Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

[The following article, from the pen of Hon. R. J. Walker, forms the Appendix to the volume just published in England, and now exciting great attention there, containing the various pamphlets issued by him during the last six months. The subjects discussed embrace Jefferson Davis and Repudiation, Recognition, Slavery, Finances and Resources of the United States. It would be difficult to overestimate the effect of these Letters abroad. As our readers already possess them in the pages of The Continental, we enable them to complete the series by furnishing the ensuing Appendix. It closes with an extract from an 'Introductory Address' delivered by Mr. Walker before the National Institute, at Washington, D. C., giving a short account of the various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen in the Inductive Sciences. As showing to England what a high rank we had even then taken in the world of science, and pointing out to her the number and fame of our savants, it will be read with just pride and interest. As the Address was delivered in 1844, it of course contains no details of our marvellous progress since that date in science and discovery.—Ed. Continental.]

We have seen by the Census Tables, if the product per capita of the Slave States in 1859 had been equal to that of the Free States for that year, that the ADDITIONAL value produced in 1859 in the Slave States would have been $1,531,631,000. Now as our population augmented during that decade 35.59 per cent., this increased value, at that ratio, in 1869 would have been $2,052,332,272. If multiplying the amount each year by three only, instead of 3-559/1000 the result, during that decade, would have been as follows:

That is, the total increased product of the Slave States, during the decade from 1859 to 1869, would have been $17,873,539,511, if the production in the Slave States had been equal, per capita, to that of the Free States. This, it will be remembered, is gross product. This, it will be perceived, is far below the actual result, as we can see by comparing the real product of 1869, $2,052,332,272, as before given, with the $2,034,317,524, as the result of a multiplication by three each year.

The ratio of the increase of our wealth, from 1850 to 1860, as shown by the census, was much greater than that of our population—namely, 126.45 per cent. Multiplying by this ratio (126.45), the result would be an additional product in 1860, in the Slave States, of $3,427,619,475. But our wealth increases in an augmented ratio during each decade.

Thus, the ratio of the increase of our wealth, as shown by the census, was as follows:

Thus, the increase of our wealth from 1840 to 1850, was more than 50 per cent. greater than from 1830 to 1840; and from 1850 to 1860, nearly double that from 1840 to 1850. At the same duplicate ratio, from 1850 to 1870, the result would be over 250 per cent. That such would have been a close approximation to the true result, is rendered still more probable by the fact, that the product of 1859, as shown by the census, was 250 per cent. greater than that of 1849.

If, then, instead of 126.45 per cent., we were to assume 250 per cent. as the ratio, the result would be in 1869, $5,297,708,612, as the increased product of the Slave States that year, if the ratio per capita were equal to that of the Free States. If we carry out these ratios from 1859 to 1869, either of 126.45, or of 250, into the aggregate of the decade, the results are startling. Assuming, however, that of the population only, we have seen that the aggregate result in the decade from 1859 to 1869 was over seventeen billions of dollars, or largely more than ten times our debt incurred by this rebellion.

When, then, I reassert the opinion, heretofore expressed by me, that as the result of the superiority of free over slave labor, our wealth in 1870, and especially in each succeeding decade, as a consequence of the entire abolition of Slavery in the United States, will be far greater, notwithstanding the debt, than if the rebellion had never occurred, there is here presented conclusive official proof of the truth of this statement. We have seen that our wealth increased from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent., whilst that of England, from 1851 to 1861, augmented only at the rate of 37 per cent.

Applying these several ratios to the progress of the wealth of the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively, in 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900, the result is given below.

We have seen by the census, that our national wealth was, in

Increase from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.

England, from 1851 to 1861, 37 per cent.

Assuming these ratios, the result would be as follows:

Thus, it appears by the census of each nation, that, each increasing in the same ratio respectively as for the last decade, the wealth of the United States in 1880 would exceed that of the United Kingdom $23,743,518,849; that in 1890 it would be much more than double, and in 1900, approaching quadruple that of the United Kingdom.

When we reflect that England increases in wealth much more rapidly than any other country of Europe, the value of these statistics may be estimated, as proving how readily our national debt can be extinguished without oppressive taxation.

These are the results, founded on the actual statistics, without estimating the enormous increase of our national wealth, arising from the abolition of Slavery. We have seen that, by the official tables of the census of 1860, the value of the products of the United States, so far as given, for the year 1859, was $5,290,000,000. But this is very short of the actual result. The official report (pages 59, 190, 198 to 210) shows that this included only the products of 'agriculture, manufactures, mines, and fisheries.' In referring to the result as to 'manufactures,' at page 59 of his official report before given, the Superintendent says: 'If to this amount were added the very large aggregate of mechanical productions below the annual value of $500, of which no official cognizance is taken, the result would be one of startling magnitude.'

1. This omission alone, for gross product, is estimated at $500,000,000.

2. Milk and eggs, fodder, wood, poultry, and feathers, omitted, gross products, estimated at $350,000,000.

3. Gross earnings of trade and commerce, including freights, &c., by land and water, $1,000,000,000.

4. Gross earnings of all other pursuits and business, including all other omissions, $1,000,000,000.

Total gross products of 1860, as thus estimated, $8,140,000,000, of which the amount for the Free States, as estimated, is $6,558,334,000, and for the Slave States, $1,581,666,000.

I have heretofore referred to the vast influence of education as one of the principal causes of the greater product per capita in the Free than in the Slave States, of the much larger number of patents, of inventions, and discoveries, in the former than in the latter.

At the April meeting of 1844, upon the request of the Society, I delivered at Washington (D. C.) the Introductory Address for the National Institute, in which, up to that date, an account was given by me of 'the various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen in the inductive sciences.' On reference to that address, which was published at its date (April, 1844), with their bulletin, it will be seen that, from the great Franklin down to Kinnersley, Fitch, Rumsey, Fulton, Evans, Rush, the Stevenses of New Jersey, Whitney, Godfrey, Rittenhouse, Silliman, J. Q. Adams, Cleveland, Adrain, Bowditch, Hare, Bache, Henry, Pierce, Espy, Patterson, Nulty, Morse, Walker, Loomis, Rogers, Saxton, and many others; these men, with scarcely an exception, were from the Free States.

EXTRACT

And, first, of electricity. This has been cultivated with the greatest success in our country, from the time when Franklin with his kite drew down electricity from the thunder cloud, to that when Henry showed the electrical currents produced by the distant lightning discharge. In Franklin's day the idea prevailed that there were two kinds of electricity, one produced by rubbing vitreous substances, the other by the friction of resinous bodies. Franklin's theory of one electric fluid in all bodies, disturbed in its equilibrium by friction, and thus accumulating in one and deserting the other, maintains its ground, still capable of explaining the facts elicited in the progress of modern discovery. Franklin believed that electricity and lightning were the same, and proceeded to the proof. He made the perilous experiment, by exploring the air with a kite, and drawing down from the thunder cloud the lightning's discharge upon his own person. The bold philosopher received unharmed the shock of the electric fluid, more fortunate than others who have fallen victims to less daring experiments. The world was delighted with the discoveries of the great American, and for a time electricity was called Franklinism on the continent of Europe; but Franklin was born here, and the name was not adopted in England. While Franklin made experiments, Kinnersley exhibited and illustrated them, and also rediscovered the seemingly opposite electricities of glass and resin. Franklin's lightning rod is gradually surmounting the many difficulties with which it contended, as experience attests the greater safety of houses protected by the rod, properly mounted, whilst the British attempt to substitute balls for points has failed. This question, as to powder magazines, has lately excited much controversy. Should a rod be attached to the magazine, or should it be placed upon a post at some distance? This question has been solved by Henry. When an electrical discharge passes from one body to another, the electricity in all the bodies in the neighborhood is affected. Henry magnetized a needle in a long conductor, by the discharge from a cloud, more than a mile from the conductor. If a discharge passes down a rod, attached to a powder house, may it not cause a spark to pass from one receptacle for powder to another, and thus inflame the whole? The electrical plenum, which Henry supposed, is no doubt disturbed, and to great distances; but the effect diminishes with the distance. If all the principal conductors about a building can be connected with a lightning rod, there is no danger of a discharge; for it is only in leaving or entering a conductor that electricity produces heating effects; but if not, the rod is safer at a moderate distance from the building. The rate at which electricity moved was another of the experiments of Franklin. A wire was led over a great extent of ground, and a discharge passed through it. No interval could be perceived between the time of the spark passing to and from the wire at the two ends. Not long since, Wheatston of England, aided by our own great mechanic, Saxton, solved the problem. This has induced Arago, of France, to propose to test the rival theories of light, by similar means—to measure thus a velocity, to detect which has heretofore required a motion over the line of the diameter of the earth's orbit.

In galvanism, our countrymen have made many important discoveries. Dr. Hare invented instruments of such great power as well to deserve the names of calorimeter and deflagrator. The most refractory substances yielded to the action of the deflagrator, melting like wax before a common fire. Even charcoal was supposed to be fused in the experiments of Hare and Silliman, and the visionary speculated on the possibility of black as well as white diamonds. Draper, by his most ingenious galvanic battery, of two metals and two liquids, with one set of elements, in a glass tube not the size of the little finger, was able to decompose water. Faraday, of England, discovered the principle, that when a current of electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an action of a current upon itself, by forming a conductor in the whirls of a spiral, so that sparks and shocks might be obtained by the use of such spirals, when connected with a pair of galvanic plates, a current from which could give no sparks and no shocks. Henry's discoveries of the effects of a current in producing several alternations in currents in neighboring conductors—the change of the quality of electricity which gives shocks to the muscles into that producing heat, and vice versa—his mode of graduating these shocks—his theoretical investigations into the causes of these alternations—are abstruse, but admirable; and his papers have been republished throughout Europe. The heating effects of a galvanic current have been applied by Dr. Hare to blasting. The accidents which so often happen in quarries may be avoided by firing the charge from a distance, as the current which heats the wire, passing through the charge, may be conveyed, without perceptible diminution, through long distances. A feeble attempt to attribute this important invention of Dr. Hare to Colonel Pasley, an English engineer, has been abandoned. This is the marvellous agent by which our eminent countryman, Morse, encouraged by an appropriation made by Congress, will, by means of his electric telegraph, soon communicate information forty miles, from Washington to Baltimore, more rapidly than by whispering in the ear of a friend sitting near us. A telegraph on a new plan at that time, invented by Mr. Grout, of Massachusetts, in 1799, asked a question and received an answer in less than ten minutes through a distance of ninety miles. The telegraph of Mr. Morse will prove, I think, superior to all others; and the day is not distant when, by its aid, we may perhaps ask questions and receive replies across our continent, from ocean to ocean, thus uniting with steam in enlarging the limits over which our Republic may be safely extended.2

Many of our countrymen have contributed to the branch which regards the action of electrified and magnetic bodies. Lukens's application of magnetism to steel (called touching), the compass of Bissel for detecting local attraction, of Burt for determining the variation of the compass, and the observations on the variations of the needle made by Winthrop and Dewitt, deserve notice and commendation. Not long since, Gauss, of Germany, invented instruments by which the changes of magnetic variation and force could be accurately determined. Magnetic action is ever varying. The needle does not point in the same direction for even a few minutes together. The force of magnetism, also, perpetually varies. 'True as the needle to the pole' is not a correct simile for the same place, and, if we pass from one spot to another, is falsified at each change of our position; for the needle changes its direction, and the force varies. Enlarged and united observations, embracing the various portions of the world, must produce important results. The observations at Philadelphia, conducted by Dr. A. D. Bache, and now continued by him under the direction of the Topographical Bureau, are of great value, and will, it is hoped, be published by Congress. Part of them have already first seen the light in Europe—a result much to be regretted, for we are not strong enough in science to spare from the national records the contributions of our countrymen.

These combined observations, progressing throughout the world, are of the highest importance. The University of Cambridge, the American Philosophical Society, and Girard College have erected observatories; and one connected with the Depot of Charts and Instruments has been built in this city last year by the Government, and thoroughly furnished with instruments for complete observations. The names of Bache, Gillis, Pierce, Lovering, and Bond are well known in connection with these establishments.

A magnetic survey of Pennsylvania has been made by private enterprise, and the beginning of a survey in New York. Loomis has observed in Ohio, Locke in Ohio and Iowa, and to him belongs the discovery of the position of the point of greatest magnetic intensity in the Western World. Most interesting magnetic observations (now in progress of publication by Congress) are the result of the toilsome, perilous, and successful expedition, under Commander Wilkes, of our navy, by whom was discovered the Antarctic continent, and a portion of its soil and rock brought home to our country.

The analogy of the auroral displays with those of electricity in motion, was first pointed out by Dr. A. D. Bache, whose researches, in conjunction with Lloyd of Dublin, to determine whether differences of longitude could be measured by the observations of small simultaneous changes in the position of the magnetic needle, led to the knowledge of the curious fact, that these changes, which had been traced as simultaneous, or nearly so, in the continent of Europe, did not so extend across the Atlantic.

Kindred to these two branches are electro-magnetism and magneto-electricity, connected with which, as discoverers, are our countrymen Dana, Green, Hare, Henry, Page, Rogers, and Saxton. The reciprocal machine for producing shocks, invented by Page, and the powerful galvanic magnet of Henry, are entitled to respectful notice. This force, it was thought, might be substituted for steam; but no experiments have as yet established its use, on any important scale, as a motive power. The fact that an electrical spark could be produced by a peculiar arrangement of a coil of wire, connected with a magnet, is a recent discovery; and the first magneto-electric machine capable of keeping up a continuous current was invented by Saxton.

Electricity and magnetism touch in some points upon heat. Heat produces electrical currents; electrical currents produce heat. Heat destroys magnetism. Melted iron is incapable of magnetic influence. Reduction of temperature in iron so far decreases the force, that a celebrated philosopher made an elaborate series of experiments to ascertain whether a great reduction of temperature might not develop magnetic properties in metals other than iron. This branch of thermo-electricity has received from us but little attention. Franklin's experiments, by placing differently colored cloths in the snow, and showing the depth to which they sank, are still quoted, and great praise has been bestowed abroad on a more elaborate series of experiments, by a descendant of his, Dr. A. D. Bache, proving that this law does not hold good as to heat, unaccompanied by light. The experiments of Saxon and Goddard demonstrate that solid bodies do slowly evaporate. It is proper here to mention our countryman, Count Rumford, whose discoveries as to the nature and properties of heat, improvement in stoves and gunnery, and in the structure of chimneys and economy of fuel, have been so great and useful.

Light accompanies heat of a certain temperature. That it acts directly to increase or decrease magnetic force, is not yet proved; and the interesting experiments made by Dr. Draper, in Virginia, go to show that it is without magnetic influence. The discussion of this subject forms, the branch of optics, touching physical science on the one side, the most refined, and the highest range of mathematics on the other. Rittenhouse first suggested the true explanation of the experiment, of the apparent conversion of a cameo into an intaglio, when viewed through a compound microscope, and anticipated many years Brewster's theory. Hopkinson wrote well on the experiment made by looking at a street lamp through a slight texture of silk. Joscelyn, of New York, investigated the causes of the irradiation manifested by luminous bodies, as for instance the stars. Of late, photographic experiments have occupied much attention, and Draper has advanced the bold idea, supported by experiment, that the agent in the so-called photography, is not light, nor heat, but an agent differing from any other known principle. Henry has investigated the luminous emanation from lime, calcined with sulphur, and certain other substances, and finds that it differs much from light in some of its qualities.

Astronomy is the most ancient and highest branch of physics. One of our earliest and greatest efforts in this branch was the invention of the mariner's quadrant, by Godfrey, a glazier of Philadelphia. The transit of Venus, in the last century, called forth the researches of Rittenhouse, Owen, Biddle, and President Smith, near Philadelphia, and of Winthrop, at Boston. Two orreries were made by Rittenhouse, as also a machine for predicting eclipses. Most useful observations, connected with the solar eclipses, from 1832 to 1840, have been made by Paine, of Boston. We have now well-supplied observatories at West Point, Washington, Cambridge, Philadelphia, Hudson, Ohio, and Tuskaloosa, Alabama; and the valuable labors of Loomis, Bartlett, Gillis, Bond, Pierce, Walker, and Kendall are well known. Mr. Adams, so distinguished in this branch and that of weights and measures, laid last year the corner stone of an observatory at Cincinnati, where will soon be one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Most interesting observations as to the great comet of 1843 were made by Alexander, Anderson, Bartlett, Kendall, Pierce, Walker, Downes, and Loomis, and valuable astronomical instruments have been constructed by Amasa Holcomb, of Massachusetts, and Wm. J. Young, of Philadelphia.