An American history . the light of our prosperity, he 541. Thestruck the real note of the truce of 1850-1854. It was a busi- the^countay,ness mans peace. The commercial and industrial classes were 1850-1854tired of the agitation over slavery. They were glad to have Con-gress stop discussing the Missouri Compromise and the WilmotProviso, and attend to the business interests of the era of great prosperity was opening. The discovery ofimmense deposits of gold and silver in California; the extensionof the wheat fields into Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota; thegreat increase in the product
An American history . the light of our prosperity, he 541. Thestruck the real note of the truce of 1850-1854. It was a busi- the^countay,ness mans peace. The commercial and industrial classes were 1850-1854tired of the agitation over slavery. They were glad to have Con-gress stop discussing the Missouri Compromise and the WilmotProviso, and attend to the business interests of the era of great prosperity was opening. The discovery ofimmense deposits of gold and silver in California; the extensionof the wheat fields into Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota; thegreat increase in the products of the Northern mills and facto-ries ; and the growing fleet of our merchant marine, were allsigns of rapidly increasing wealth. The railroad mileage of thecountry up to the year 1848 was less than 6000, but during 1 It was in 1832 that Clay, by forcing through Congress the bill for the re-charter of the National Bank, set up the standard around which the opponentsof President Jackson rallied to form the Whig Canals and Railroads operated in 1850368 The Compromise of i8jo 369 the next ten years over 16,500 miles of new track were 1850 and 1855 the important railroads of the Atlanticcoast (the New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, theBaltimore and Ohio) were all connected with the Great Lakesor the Ohio River.^ Thus the immense northern basin of theMississippi, which, as part of the Louisiana Purchase, had beenconnected with the Gulf of Mexico, through the highway ofthe great river, now began to be joined with the Eastern statesand to send its growing trade through the Great Lakes andover the Atlantic-seaboard railroads. The wealth of the South seemed even more firm in its foun- 542. Thedations and more rapid in its increase. An apparently limitless xlngcot-demand for cotton by the mills of America and Europe en- 1°°+^ **couraged the cultivation of that staple to the neglect of everyother form of industry. By 1850 the value of the cotton cropwas
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