It might be said that modern industrialism in America had its rise in certain causes and circumstances which existed at the beginning of the present century. It is well known how at that time almost the entire commerce of the civilized world outside of Great Britain and her colonial possessions was carried on under the American flag, in American bottoms, and also how among British orders in council, Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees and our own embargo and non-intercourse acts, retaliatory measures adopted by our government, this splendid commerce was speedily and effectually destroyed, and how finally this catastrophe produced in turn our first industrial crisis under the Constitution. New England found herself, in consequence, in great and widespread public distress, and her large capital, erstwhile engaged in commercial ventures at vast profit, became suddenly idle and non-productive. But it is an ill wind which blows no good. So it was in the case of New England at this period. For the ill wind which carried ruin to her commerce and want to hundreds of thousands of people, carried also the seeds and small beginnings of all her subsequent manufacturing greatness and prosperity. With the development of manufactures, which now followed, and the diversifying of American industries in the northern section of the Union, modern industrialism as a tremendously aggressive social factor and system of free labor was thereupon launched upon its long and stormy rivalry and struggle with slave institutions and slave labor for the possession of the republic, and, as a resultant of this conflict, it began to affect also the history and destiny of the Negroes of the United States. New England, naturally enough, was not at all well disposed toward a government whose acts had inflicted upon her such bitter distress, such ruinous dislocations of her capital and labor. This angry discontent was much aggravated later by the War of 1812, into which, in the opinion of that section, the country was precipitated by reason of Southern domination in national affairs. And thus was, perhaps, awakened in the North for the first time a distinct consciousness of the existence in the peculiar labor and institutions of the South, of interests and forces actively opposed to those of free labor and free institutions.