Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1855-09-01
COL. BENTON'S HISTORY
TIE NORTH IND THE !SOCTH-COMPiR1.
TENT--ITS True CAUSE
AMMO l359-ME. VAN BrREy, PRESIDENT.


To show the working of the federal royern
ment is the design of this Vicw-show how
things are done under it and their effects-that
the good may be approved and pursued, the
evil condemned and avoided. and the machine
OF government be made to work equally for the
benefit of the whole Union, according to the
wise and benefcent intent of its founders. It
thus becomes necessary to show its working in
the two great Atlantic sections originally sole
parties to the CniOn--the North and the South
complained OF for many years on one part as
unequal and oppressive and made so by
course OF federal legislation at variance with
the objects of the confederation aud contrary
to the intent of the words of the constitution
The writer of this view sympathizcd with
that complaint believed it to be. to much
extent, welfoundcd- with concern the
corroding effect it had on the feelings of pa
trotic men Of the South and often had to
lament that sense of duty to his own con-
stituents required him to give votes which his
Judgment dIsapproved and his feelings condemn
ed. This complaint existed when he came into
the Senate; it had in fact commenced in the
first years of the federal government. at the
time of the assumption of the state debts, the
incorporation Of the first national bank. and
which drew capital from the South to North
1t continued to increase and, at the period to
which this chapter relates, it had reached the
stage OF an organized sectional expression in
voluntary convention of the southern states-
1t had often been expressed in Congress and in
the state legislatures, and habitually in the
discussion of the people ; but now it took the
more serious form of joint action, and exhibited
the spectacle Of part of the states assembling
Sectionaly to complain formally of the unequal.
and to them, injurious operation of the common
government, established by common consent
for the common good and now frustrating its
objects by departing from the purposes OF its
creation. The convention was called commercial
and properly, as the grievance complained Of
was in its root commercial and remedy was
proposed.
1t met at Augusta Georgia, and afterwards
at Charleston, South Carolina. and the evil
complained of, and the remedy proposed, were
strongly set forth in the proceedings of the
body, and in addresses to the people of the
southern and southwestern states The changed
relative condition of the two sections of the
country, before and since the Union, was shown
in their general relative depression or prosperity
since that event ; and especially in the reversed
conuitlon Oi tnelr respective foreign import
trade. In the colonial condition the compari-
son was wholly III favor Of the South under
the Union, wholly against it. Thus in the
year 1I60-only sixteen years before the
Declaration of Independence foreign
imports into Virginia were $3.50, 900 sterling,
and into South Carolina 9555, ,000 while into
New York they were only glS9, 900 into
Pennsylvania, gl90, 900 aud into all the New
England colonies collectively, only g56l 900.
These figures exhibit an immcuac superiority
of commercial prosperity on the side of the
South III its colonial state, sadly constraSting
with another set of figures exhibited by the
convention to show its relative condition within
a few years after the union Thus, in thc year
1921, the imports into New York had risen to
81. .00o,00o, being about seventy times its
colonial import at about an equal period before
the adoption of the constitution and those of
South Carolina stood at $4,000, O00--which,
for all practical purposes, may be considered the
same that they were in 1850. E
Such was the difference-the reversed cond-
tlons--of the two sections worked between
them in the brief space of two generations
within the actual lifetime of some who had
seen their colonial conditions proceedings
of the convention did not stop there, but
brought down the comparison (under this com
mercal aspect to near the period Of It's own