Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/322

296 of slavery as an economic factor in the South, following the invention of the cotton-gin. The South believed that, through the growth of the cotton industry, it was to be the wealthy section of the country; the cotton-gin made the use of slave labor imperative.

Up to the time that Whitney invented the cotton-gin, there was not, even in the South, a strong pro-slavery sentiment; in fact, in the early part of the century there was a great abolition sentiment in the South. Washington had, on his death, freed his slaves, and some of the most distinguished statesmen of that region, although they held slaves, believed that at some time or another slavery would be abolished.

Jefferson had, in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, a clause condemning slavery. It was omitted, however, because it was thought that such a clause might give offense to those in the North who had been engaged in the slave-traffic. Years afterward, this reproach came back to plague the abolitionists of the North, for the truth was that there were, at the North, as many who were willing to make profit out of the slaves as there originally were in the South. Even after the agitation against slavery had been fully launched, merchants of the North who had profitable business relations with the cotton states were opposed to all contention that might interfere with their profits.

As we have seen, it was in the slave states that the abolition feeling first developed, but we have also seen that that feeling was very quickly put down. This suppression, together with the fact that the South had come under the domination of an autocracy that brooked no public discussion, except within lines of its own setting, was the reason for the minor place in journalism occupied by the southern papers.