Your search returned 14 results in 7 document sections:

Rebellion Record: Introduction., Volume 1. (ed. Frank Moore), Introduction. (search)
ton. In 1791, Hamilton, in his report on the manufactures, recommended the repeal of this duty, on the ground that it was a very serious impediment to the manufacture of cotton, but his recommendation was disregarded. Thus, in the infancy of the cotton manufacture of the North, at the moment when they were deprived of the protection extended to them before the Constitution by State laws, and while they were struggling against English competition under the rapidly improving machinery of Arkwright, which it was highly penal to export to foreign countries, a heavy burden was laid upon them by this protecting duty, to enable the planters of South Carolina and Georgia to explore the tropics for a variety of cotton seed adapted to their climate. For seven years at least, and probably more, this duty was in every sense of the word a protecting duty. There was not a pound of cotton spun, no not for candle-wicks to light the humble industry of the cottages of the North, which did not pay
Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist, Chapter 4: the hour and the man. (search)
her they were intended to discourage the growth of slavery — the first by restricting its territorial extension, the second, by arresting its numerical increase. And without doubt they would have placed the evil in the way of ultimate extinction had other and far reaching causes not intervened to produce adverse social and political conditions. The first of these causes, in point of time, were certain labor-saving inventions in England, which vastly enhanced the demand for raw cotton. Arkwright's invention of the spinning machine about twenty years prior to the adoption of the Constitution, perfected by the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and the mule of Crompton, turned Lancashire, the historian Green says, into a hive of industry. The then rapid demand for cotton operated in time as a stimulus to its production in America. Increased productivity raised the value of slave property and slave soil. But the slow and tedious hand method of separating the fiber of the cotton bulb fr
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 16 (search)
-help and energy of the governed. Compare the last century with this, or the European with the Yankee. Every narrowing of the sphere of government proves growth in the people, and is the seed of further growth. Civilization dwarfs political machinery. Without doubt, the age of Fox and Pitt was one in which the prejudices of courts and the machinery of cabinets had large sway. But how absurd to say even of Pitt and Fox that they shaped the fate of England. The inventions of Watt and Arkwright set free millions of men for the ranks of Wellington; the wealth they created clothed and fed those hosts; the trade they established necessitated the war, if it was at all or ever necessary. Berlin and Milan decrees would have smothered every man in England. The very goods they manufactured, shut out from the continent, would have crowded the inhabitants off their little island. It was land monopoly that declared war with France, and trade fought the battle. Napoleon was struck down b
James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley, Chapter 26: three months in Europe. (search)
likely to go out of fashion at no distant day; but not through her fault. He could not see, however, what the Master of the Buck-hounds, the Groom of the Stole, the Mistress of the Robes, and such uncouth fossils, had to do with a grand exhibition of the fruits of industry. The Mistress of the Robes made no robes; the Ladies of the Bed-chamber did nothing with beds but sleep on them. The posts of honor nearest the Queen's person ought to have been confided to the descendants of Watt and Arkwright, Napoleon's real conquerors; while the foreign ambassadors should have been the sons of Fitch, Fulton, Whitney, Daguerre and Morse; and the places less conspicuous should have been assigned, not to Gold-stick, Silver-stick, and kindred absurdities, but to the Queen's gardeners, horticulturists, carpenters, upholsterers and milliners! (Fancy Gold-stick reading this passage!) The traveler, however, even at such a moment is not unmindful of similar nuisances across the ocean, and pauses to
materials, totally unfit to guide the policy of a mighty empire, endured only during an interim. The period in British history was one of great and Chap. I.} 1778. increasing intellectual vigor. It was distinguished in philosophy by Hume and Reid and Price and Adam Smith; in painting by Reynolds; in poetry and various learning by Gray and Goldsmith, Johnson and Cowper; in legislative eloquence by Chatham, Burke, and Fox; in history by Gibbon; in the useful arts by Brindley, Watt, and Arkwright. That the nation, in a state of high and advancing culture, should have been governed by a sordid ministry, so inferior to itself as that of Lord North, was not due to the corruption of parliament alone; for there was always in the house of commons an independent fraction, disposed to give its votes with judicial fairness. It cannot be fully explained without considering the chaotic state of political parties. The conflict between England and her American colonies sprang necessarily o
opposite orators, in a voice of thunder. 'General Washington a coward? Who so base as dare say it? Look at him at the battle of the Nile; look at him at Waterloo, the Cowpens, on the plains of Marathon, at the Pyramids, at Stillman's defeat, at Bad Age; and, Sir, look at him at the battle of New Orleans!' "'General Washington at the battle of New Orleans?' interrupted another debater, gesticulating violently. 'Mr. Speaker, is there such an ignoramus in the house? ' Sir, any schoolboy knows that the battle of New Orleans was fit before General Washington was born. Let the gentleman read Plutarch's lives, the lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, or let him read Arkwright's History of the Black Hawk war, and he'll find that General Henry Dodge fit the battle of New Orleans." We trust Mr. Charles Francis Adams will accept the above as the only thing in the way of Washington-anniversary eloquence that we can now produce without a violation of his patent.
ell gathered from the houses of mechanics and merchants those steady soldiers whose backs were never seen by the foe. The progress of Great Britain since she emerged from the middle period exposed her to the taunt of Napoleon that she was a nation of shop-keepers; but she was, and is, equally a nation of mechanics; and it was the wealth which trade and manufactures produced that proved too strong in the end for even the genius of Napoleon. It has been said, and we dare say with truth, that Arkwright, who placed cotton spinning in the sisterhood of national powers, bore the English nation triumphantly through the wars of the French revolution; and that Watt, who organized the steam engine, was the conqueror of the conqueror of Europe. At a later period, when a plain Northumberland mechanic inaugurated the grand railroad experiment of the age, Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, looking from one of the bridges at the flashing train, exclaimed: "1 "rejoice to see it, and to think that feudality is "g