Indeed the sparseness of its
population at the time of purchase and the amazing fertility of its soil
and adaptability of its climate to Slave Labor, together with the then
recent invention by Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, of that wonderful
improvement in the separation of cotton-fibre from its seed, known as
the "cotton-gin"--which with the almost simultaneous inventions of
Hargreaves, and Arkwright's cotton-spinning machines, and Watt's
application of his steam engine, etc., to them, marvelously increased
both the cotton supply and demand and completely revolutionized the
cotton industry--contributed to rapidly and thickly populate the whole
region with white Slave-holders and black Slaves, and to greatly enrich
and increase the power of the former.
When Jefferson succeeded in negotiating the cession of that vast and
rich domain to the United States, it is not to be supposed that either
the allurements of territorial aggrandizement on the one hand, or the
impending danger to the continued ascendency of the political party
which had elevated him to the Presidency, threatening it from all the
irritations with republican France likely to grow out of such near
proximity to her Colony, on the other, could have blinded his eyes to
the fact that its acquisition must inevitably tend to the spread of that
very evil, the contemplation of which, at a later day, wrung from his
lips the prophetic words, "I tremble for my Country when I reflect that
God is just.
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