The Charleston _Courier_ in 1839 printed an extract from the New York _Journal of Commerce_, to the effect that twenty-three vessels under the American flag had sailed about that time from Havana on the slave trade[173]. And the Charleston _Mercury_ in 1849 declared: “The slave trade is again very active in Cuba.”[174] In support of these claims it can be said: Of the increase of the colored population of the United States from 1850 to 1860, more than one-half was in the four States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, into which slaves could most easily be imported, and the temper of the most northerly of those was becoming extremely sensitive upon the subject of allusions to the institution of slavery, as the following extract of a resolution adopted by the Legislature of that State, and sent to the other States of the Union, indicates: “Whereas the right of property in slaves is expressly recognized by the Constitution of the United States, and is by virtue of such recognition guaranteed against unfriendly action on behalf of the General Government; and whereas, each State of the Union, by the fact of being a party to the federal compact, is also a party to the recognition and guaranty aforesaid.... Resolved: That the citizens of the State of Ohio have pursued a course peculiarly unjust and odious, in their fanatical hostility to institutions for which they are not responsible; in their encouragement of known felons and endorsement of repeated violations of law and decency, and in their establishment of abolition presses, and circulation of incendiary documents, urging a servile population to bloodshed and rapine, and by reason of the premises, it is the duty and interest of the people of Arkansas to discontinue all social and commercial relations with the citizens of the said State.” etc.[175] It is interesting to note that in his very able and extremely interesting paper on “The Fight for the Northwest,” 1860, the map which accompanies the article of Prof. W. E. Dodd, does not include Ohio. Quoting from a speech of Senator Hammond in 1858, in which the latter declared: “The most valuable part of the Mississippi belongs to us, and although those who have settled above us, are now opposed to us, another generation will tell another tale,”[176] Mr. Dodd draws from it the conclusion that “Hammond’s idea was that the railroads connecting the West and the South, would so stimulate reciprocal trade between the farmers and the planters, that the resistance of the Chicago-Detroit region would be overcome.” But it should be borne in mind that in 1858-1860, between the West and the South there stretched a great tract of country over six hundred miles in length, and nearly three hundred miles in breadth, through the whole extent of which not a single railroad stretched across from the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry to the junction of the Ohio River with the Mississippi, near the northeastern corner of Arkansas.