DUST IN THE AFTERNOON LIGHT

    “Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite Institution….”- Ulysses S. Grant  Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

     From the very beginning of the alien invasion, civil/military government was the right hand of the church, speculator and developer. By maintaining a monopoly on all Indian property “sales,” as early as 1684, the New York Assembly enacted a bill that stated: “from henceforward noe purchase of Lands from the Indians shall bee esteemed a good Title without Leave first had and obtained from the Governour signified by a warrant under his hand and seal….” This gave governmental authorities the ultimate power over large tracts of Indian property, that only the rich manor lords, or politically connected conglomerates of speculators could put together or afford. It was the beginning of the corporate southern plantation system, not surprisingly, started in New York. For the woodcutter, farmer, or mechanic (north or south) little opportunity was available to acquire property or wealth. This legalese stopped small scale homesteading in its tracks, further fueling and facilitating the patronage system, poor tenant and slave exploitation, and widespread discontent.     

     All things considered, the southern planters in Putnam County Georgia and Henry Seward’s host Major William Alexander were in great shape in 1819; reaping the rewards of “industrial” crop production of cotton, with the indispensable use of slave labor. The recent downturn in the western real estate market was but a small glitch, a bump in the road for Dixie. The industrial mechanization of tractors and harvesters was a long way off, and the new south of 1819 felt it was impossible to rebound economically without slaves. A 1901 article reported, “The population of [Putnam] county in 1810 was 6,809 whites and 3,220 slaves; in 1830 there were 5,554 whites and 7,707 slaves; in 1850 the free population had been reduced to 3,326 whites, and there were 7,468 slaves…..He [the planter] found himself at the end of the war between the States with a yard full of negroes, a sadly impoverished plantation and a heavy debt.” Once again, African Americans were blamed for hard economic times and being responsible for their very existence in enslavement, as they were eventually freed from it.

     Eli Whitney’s marvel, the cotton gin (patented in 1794) only removed the seeds of the plant. It didn’t plant nor harvest the crop. An article on Putnam County, Georgia explains, “Following the invention of the cotton gin, which could profitably process short-staple cotton, [Putnam] county was developed for cotton cultivation of that type.” Instead of releasing men and women from labor, the cotton gin increased the need for even more slaves. If the gin’s mechanization could process the crop quickly, more cotton would have to be grown and picked to satisfy the machine and the market’s insatiable hunger for cheap textiles. That would take more slaves. The racial demographic figures between 1810 and 1850 reflect this change in slave population in Putnam County in the lead up to civil war. 

     Putnam County, Georgia was on the eastern edge of the Creek Nation. The southern planters knew they had to expand, spreading slavery west, or see their white supremacist, plantation way of life perish. Grant’s Union Army did stop slavery from spreading, but accelerated Indian genocide. It was a trade off nobody questioned. For the General it was a winning proposition. Grant considered the Civil War (like his General Tecumseh Sherman would later consider the ensuing Indian Wars) a “purification through fire,” also noting in his memoir, “It is probable that the Indians would have had control of these lands for a century yet but for war. We must conclude, therefore, that wars are not always evils unmixed with some good.” The “some good” Grant referred to was the expeditious extermination of the Native Americans across the continental United States. In Grant’s opinion, the bloody, white man’s Civil War thankfully, sped up the process of Indian elimination and the consummation of white manifest destiny. The post-war economy, now with banks again funding unlimited real estate expansion, could stabilize without dependency on chattel-slavery. This was all done at the bidding of the “well-to-do population,” at the expense of the Indian, and eventually the freedmen. Grant wasn’t a founder, but he was a student of military history. Since the Esopus Wars in the 1650’s, the Indians had suffered through and been decimated by many of the white man’s wars. By the time Susan VanDerZee was serving the old general his tea on the upper east side, the tribes would be no more than dust in the afternoon light.