navy, had not only the right but the duty of imposing government upon a
colony that was ignorant, poor, and degraded, and that this example of
the nation governing a colony by force of arms proved that the white
man, as master, should impose government from without upon the slave.

Not until years after the war was over did men fully realize that
slavery was weight and free labour wings to the people. The North
believed that the working man should be free, that he should be
educated in the public schools, and that the only way to increase his
wage was to increase his intelligence. Each new knowledge, therefore,
brought a new economic hunger, and made the free labourer a good buyer
in the market, thus supporting factories and shops. Contrariwise the
slave was a poor buyer. The negro picking cotton out of the pod had few
wants,--one garment about his loins, a pone of corn bread, a husk
mattress,--no more. For that reason the slave starved the factory and
shop. Invention in the South perished. Every attempt to found a factory
was attended with failure. Of necessity, the North grew steadily richer
straight through the war, while the South grew steadily poorer. The war
closed with Northern factories and shops and trade at the high tide of
prosperity. The free working man asked many forms of clothing for the
body, books and magazines for the mind, pictures for the walls,
sewing-machine, the reed organ, every conceivable comfort and
convenience for his family, and these many forms of hunger nourished
invention, made the towns centres of manufacturing life, and built a
rich nation. The Northern working man put his head into his task, the
slave, his heel. When the war was over, the South was like a crushed
egg, impoverished by slavery. The peculiar institution had served well
eight thousand slave planters, each of whom owned more than fifty
slaves. But slavery had starved the remaining millions.