new constitution of Indiana, so far as she is concerned, is conclusive upon that point.

It is not to be supposed that the states in question will ever emancipate, if the liberated slaves are to stay where they are. Emancipation and citizenship both, to the slaves of the Southern States, is rather too much to expect from any one of them.

There are in the United States at this time about three millions of slaves owned by less than three millions of people. We shall not use too large a figure if we set down the average value of each slave at $400, or in the aggregate at twelve hundred millions of dollars. Total emancipation-it makes no odds how gradual—even if commenced now, would cost these three millions of American citizensor, in a large sense, the people of the fifteen slave states, 1200 millions of dollars. Did ever any people incur such a tax? History affords no example of any. The slave population increases at the rate of 21 per cent. per annum. Therefore, unless an outlet be found for the slave population-as slaves-the difficulties of emancipation in these United States, so far from decreasing with time, will become greater and greater, and that, too, they are doing at a tremendous rate, and with a frightful ratio, as year after year rolls round.

The fact must be obvious to the far-reaching minds of our statesmen, that unless some means of relief be devised, some channel afforded, by which the South can, when the time comes, get rid of the excess of her slave population, that she will be ultimately found, with regard to this institution, in the predicament of the man with the wolf by the ears-too dangerous to hold on any longer, and equally dangerous to let go.

To our mind, the event is as certain to happen as any event is which depends on the contingencies of the future, viz. that unless means be devised for gradually relieving the slave states from the undue pressure of this class upon them-unless some way be opened by which they may be rid of their surplus black population,—the time will come-it may not be in the next nor in the succeeding generation-but, sooner or later, come it will, and come it mustwhen the two races will join in the death struggle for the mastery.

The valley of the Amazon is the way; in this view, it is the safetyvalve of the Union. It is slave territory and a wilderness. One among the many results of this line of steamers, is the entire suppression of the African slave trade with Brazil, by a substitution therefor of a slave emigration from the United States. At least, so t appears to us.

The negroes from the Middle* and the New-England states, who, under the emancipation laws of those states, were forced into the markets of Va. and other southern states, did not thereby become more of slaves than they were before. There was a transfer of the place of servitude-that was all. Not a slave the more was made. But he that was taken from the North to the South remained in the country.

Calling Middle States,-New-York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania, only.

Suppose he had been sent to South America instead of to South Carolina, it would have still been the same to him; but how different to the country! There would in that case have been a transfer of the place of servitude, as before; but, according to the anti-slavery tenets of fanaticism, a curse the less would have remained upon the country. This subject opens to the imagination a vista; in it the valley of the Amazon is seen as the safety-valve of the South, and this line of steamers as a strand, at least, in the cord which is to lift that valve whenever the pressure of this institution, be that when it may, shall become too powerful upon the machinery of our great Ship of State. As in the breaking away of the storm, a streak of clear sky is welcomed by the mariner whose ship has been endangered by the elements, so this Amazonian vista is to us. It is the first and the only streak of light to our mind's eye, that the future throws upon the final question of slavery in this country.

Every steamship has her safety-valve; but every steamship is not obliged to use it always. It is there in case of necessity. So with the valley of the Amazon: we need not go there ourselves, nor send our slaves there immediately; but it is well to have the ability to go or to send, in case it may become expedient so to do.

This line of steamers, by the commercial ties which it will establish, by the business relations which it will beget, by the frequent intercourse which it will bring about between the valley of the Amazon and the Southern States, will accomplish all these great results, and more, too.

The subject is immense-its magnitude oppresses us. We com

mend it to the serious consideration of our merchants and statesmen ; and in so doing, we venture, though with diffidence, to ask the question: will not one or more of the states most concerned in the successful issue of the enterprise, give it encouragement?

ART. III-THE STATE OF ALABAMA.*

EARLY BRITISH AND AMERICAN HISTORY OF ALABAMA-CREEK WARS OF GENERAL JACKSON-TERRITORIAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT, ETC.

HAVING treated in sufficient detail of the aboriginal and early French history of Alabama, we pass to that period which opens the second volume of Mr. Pickett, and which marks the advent of the British power in the state.

At the conclusion of the long and bloody wars in Europe, and with the adoption of the pacification of Paris in 1763, France had divested herself of her whole North American interests. The western bank of the Mississippi, from its mouth to its source, but including the island of New-Orleans on the other bank, passed into the hands of Spain; whilst Great Britain succeeded to Canada, all of the terri

History of Alabama, and incidentally of Mississippi and Georgia, by A. J. Pickett, 2 vols. Charleston, 1851.

tories east of the Mississippi as far south as the Bayou Iberville, together with Florida. The whole of Alabama and Mississippi, and that portion of Louisiana north of a line drawn through the Bayou Iberville-the Amite, Lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain to the sea, and east of the Mississippi River, became thus a British possession, known until 1781 as West Florida and the province of Illinois. Alabama was divided on the parallel of 32° 28′between West Florida and Illinois, in nearly equal divisions; and Montgomery and Wetumpka, which are but fifteen miles apart, were in different jurisdictions. The Florida portion only was then in European occupation, having Pensacola as its seat of government.

George Johnson, the first English Governor, organized the government, garrisoned the fort at Mobile and that of Toulouse up the Coosa; but the government was purely military. Its earliest history was marked by great sufferings among the English inhabitants of Mobile, who died in great numbers from habits of intemperance, exposure, and a contagious disease introduced by one of the regiments. From these disasters the French residents were spared. They lived a regular and abstemious life-refrained from spirituous liquors in summer, confined themselves to spring water, and for a large part spent the sickly months upon their plantations on the Tensaw and Mobile rivers, which were very healthy. Many of them lived to a great old age. The Chevalier de Lucere had a plantation on the first island below the confluence of the Tombigby and the Alabama. Other islands on the Tensaw and Mobile were cultivated by the French and English, who spent their summers among the hills, and engaged in the product of tar. Lower down than Lucere's plantation, were those of Campbell, Stewart, Andry, McGillivray, Favre, Chastang, Strother and Narbone. Five miles lower still was the site of an old French fort, and eleven miles lower, the plantation of Mr. Lezars, which had once belonged to the French Intendant of Mobile. The exports of Mobile in 1772 were indigo, raw hides, corn, fine cattle, tallow, rice, pitch, bear's oil, tar, tobacco, squared timber, indigo seed, myrtle wax, cedar posts and planks, salted wild beef, pecan nuts, cypress and pine boards, plank of various woods, shingles, dried salt fish, scantling, sassafras, canes, staves and heading, hoops, oranges, and peltry. Cotton was cultivated in small quantities; and a machine in use for separating it from the seed, is thus described by Capt. Roman, (one of them was used by Mr. Crebs, the alleged inventor, who suspended canvass bags between pine trees, and packed in his cotton by treading down to the extent of 300 pounds.)

"It is a strong frame of four studs, each about four feet high, and joined above and below by strong transverse pieces. Across this are placed two round well-polished spindles, having a small groove through their whole length, and by means of treadles are put in opposite motions. The workman sits behind the frame, with a thin board before him, upon which is placed the cotton, thinly spread, which the rollers receive. The lint goes through the rollers, and the seed falls down in a separate pile. The French population have much improved upon this plan, by a large wheel, which

turns two of these mills with so much velocity, that seventy pounds of clean cotton can be made every day."

Fearful gales swept over West Florida, inundating Mobile, and running vessels up into the town. The houses of Mr. Crebs' plantation on the Pascagoula were riddled, trees everywhere prostrated, herds scattered, crops ruined. The sea water was driven up the bays and rivers, whilst the coast and shipping suffered frightfully. The Chandelier island came near being entirely swept away; and what was remarkable, the mulberries all produced a second crop of leaves, budded, blossomed, and bore ripe fruit within four weeks after the gales had subsided.

In the summer of 1777, the botanist, Bartram, made an excursion through Alabama. He describes Mobile as extending back half a mile from the river, with a few good buildings, occupied by the French, or emigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, and the North American Colonies. Swansan and McGillivray conducted the Indian trade, having commodious storehouses. The French buildings were of brick, one story, square, often very large, and including courts within. The common people lived in cypress frames, filled in with plaster. Mr. Farmer resided near the present Stockton, his extensive plantations lying up and down the Tensaw-surrounded by other thriving plantations, and the ruins of many which the French had abandoned on the change of government. In his journeyings, Bartram met a party of Georgians, nine or ten in number, including women and children, who after passing through the great hardships of the wilderness, are believed to have been the first Anglo-American inhabitants of Baldwin county.

"Returning to Mobile, the botanist presently embarked in a trading vessel, manned by three negroes, and set sail for Pearl River. Passing along the western coast, and reaching the mouth of Dog River, they there landed, and entered the woods for recreation. Here he saw the remains of the old Fort St. Louis de la Mobile, with a few pieces of iron cannon, and also vast iron kettles for boiling tar into pitch. Pursuing his voyage, he again came to the shore, a few miles beyond where resided a Frenchman eighty years of age; he was active, strong and muscular; his mother, who was present, and who appeared to be brisk and cheerful, was one hundred and five years of age. Fifty years previous to this she had landed in Mobile from la belle France."

The effects of the American revolution began now to be felt throughout the possessions of Louisiana and of Florida; and Mr. Pickett devotes nearly one whole chapter to the biography and adventures of the family of the McGillivrays, who, in conjunction with the Indians, were severely felt in their sanguinary attacks upon the whigs of Georgia. The chapter is in the most finished style of the author, and is evidently his chef d'œuvre. A romantic interest attaches to the whole history of the McGillivrays. Lochlan, the father, a Scotch boy of 16, scampered off from wealthy parents at home and sought the Western World. Without money and scarcely clothes, he landed at Charleston, found himself among the Indian traders who quartered in the suburbs, and soon made one in their adventures. For his services he received a jack knife, which being

converted into skins to be sold at Charleston, constituted the basis of his afterwards extensive fortune. He became in the event one of the boldest and most successful traders, extending his commerce to the very neighborhood of Fort Toulouse. Here he had the address to captivate the heart of a beautiful and aristocratic Indian girl, of the tribe of the Wind-Sehoy Marchand, the daughter of a former French captain at Fort Toulouse. Pickett describes her as a second Pocahontas, though we have always received with grains of distrust these descriptions of Indian beauties, prosy as the remark may be. Of the marriage at a trading-house, near Wetumpka, on the Coosa, sprung Alexander McGillivray, and the tradition goes, that his mother, in pregnancy, dreamed of piles of manuscripts, books, papers, &c., as mothers ever will dream, and fathers, too, pending an event like this. The fortunes of the father prospered; he had plantations and negroes in Georgia, large stores in Savannah and Augusta, &c. When the boy Alexander had reached his fourteenth year, he was placed at school in Charleston, and subsequently in a counting-house at Savannah. Commerce pleased him not so much as books, and he forthwith became a hard and diligent student. But even this could not satisfy the wants of a spirit, which, true to the instincts of its mother race, yearned after the sports and life of the wilderness. Civilization had lost all its charms. Alexander McGillivray was again among the Creeks, and by virtue of his noble descent, a chief and a leader. He presided at the national council upon the Chattahoochee, received the rank of colonel from the British of Florida, and thenceforward devoted himself to the royal cause. In 1778, he corresponded extensively with the government of Florida and the province of Georgia, and engaged in the task of confederating the Indians against the colonial cause, acting in concert with many royalists who had fled from the colonies, sometimes leading expeditions in person, but generally relying upon Le Clerk Milfort, a bold and daring adventurer, who subsequently published a work, "Sejour dans la Nation Creek," from which, and from contemporaneous manuscripts and conversations with the nephew and niece of McGillivray, Mr. Pickett obtains his information.

Before dismissing the McGillivray chapter, we cannot but condemn the introduction of such a passage as the following into it. In writing a grave history, Mr. Pickett should throw aside the prejudices of the politician, and not treat of great national topics, like the French, English, and Spanish wars, as if in the editorial of a daily, or at a stump gathering. History should speak in the language of dignity, having no country, no friends, and no party! We give the passage :

"This brought about a collision with John Bull. Spain interposed her friendly efforts to effect a reconciliation, but the canine propensities of England was aroused, and that ungenerous government declared war against Spain as well as France," &c.

Now, it so happens, by the way, that these very wars which Mr. Pickett refers to in such terms of ignominy, were advocated by the great and pure Earl of Chatham, who came down from his bed to urge them, and who died almost in the very effort of speaking these memorable words: "Shall a people, so lately the terror of the world,