitable labor is retained." But what do you say to tlie fact that, in the eastern counties, that spectacle so familiar and so melancholy in your own State, in all the older Slave States, is already not unfrequently seen by the traveler — an abandoned plantation of " worn-out" fields, with its little village of dwellings, now a home only for wolves and vultures ?

This but indicates a large class of observations,* by which I hold myself justified in asserting that the natural elements of wealth in the soil of Texas will have been more exhausted in ten years, and with them the rewards offered by Providence to labor will have been more lessened than, without slavery, would have been the case in two hundred. Do not think that I use round numbers carelessly. After two hundred years' occupation of similar soils by a free-laboring community, I have seen no such evidences of waste as, in Texas, I have after ten years of slavery. And indications of the same kind I have observed, not isolated, but general, in every Slave State but two — which I have seen only in parts yet scarcely at all settled. Moreover, I have seen similar phenomena following slavery in other countries and in other climates.

It is not at all improbable, my good friend, that children of yours, in, perhaps, the tenth generation, will have to work, whatever may be their occupation, one hour a day more, during all their working lives, than they would have done but for this your policy of extending slavery over Texas, and thereby permanently

* Of this class, fr«quent notes on live stock will be found in the volume. The exception which Kentucky offers to all other Slave States, in this respect, is easily accounted for, and is clearly maintained by a great sacrifice of other Bources of wealth, which sacrifice would be unnecessary, but for slavery.

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. XV

iiminishing tlie riglitfnl profits of labor. Bread is to cost them more by the pound, cotton and wool stuffs more by the yard.

Will you say that no superficial observations of a passing stranger can shake your confidence in the great higher law of demand and supply? That slavery cannot be forced by any legislation to exist for an injurious period in any country or region where free labor would, on the whole, be more economical ? That free labor, on the other hand, cannot be restrained? That the climate of Texas demands African laborers, and that Africans are incapable of persistent labor, unless they are controlled, directed, and forced by a superior will ? There are a few facts mentioned in these pages which bear on both these points, and to which I will simply beg you to give a fair consideration. Especially, I would be glad to have you ponder the experience of the German colonists, of which, though the narration is infiuenced, perhaps, by an irresistible enthusiasm of admiration, the details have been carefully obtained arid verified.

As to the needlessness of legal restrictions upon slavery where its introduction would be uneconomical, let me ask, do you consider public lotteries of money economical institutions ? They exist in every civilized community wherein they are not prohibited by law. Gambling-houses, and places of trafiic in stolen goods, you will hardly deem economical conveniences in any climate ; yet laws are everywhere required to restrict their increase.

I consider that slavery is no less disastrous in its effects on industry — no less destructive to wealth. The laws and forces sustaining it, where it has been long established, may have become a temporary necessity, as poisons are to the life of some unfortunate invalids. Judge you of that. But laws intended to extend its field of improvidence are unjust, cruel, and oppressive. Revolutionary resistance to them by all men whose interest it is to have industry honestly paid, can only be wrong while likely to be unsuccessful.

There are two reasons, both of which, you have confessed to me, operate on your own mind, why, the power to hold slaves

XVI A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

being secured, men employ them in preference to the much cheaper free labor, and why the vitality of slavery need be nowhere dependent on its mere economy as a labor system.

First: Slavery educates, or draws out, and strengthens, by example and exercise, to an inordinate degree, t.lie natural lust of authority, common as an element of character in all mankind. To a degree, that is, which makes its satisfaction inconvenient and costly — costly of other means of comfort, not only to the individual, but to the community.

Thus, a man educated under the system will be disposed no longer than he is forced, by law or otherwise, to employ servants or laborers who may make demands upon him, and if those demands are refused, may in their turn legally refuse to obey him. He will prefer to accept much smaller profits, much greater inconveniences, than would a man otherwise educated, rather than submit to what he considers to be the insolence of a laborer, who maintains a greater self-respect, and demands a greater consideration for his personal dignity, than it is possible for a slave to do.*

Secondly: The power of exercising authority in this way is naturally overmuch coveted among you. It gives position and status in your society more than other wealth — (wealth being equivalent to power). It is fashionable with you to own slaves, as it is with the English to own land, with the Arabs,

* The apologetic style in which the Southern newspapers generally commented upon the homicide, by a member of Congress, educated in Alabama, of a servant in a hotel at Washington, last spring, affords a sad indication of the strength of this educational prejudice. In some cases no apology, but a distinct approval, of such a method of vindicating Southern habits of unmitigfited authority was expressed. The Charleston Standard observed : " If white men accept the office of menials, it should be expected that they will do so with an apprehension of their relation to society, and the disposition quietly to encnunler both the responsibilities and liabilities which the relation implies.'' The Alabama Mail, extending the scope of its demand to free soil, remarked : " It is getting time that waiters at the North were convinced that they are servants and not gentlemen in disguise. We hope this Herbert affair will teach them prudence."

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. XVll

norses ; and as beads and vermilion have a value among the Indians which seems to ns absurd, so, among you, has the power of commanding the service of slaves. Consequently you are willing to pay a price for it which, to one not educated as you have been, seems absurdly high. Nor are you more likely to dispense with slaves, when you have it in your power to possess them, than the Chinese with their fashion of the queue, Turks with their turban, or Englishmen with their hats.

We need no restrictions upon fashions like these, which are oppressive only to those who obey them. Such is not the case with the fashion of slavery.*

But still you may doubt if slavery can long remain where it is uneconomical ; the influences I have mentioned might, you will reflect, induce a Southerner to continue to employ his slaves while he is able ; but his ability to do so would soon be exhausted if the institution were really uneconomical ; in a new country the opportunity of employing slaves would soon be lost, owing to the superior advantages those would have who employed the cheaper labor of freemen ; in fact, capital would be rapidly exhausted in the effort to sustain the luxury of commanding slaves.

Such, precisely, is the case. How, then, does it continue ? Do not be offended if I answer, by constantly borrowing and never paying its debts.

Look at any part of the United States where slavery has predominated for a historic period ; compare its present aspect with that it bore when peopled only by " heathen salvages," and you

* It might be supposed that the distinct " mean white" class, characteristic of older communities in the Slave States, could hardly yet have been devel oped in a region where slavery itself has but just now been transplanted, and where the avenues of escape from it, and of better possibilities, are so open and inviting to all. But it appears that such a class is a necessary phenomenon attending slavery. The planter in Eastern Texas speaks with the same irritation of his poorer neighbors that he does elsewhere at the South, and says, " If there are hog-thieves anywhere, it is here." The existence of the classos, master and slave, implies the existence of a miserable intermediate class.

XVm A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND.

will see that the luxury of slaves, and what other luxury through their labor has therein been enjoyed, have been acquired at an immense cost beyond that of mere labor. You will see that what has been called the profit of slave labor has been obtained only by filching from the nation's capital — from that which the nation owes its posterity — many times the gross amount of all the production of that labor.*

Governor Adams, in a recent message to the legislature of South Carolina, intimates that, at ten cents a pound, English manufacturers are paying too little for the cotton this country sends them. I think twice that amount would be too little to recompense the country for the loss of capital at present involved in its production. I believe that, with free labor in Texas, unembarrassed by the inconveniences attending slavery, it could have been profitably exported at half that price.

You will still ask how slavery, laboring under such economical

* A respectable Southern critic has asked, if evidences of a s])endthrift system of industry, similar to those described in the Slave States, might not have been found by one disposed to look for them, in the Free, and has quoted official testimony of a reduced production per acre of one of the crops cultivated in New Tork, as refuting my evidence of the desolating eflfects of slavery in the Seaboard States.

Waste of soil and injudicious application of labor is common in the agriculture of the North, but nowhere comparably with what is general at the Soutli. Nowhere, in any broad agricultural district, does such waste appear to have taken place, without a present equivalent existing for it. Nowhere is the land, with what is attached to it, now less suitable and promising for the residence of a refined and civilized people, than it was before the operations, which have been attended with tlie alleged waste, were commenced.

I am mistaken if the same is true of Eastern Virginia and Carolina, or any other district where slavery has predominated for a historic period. The land, in these cases, is positively less capable of sustaining a dense civilized community, than it would be if no labor at all had ever been expended upon it. Had all its original elements of wealth remained intact, had it been hitherto entirely reserved from civilized occupation, it would have sold for more by the acre to day, than it is now to be valued at with all the ameliorations and constructions which labor has eflfected upon it. Labor, in the case of Eastern Virginia, for two hundred years, by a community in which the controlling force has been the boasted Anglo-Saxon, the prevailing religion Christian and Protostant.

A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND. XIX

disadvantages, can take possession of any country, to the exclusion or serious inconvenience of free labor ?

Plainly, it may do so by fraud and violence — by disregard of the rights of citizens. I will not say that these are necessities of its existence, only that they are alleged to be so by those who have carried slavery into Texas, as well as by those ^vho have sought to establish it in Kansas. These missionaries of the institution voluntarily make the declaration, and put it deliberately on record, that lawless violence and repudiation of state pledges must be permitted in order to maintain slavery in these regions. AVhether with reason or not, the purpose to maintain slavery is constantly offered and received as a sufficient excuse for disregarding not merely personal rights under the Constitution, but the most solemn treaty-obligations with a foreign nation.*

When you demand of us to permit slavery in our territory, we know that you mean to take advantage of our permission, to

* Is not the general impression, that frequent deeds of lawless violence ai'Q a necessary and pardonable characteristic of our frontier community, based upon, and entirely sustaintKi by, occurrences which are peculiar to the frontier of the Slave States ? Lynch law is not found a necessary preliminaiy to good government in Iowa and Minnesota. Tarring and feathering, mob executions, bowie-knife fracases, deadly family feuds, etc., etc., are characteristic only of communities, tie controlling minds in which have been educated in the Slave States. No one looks with hope or anxiety for spontaneous popular invasions or filibustering occupations of Canada West by Miunesotaus or ^lichiganians. Plundering parties of Maine backwoodsmen do not constantly menace the peaceful villages of Nova Scotia. We do not have periodical reports from Eastport, of pii'atical fleets preparing to invade Newfoundland. But last year, a large band of mounted Texan Free-Companions plundered and burned, in mere wantonness, a peaceful Mexican town on the Rio Grande ; four hundred United States troops listening to the shrieks of fleeing women, and looking on in indolence. This has passed without rebuke ; apparently with entire public and official indifference. It was looked upon as one of the necessai*y and pardonable occurrences of a frontier. Would this have been the case, if it had happened on the Northwestern frontier ? Is it not time the people of the free West were delivered from the vague reputation of bad temper, recklessness, and lawlessness, under which they suffer, and which, without doubt, greatly deters induatrious and peacefully disposed persons from immigrating among them ?