The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2, by 
Joseph Warren Keifer

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2
       A Political History of Slavery in the United States Together
       With a Narrative of the Campaigns and Battles of the Civil
       War In Which the Author Took Part: 1861-1865

Author: Joseph Warren Keifer

Release Date: July 19, 2007 [EBook #22100]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR ***




Produced by Ed Ferris




Transcriber's note:

  Footnotes are at the end of each chapter, except at the end of
  each section in Chapter I.  Duplicate notes were on adjacent pages
  in the book.

  Right-hand-page heads are omitted.

  Names have been corrected (except possibly "Hurlburt").

  LoC call number:  E470.K18


SLAVERY AND
FOUR YEARS OF WAR

A POLITICAL HISTORY OF SLAVERY
IN THE UNITED STATES

TOGETHER WITH A NARRATIVE OF THE CAMPAIGNS
AND BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR IN WHICH
THE AUTHOR TOOK PART:  1861-1865

BY
JOSEPH WARREN KEIFER
BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL OF VOLUNTEERS; EX-SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, U. S. A.; AND MAJOR-GENERAL OF VOLUNTEERS,
SPANISH WAR.

ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME I.
1861-1863

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1900


Copyright, 1900

BY
JOSEPH WARREN KEIFER

The Knickerbocker Press, New York


To the

memory of the dead and as a tribute of esteem to the living officers
and soldiers who served immediately with and under the author in
battles and campaigns of the great American rebellion

This Book is Dedicated


PREFACE

The writer of this book was a volunteer officer in the Union army
throughout the war of the Great Rebellion, and his service was in
the field.

The book, having been written while the author was engaged in a
somewhat active professional life, lacks that literary finish which
results from much pruning and painstaking.  He, however, offers no
excuse for writing it, nor for its completion; he has presumed to
nothing but the privilege of telling his own story in his own way.
He has been at no time forgetful of the fact that he was a subordinate
in a great conflict, and that other soldiers discharged their duties
as faithfully as himself; and while no special favors are asked,
he nevertheless opes that what he has written may be accepted as
the testimony of one who entertains a justifiable pride in having
been connected with large armies and a participant in important
campaigns and great battles.

He flatters himself that his summary of the political history of
slavery in the United States, and of the important political events
occurring upon the firing on Fort Sumter, and the account he has
given of the several attempts to negotiate a peace before the final
overthrow of the Confederate armies, will be of special interest
to students of American history.

Slavery bred the doctrine of State-rights, which led, inevitably,
to secession and rebellion.  The story of slavery and its abolition
in the United States is the most tragic one in the world's annals.
The "Confederate States of America" is the only government ever
attempted to be formed, avowedly to perpetuate _human slavery_.
A history of the Rebellion without that of slavery is but a recital
of brave deeds without reference to the motive which prompted their
performance.

The chapter on slavery narrates its history in the United States
from the earliest times; its status prior to the war; its effect
on political parties and statesmen; its aggressions, and attempts
at universal domination if not extension over the whole Republic;
its inexorable demands on the friends of freedom, and its plan of
perpetually establishing itself through secession and the formation
of a slave nation.  It includes a history of the secession of eleven
Southern States, and the formation of "The Confederate States of
America"; also what the North did to try to avert the Rebellion.
It was written to show why and how the Civil War came, what the
conquered lost, and what the victors won.

In other chapters the author has taken the liberty, for the sake
of continuity, of going beyond the conventional limits of a personal
_memoir_, but in doing this he has touched on no topic not connected
with the war.

The war campaigns cover the first one in Western Virginia, 1861;
others in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, 1862; in
West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, 1863; and in
Virginia, 1864; ending with the capture of Richmond and Petersburg,
the battles of Five Forks and Sailor's Creek, and the surrender of
Lee to Grant at Appomattox, 1865.  A chapter on the New York riots
of 1863, also one on the "Peace Negotiations," will be found, each
in its proper place.

Personal mention and descriptions of many officers known to the
writer are given; also war incidents deemed to be of interest to
the reader.

But few generalizations are indulged in either as to events,
principles, or the character of men; instead, facts are given from
which generalizations may be formed.

The author is indebted to his friends, General George D. Ruggles
(General Meade's Assistant Adjutant-General, Army of the Potomac,
late Adjutant-General, U.S.A.), for important data furnished from
the War Department, and to his particular friends, both in peace
and war, General John Beatty and Colonel Wm. S. Furay of Columbus,
Ohio, for valuable suggestions.

  J. W. K.
December, 1899.


CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Slavery:  Its Political History in the United States,
(I.) Introductory--(II.) Introduction of Slavery into the Colonies
--(III.) Declaration of Independence--(IV.) Continental Congress:
Articles of Confederation--(V.) Ordinance of 1787--(VI.) Constitution
of the United States--(VII.) Causes of Growth of Slavery--(VIII.)
Fugitive-Slave Law, 1793--(IX.) Slave Trade Abolished--(X.) Louisiana
Purchase--(XI.) Florida--(XII.) Missouri Compromise--(XIII.)
Nullification--(XIV.) Texas--(XV.) Mexican War, Acquisition of
California and New Mexico--(XVI.) Compromise Measures, 1850--(XVII.)
Nebraska Act--(XVIII.) Kansas Struggle for Freedom--(XIX.) Dred
Scott Case--(XX.) John Brown Raid--(XXI.) Presidential Elections,
1856-1860--(XXII.) Dissolution of the Union--(XXIII.) Secession of
States--(XXIV.) Action of Religious Denominations--(XXV.) Proposed
Concessions to Slavery--(XXVI.) Peace Conference--(XXVII.) District
of Columbia--(XXVIII.) Slavery Prohibited in Territories--(XXIX.)
Benton's Summary--(XXX.) Prophecy as to Slavery and Disunion.

CHAPTER II
Sumter Fired on--Seizure by Confederates of Arms, Arsenals, and
Forts--Disloyalty of Army and Navy Officers--Proclamation of Lincoln
for 75,000 Militia, and Preparation for War on Both Sides

CHAPTER III
Personal Mention--Occupancy of Western Virginia under McClellan
(1861)--Campaign and Battle of Rich Mountain, and Incidents

CHAPTER IV
Repulse of General Lee and Affairs of Cheat Mountain and in Tygart's
Valley (September, 1861)--Killing of John A. Washington, and
Incidents--and Formation of State of West Virginia

CHAPTER V
Union Occupancy of Kentucky--Affair at Green River--Defeat of
Humphrey Marshall--Battles of Mill Springs, Forts Henry and Donelson
--Capture of Bowling Green and Nashville, and Other Matters

CHAPTER VI
Battle of Shiloh--Capture of Island No. 10--Halleck's Advance on
Corinth, and Other Events

CHAPTER VII
Mitchel's Campaign to Northern Alabama--Andrews' Raid into Georgia,
and Capture of a Locomotive--Affair at Bridgeport--Sacking of
Athens, Alabama, and Court-Martial of Colonel Turchin--Burning of
Paint Rock by Colonel Beatty--Other Incidents and Personal Mention
--Mitchel Relieved

CHAPTER VIII
Confederate Invasion of Kentucky (1862)--Cincinnati Threatened,
and "Squirrel Hunters" Called Out--Battles of Iuka, Corinth, and
Hatchie Bridge--Movements of Confederate Armies of Bragg and Kirby
Smith--Retirement of Buell's Army to Louisville--Battle of Perryville,
with Personal and Other Incidents

CHAPTER IX
Commissioned Colonel of 110th Ohio Volunteers--Campaigns in West
Virginia under General Milroy, 1862-1863--Emancipation of Slaves
in the Shenandoah Valley, and Incidents


ILLUSTRATIONS

J. Warren Keifer

Andrew H. Reeder, first governor of Kansas Territory, Flight in
Disguise, 1855 [From a painting in Coates' House, Kansas City,
Missouri.]

Abraham Lincoln

Map of the United States, 1860 [Showing free and slave States and
Territories.]

General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S.A. [From a photograph taken 1865.]

Confederate Silver Half-Dollar

John Beatty, Brigadier-General of Volunteers [From a photograph
taken 1863.]

Rich Mountain and Cheat Mountain Country, W. Va.

General William T. Sherman, U.S.A. [From a photograph taken 1881.]

Major-General O. M. Mitchel [From a photograph taken 1862.]

Brevet Brigadier-General Wm. H. Ball [From a photograph taken 1864.]

Rev. William T. Meloy, D. D., Lieutenant 122d Ohio Volunteers [From
a photograph taken 1896.]

Major-General Robert H. Milroy [From a photograph taken 1863.]

Lieutenant James A. Fox, 110th Ohio Volunteers [From a photograph
taken 1863.]

Map of Shenandoah valley [From Major W. F. Tiemann's _History of
the 159th New York_.]

Rev. Milton J. Miller, Chaplain 110th Ohio Volunteers [From a
photograph taken 1865.]

Rev. Charles C. McCabe, D. D., Bishop M. E. Church, Chaplain 122d
Ohio Volunteers [From a photograph taken 1868.]


SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR


SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS
OF WAR

CHAPTER I
SLAVERY:  ITS POLITICAL HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES
(I.) Introductory--(II.) Introduction of Slavery into the Colonies
--(III.) Declaration of Independence--(IV.) Continental Congress:
Articles of Confederation--(V.) Ordinance of 1787--(VI.) Constitution
of the United States--(VII.) Causes of Growth of Slavery--(VIII.)
Fugitive-Slave Law, 1793--(IX.) Slave Trade Abolished--(X.) Louisiana
Purchase--(XI.) Florida--(XII.) Missouri Compromise--(XIII.)
Nullification--(XIV.) Texas--(XV.) Mexican War, Acquisition of
California and New Mexico--(XVI.) Compromise Measures, 1850--(XVII.)
Nebraska Act--(XVIII.) Kansas Struggle for Freedom--(XIX.) Dred
Scott Case--(XX.) John Brown Raid--(XXI.) Presidential Elections,
1856-1860--(XXII.) Dissolution of the Union--(XXIII.) Secession of
States--(XXIV.) Action of Religious Denominations--(XXV.) Proposed
Concessions to Slavery--(XXVI.) Peace Conference--(XXVII.) District
of Columbia--(XXVIII.) Slavery Prohibited in Territories--(XXIX.)
Benton's Summary--(XXX.) Prophecy as to Slavery and Disunion.

I
INTRODUCTORY

Slavery is older than tradition--older than authentic history, and
doubtless antedates any organized form of human government.  It
had its origin in barbaric times.  Uncivilized man never voluntarily
performed labor even for his own comfort; he only struggled to gain
a bare subsistence.  He did not till the soil, but killed wild
animals for food and to secure a scant covering for his body; and
cannibalism was common.  Tribes were formed for defence, and thus
wars came, all, however, to maintain mere savage existence.  Through
primitive wars captives were taken, and such as were not slain were
compelled to labor for their captors.  In time these slaves were
used to domesticate useful animals and, later, were forced to
cultivate the soil and build rude structures for the comfort and
protection of their masters.  Thus it was that mankind was first
forced to toil and ultimately came to enjoy labor and its incident
fruits, and thus human slavery became a first step from barbarism
towards the ultimate civilization of mankind.

White slavery existed in the English-American colonies antecedent
to black or African slavery, though at first only intended to be
conditional and not to extend to offspring.  English, Scotch, and
Irish alike, regardless of ancestry or religious faith, were, for
political offenses, sold and transported to the dependent American
colonies.  They were such persons as had participated in insurrections
against the Crown; many of them being prisoners taken on the battle-
field, as were the Scots taken on the field of Dunbar, the royalist
prisoners from the field of Worcester; likewise the great leaders
of the Penruddoc rebellion, and many who were taken in the insurrection
of Monmouth.

Of these, many were first sold in England to be afterwards re-sold
on shipboard to the colonies, as men sell horses, to the highest
bidder.

There was also, in some of the colonies, a conditional servitude,
under indentures, for servants, debtors, convicts, and perhaps
others.  These forms of slavery made the introduction of negro and
perpetual slavery easy.

Australasia alone, of all inhabited parts of the globe, has the
honor, so far as history records, of never having a slave
population.

Egyptian history tells us of human bondage; the patriarch Abraham,
the founder of the Hebrew nation, owned and dealt in slaves.  That
the law delivered to Moses from Mt. Sinai justified and tolerated
human slavery was the boast of modern slaveholders.

Moses, from "Nebo's heights," saw the "land of promise," where
flowed "milk and honey" in abundance, and where slavery existed.
The Hebrew people, but forty years themselves out of bondage,
possessed this land and maintained slavery therein.

The advocates of slavery and the slave trade exultingly quoted:

"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of
the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to
a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it."--Joel iii, 8.

They likewise claimed that St. Paul, while he preached the gospel
to slaveholders and slaves alike in Rome, yet used his calling to
enable him to return to slavery an escaped human being--Onesimus.( 1)

The advocates of domestic slavery justified it as of scriptural
and divine origin.

From the Old Testament they quoted other texts, not only to justify
the holding of slaves in perpetual bondage, but the continuance of
the slave trade with all its cruelties.

"And he said, I am Abraham's servant."--Gen. xxiv., 34.

"And there was of the house of Saul a _servant_ whose name was
Ziba.  And when they had called him unto David, the King said unto
him, Art thou Ziba?  And he said, Thy servant is he. . . .

"Then the King called to Ziba, Saul's _servant_, and said unto him,
I have given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul, and
to all his house.

"Thou, therefore, and thy sons, and they servants shall till the
land for him, and thou shalt bring in _the fruits_, that thy master's
son may have food to eat," etc.  "Now Ziba had fifteen sons and
_twenty servants_."--2 Samuel ix., 2, 9-10.

"I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house;
also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all
that were in Jerusalem before me."--Eccles. ii., 7.

"And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence comest thou? and she
said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.

"And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress,
and submit thyself to her hands."--Gen. xvi., 8, 9.

"A servant will not be corrected by words; for though he understand,
he will not answer."--Prov. xxix., 19.

And from the New Testament they triumphantly quoted:

"Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
Art thou called being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest
be made free, use it rather."--I Cor., vii., 20-22.

"Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to
the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
as unto Christ," etc.

"And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening:
knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect
of persons with him."--Eph., vi., 5-9.

"Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh,
not with eye service, as men pleasers; but in singleness of heart,
fearing God."--Col. iii., 22.

"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal;
knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."--Col. iv., 1.

"Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters
worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not
blasphemed," etc.--I Tim., vi., 1, 2.

"Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to
please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining,
but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of
God our Saviour in all things."--Titus ii., 9, 10.

"Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to
the good and gentle, but also to the froward."--I. Pet. ii, 18.

The advocates of slavery maintained that Christ approved the calling
as a slaveholder as well as the faith of the Roman centurion, whose
servant, "sick of a palsy," Christ miraculously healed by saying:
"_I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel_."--Matt.
viii., 10.

They also cited Dr. Adam Clark, the great Bible commentator; Dr.
Neander's work, entitled _Planting and Training the Church_, and
Dr. Mosheim's _Church History_, as evidence that the Bible not only
sanctioned slavery but authorized its perpetuation through all
time.( 2)  In other words, pro-slavery advocates in effect affirmed
that these great writers:

  "Torture the hollowed pages of the Bible,
   To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood,
   And, in oppression's hateful service, libel
   Both man and God."

While the teachings of neither the Old nor the New Testament, nor
of the _Master_, were to overthrow or to establish political
conditions as established by the temporal powers of the then age,
yet it must be admitted that large numbers of people, of much
learning and a high civilization, believed human slavery was
sanctioned by divine authority.

The deductions made from the texts quoted were unwarranted.  The
principles of justice and mercy, on which the Christian religion
is founded, cannot be tortured into even a toleration (as, possibly,
could the law of Moses) of the existence of the unnatural and
barbaric institution of slavery, or the slave trade.

Slavery was wrong _per se;_ wholly unjustifiable on the plainest
principles of humanity and justice; and the consciences of all
unprejudiced, enlightened, civilized people led them in time to
believe that it had no warrant from God and ought to have no warrant
from man to exist on the face of the earth.

The friends of freedom and those who believed slavery sinful never
for a moment assented to the claim that it was sanctioned by Holy
Writ, or that it was justified by early and long-continued existence
through barbaric or semi-barbaric times.  They denied that it could
thus even be sanctified into a moral right; that time ever converted
cruelty into a blessing, or a wrong into a right; that any human
law could give it legal existence, or rightfully perpetuate it
against natural justice; they maintained that a Higher Law, written
in God's immutable decrees of mercy, was paramount to all human
law or practice, however long continuing; that the lessons taught
by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and in all his life and
teachings were a condemnation of it; and that an enlightened,
progressive civilization demanded its final overthrow.

In America:  Slavery is _dead_.  We return to its history.

Greece had her slaves before tradition blended into history, though,
four centuries before Christ, Alcidamas proclaimed:  "_God has sent
forth all men free:  Nature has made no man slave_."

Alexander, the mighty Macedonian (fourth century B.C.), sold captives
taken at Tyre and Gaza, the most accomplished people of that time,
into slavery.( 3)

Rome had her slaves; and her slave-marts were open at her principal
ports for traffic in men and women of all nationalities, especially
Christians and captives taken in war.

The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the
desolating traffic.  Russia recognized slavery and carried on a
slave trade through her merchantmen.

The Turks forbade the enslaving of Mussulmans, but sold Christian
and other captives into slavery.  Christian and Moor, for seven
hundred years in the doubtful struggle in Western Europe, respectively,
doomed their captives to slavery.

Contemporary with the discovery of America, the Moors were driven
from Granada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the north of
Africa; there they became corsairs, privateers, and holders of
Christian slaves.  Their freebooter life and cruelty furnished the
pretext, not only to enslave the people of the Moorish dominion,
but of all Africa.  The oldest accounts of Africa bear testimony
to the existence of domestic slavery--of negro enslaving negro,
and of caravans of dealers in negro slaves.

Columbus, whose glory as the discoverer of this continent we
proclaim, on a return voyage (1494) carried five hundred native
Americans to Spain, a present to Queen Isabella, and American
Indians were sold into foreign bondage, as "spoils of war," for
two centuries.

The Saxon carried slavery in its most odious form into England,
where, at one time, not half the inhabitants were absolutely free,
and where the price of a man was but four times the price of an ox.

He sold his own kindred into slavery.  English slaves were held in
Ireland till the reign of Henry II.

In time, however, the spirit of Christianity, pleading the cause
of humanity, stayed slavery's progress, and checked the slave
traffic by appeals to conscience.

Alexander III, Pope of Rome in the twelfth century, proclaimed
against it, by writing:  "_Nature having made no slaves, all men
have an equal right to liberty_."

Efficacious as the Christian religion has been to destroy or mitigate
evil, it has failed to render the so-called Christian slaveholder
better than the pagan, or to improve the condition of the bondsmen.

It may be observed that when slavery seemed to be firmly planted
in the Republic of the United States of America, Egypt, as one of
the powers of the earth, had passed away; her slavery, too, was
gone--only her Pyramids, Sphinx, and Monoliths have been spared by
time and a just judgment.  Greece, too, had perished, only her
philosophy and letters survive; Israel's people, though the chosen
of God, had, as a nation, been bodily carried into oriental
Babylonian captivity, and in due time had, in fulfillment of divine
judgment, been dispersed through all lands.  God in his mighty
wrath also thundered on Babylon's iniquity, and it, too, passed
away forever, and the prophet gives as a reason for this, that
Babylon dealt in "_slaves and the souls of men_."

Rome, once the mistress of the world, cased as a nation to live;
her greatness and her glory, her slave markets and her slaves, all
gone together and forever.

Germany, France, Spain, and other slave nations renounced slavery
barely in time to escape the general national doom.

Russia, though her mighty Czars possessed absolute power to rule,
trembled before the mighty insurrections of peasant-serfs that
swept over the bodies of slain nobles and slave-masters from remote
regions to the very gates of Moscow.  Catherine II., Alexander I.,
Nicholas I., and Alexander II. listened to the threatened doom,
and, to save their empire, put forth decrees to loosen and finally
to break the chains of twenty millions of slaves and serfs.  Even
Moorish slavery in Northern Africa in large part passed away.
Mohammedan,( 4) Brahmin, and Buddhist had no sanction for human
slavery.

England heard the warning cry just in time to save the kingdom from
the impending common destiny of slave nations.

It was not, however, until 1772, that Lord Mansfield, from the
Court of the King's Bench of Great Britain, announced that no slave
could be held under the English Constitution.  This decision was
of binding force in her American colonies when the Declaration of
Independence was adopted, and the "Liberty Bell" proclaimed "_Liberty
throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof_."

The argument that the institution of slavery was sanctified by age
ceased, long since, to be satisfying to those who learned justice
and mercy in the light of Christian love, and who could read, not
only that human slavery had existed from the earliest times, but
that it had existed without right, only by the power of might, not
sanctioned by reason and natural justice, and that in its train a
myriad of coincident evils, crimes, and immoralities had taken
birth and flourished, blasting both master and slave and the land
they inhabited, and that God's just and retributive judgment has
universally been visited on all nations and peoples continuing to
maintain and perpetuate it.

Murder has existed in the world since Cain and Abel met by the
altar of God, yet no sane person for that reason justifies it.  So
slavery has stalked down the long line of centuries, cursing and
destroying millions with its damning power, but time has not
sanctioned it into a right.  The longer it existed the more foul
became the blot upon history's pages, and the deeper the damnation
upon humanity it wrought.

When all the civilized nations of Europe, as well as the nations
and even tribes of Asia, had either abolished slavery and taken
steps effectually to do so, it remained for the _United States_ to
stand alone upholding it in its direst form.

The nations of the ancient world either shook off slavery in attempts
to wash away its bloody stain, or slavery wiped them from the powers
of the earth.  So of the more modern nations.

Our Republic, boastful of its free institutions, of its constitutional
liberty, of its free schools and churches, of its glories in the
cause of humanity, its patriotism, resplendent history, inventive
genius, wealth, industry, civilization, and Christianity, maintained
slavery until it was only saved from its common doom of slave
nations by the atoning sacrifice of its best blood and the mercy
of an offended God.

More than two centuries (1562) before Lord Mansfield judicially
announced _freedom_ to be the universal law of England, Sir John
Hawkins acquired the infamous distinction of being the first
Englishman to embark in the slave trade, and the depravity of public
sentiment in England then approved his action.  He then seized, on
the African coast, and transported a large cargo of negroes to
Hispaniola and bartered them for sugar, ginger, and pearls, at
great profit.( 5)  Here commenced a traffic in human beings by
English-speaking people (scarcely yet ceased) that involved murder,
arson, theft, and all the cruelty and crimes incident to the capture,
transportation, and subjection of human beings to the lust, avarice,
and power of man.

Sir John Hawkins' success coming to the notice of the avaricious
and ambitious Queen Elizabeth, she, five years later (1567), became
the open protector of a new expedition and sharer in the nefarious
traffic, thus becoming a promoter, abettor, and participant in all
its crimes.

To the "African Company," for a long period, was granted by England
a monopoly of the slave trade, but it could not be confined to this
company.  In 1698, England exacted a tariff on the slave cargoes
of her subjects engaged in the trade.

From 1680 to 1700, by convention with Spain, the English, it is
estimated, stole from Africa 300,000 negroes to supply the Spanish
West Indies with slaves.  By the treaty of Utrecht (1713) Spain
granted to England, during thirty years, the absolute monopoly of
supplying slaves to the Spanish colonies.  By this treaty England
agreed to take to the West Indies not less than 144,000 negroes,
or 4800 each year; and, to guard against scandal to the Roman
Catholic religion, heretical slave-traders were forbidden.  This
monopoly was granted by England to the "South Sea Company."

England did not confine her trade to the West Indies.  In 1750, it
was shown in the English Parliament that 46,000 negroes were annually
sold to English colonies.( 6)

As early as 1565, Sir John Hawthorne and Menendez imported negroes
as slaves into Florida, then a Spanish possession, and with Spain's
sanction many were carried into the West Indies and sold into
slavery.

( 1)  Epistle to Philemon.

( 2)  The references to the Bible are taken from the most learned
advocates of the divinity of slavery, in its last years.  _Ought
American Slavery to be Perpetuated?_ (Brownlow and Pryne debate),
p. 78, etc.  _Slavery Ordained of God_ (Ross), 146, etc., 176, etc.

Rev. Frederick A. Ross, D. D. (the author), a celebrated Presbyterian
minister, was arrested in 1862 at Huntsville, Alabama, while it
was occupied by the Union forces, for praying from the pulpit for
the success of secession.

Parson Brownlow was a Union man in 1861, was much persecuted at
his home in Knoxville, Tenn., later advocated emancipation.

( 3)  It is interesting to note that more than fifteen hundred
years (twelfth century) after Alexander's conquests, Saladin, the
great Sultan, and other Mohammedan rulers, and Richard Coeur de
Lion, and other crusade leaders in Syria, respectively, doomed
their captives to slavery, regardless of nationality or color.--
_Saladin_ (Heroes of Nations, Putnams), 229-232, 338.

( 4)  Slavery and the slave trade, in spite of the teachings of
the Koran, grew up in Mohammedan countries.  The traffic in slaves,
however, had been frequently proclaimed against by the Ottoman
Porte.

( 5)  But the first trace of negro slavery in America came in 1502,
only ten years after its discovery, through a decree of Ferdinand
and Isabella permitting negro slaves born in Spain, descendants of
natives brought from Guinea, to be transported to Hispaniola.--
_Life of Columbus_, by Irving (Putnams), p. 275.

( 6)  _History for Ready Reference_, vol. iv., p. 2923.


II
INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY INTO THE COLONIES

In August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war sailed up the James River in
Virginia, landed and sold to the colony at Jamestown _twenty_
negroes as slaves.  This event marked the beginning of negro slavery
in English-American colonies.  Two centuries and a half did not
suffice to put an end the Ethiopian slavery and the evils of a
traffic begun on so small a scale.

One year later (1620) the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, bringing
with them stern religious convictions and severe morals which soon
ripened into written laws and were likewise woven into social,
political, and religious life, the resultant effect of which, on
human existence in America, is never to end.  One year later still,
cotton was first planted in the virgin soil of America, where it
grew to perfection, and thenceforth becoming the staple production,
made slavery and slave-breeding profitable to the slaveholder.( 7)

The earliest importation of negro slaves into New England was to
Providence Isle in the shp _Desire_ (1637).

From Boston, Mass. (1645), the first American ship from the colonies
set sail to engage in the stealing of African negroes.  Massachusetts
then held, under sanction of law, a few blacks and Indians in
bondage.( 8)  But slavery did not flourish in New England.  It was
neither profitable nor in consonance with the judgment of the people
generally.  The General Court of Massachusetts, as early as 1646,
"bearing witness against the heinous crimes of man-stealing, ordered
the recently imported negroes to be restored, at the public charge,
to their native country, with a _letter_ expressing the indignation
of the General Court."  Unfortunately, persons guilty of stealing
men could not be tried for crimes committed in foreign lands.

But the African slave trade, early found to be extremely profitable,
and hence popular, did not cease.  England, then as now, the most
enterprising of commercial nations on the high seas, engrossed the
trade, in large part, from 1680 to 1780.  In 1711, there was
established a slave depot in New York City on or near what is now
Wall Street; and about the same time a depot was established for
receiving slaves in Boston, near where the old Franklin House stood.
From New England ships, and perhaps from others, negroes were landed
and sent to these and other central slave markets.

But few of these freshly stolen negroes were sold to Northern
slaveholders.  Slave labor was not even then found profitable in
the climate of the North.  The bondsman went to a more southern
clime, and to the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of the large
plantations of the South.

As late as 1804-7, negroes from the coast of Africa were brought
to Boston, Bristol, Providence, and Hartford to be sold into
slavery.

Shipowners of all the coast colonies, and later of all the coast
States of the United States, engaged in the slave trade.

But it was among the planters of Maryland, Virginia, and the
Carolinas that slaves proved to be most profitable.  The people in
these sections were principally rural; plantations were large, not
subject to be broken up by frequent partition, if at all.  The
crops raised were better suited to cultivation by slaves in large
numbers; and the hot climate was better adapted to the physical
nature of the African negro.

The first inhabitants of the South preferred a rural life, and on
large plantations.  The Crown grants to early proprietors favored
this, especially in the Virginia and Carolina colonies.  The Puritans
did not love or foster slavery as did the Cavalier of the South.
Castes or classes existed among the Southern settlers from the
beginning, which, with other favoring causes, made it easier for
slavery to take root and prosper, and ultimately fasten itself upon
and become a dominating factor in the whole social and political
fabric of the South.  Slavery there soon came to be considered of
paramount importance in securing a high social status or a high,
so-called, civilization.

But we have, by this brief _résumé_, sufficiently shown that the
responsibility for the introduction and maintenance of slavery and
the slave trade does not rest exclusively on any of our early
colonies, North or South, nor on any one race or nationality of
the world; it remains now to show, in a summary way, how slavery
and the slave trade were treated and regarded by the different
sections of the United States after allegiance to England was thrown
off.

While slavery died out from local and natural causes, if not wholly
for moral, social, and religious reasons, in the States north of
Maryland, it flourished and ripened into strength and importance
in States south, casting a controlling influence and power over
the whole of the United States socially, and for the most part
dominating the country politically.  The greatest statesmen and
brightest intellects of the North, though convinced of the evils
of slavery and of its fatal tendencies, were generally too cowardly
to attack it politically, although but about one fifth of the whole
white population of the slave states in 1860, or perhaps at any
time, was, through family relationship, or otherwise, directly or
indirectly interested in slaves or slave labor.

Old political parties were in time disrupted, and new ones were
formed on slavery issues.

The slavery question rent in twain the Methodist Episcopal and
Presbyterian churches.  The followers of Wesley and Calvin divided
on slavery.  It was always essentially an aristocratic institution,
and hence calculated to benefit only a few of the great mass of
freemen.

In 1860, there was in the fifteen slave States a white population
of 8,039,000 and a slave population of 3,953,696.  Of the white
population only 384,884 were slaveholders, and, including their
families, only about 1,600,000 were directly or indirectly interested
in slaves or their labor.  About 6,400,000 (80 per cent.) of the
whites in these States had, therefore, no interest in the institution,
and yet they were wholly subordinated to the few who were interested
in it.

Curiously enough, slavery continued to exist, until a comparatively
recent period, in many of the States that had early declared it
abolished.  The States formed out of the territory "Northwest of
the River Ohio" cannot be said to have ever been slave States.
The sixth section of the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery
forever therein.  The slaves reported in such States were only
there by tolerance.  They were free of right.  The Constitution of
Illinois, as we shall presently see, did not at first abolish
slavery; only prohibited the introduction of slaves.

The rebellion of the thirteen colonies in 1776 and the war for
independence did not grow out of slavery; that war was waged neither
to perpetuate nor to abolish it.  The Puritan and Cavalier, the
opponents and the advocates of slavery and the slave trade, alike,
fought for independence, and, when successful, united in the purpose
to foster and build up an American Republic, based on the sovereignty
of individual citizenship, but ignoring the natural rights of the
enslaved negro.

The following table, compiled from the United States Census Reports,
may be of interest.

It shows the number of slaves reported in each State and Territory
of the United States at each Federal census.( 9)

_North_
             1790    1800    1810    1820    1830    1840    1850    1860
Cal.  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .
Conn. . . .  2,759     951     310      97      25      17   . . .   . . .
Ills. . . .  . . .   . . .     168     917     747     331   . . .   . . .
Ind.  . . .  . . .     135     237     190       3       3   . . .   . . .
Iowa  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .      16   . . .   . . .
Kansas  . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .       2
Maine   . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .       2   . . .   . . .   . . .
Mass. . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .       1   . . .   . . .   . . .
Mich. . . .  . . .   . . .      24   . . .      32   . . .   . . .   . . .
Minn. . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .
Neb.  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .      15
N. H. . . .    158       8   . . .   . . .       3       1   . . .   . . .
N. J. . . . 11,423  12,422  10,851   7,557   2,254     674     236      18
N. Y. . . . 21,324  20,343  15,017  10,088      75       4   . . .   . . .
Ohio  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .       6       3   . . .   . . .
Oregon  . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .
Penn. . . .  3,737   1,706     796     211     403      64   . . .   . . .
R. I. . . .    952     381     108      48      17       5   . . .   . . .
Utah  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .      26      29
Vermont . .     17   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .
Wis.  . . .  . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .   . . .      11   . . .   . . .
            ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
  Totals  . 40,370  35,646  27,510  19,108   3,568   1,129     262      64

/South/
                  1790     1800       1810       1820       1830       1840       1850       1860
D. C.  . . . . . . . . .    3,244      5,395      6,377      6,119      4,694      3,687      3,185
Ala. . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .  . . . . .     41,879    117,549    253,532    342,844    435,080
Ark. . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .  . . . . .      1,617      5,476     19,935     47,100    111,115
Del. . . . . . .   8,887    6,153      4,177      4,509      3,292      2,605      2,290      1,798
Florida  . . . . . . . .  . . . .  . . . . .  . . . . .     16,501     25,717     39,310     61,745
Ga.  . . . . . .  29,264   59,404    105,218    149,654    217,531    280,944    381,682    462,198
Ky.  . . . . . .  11,830   40,434     80,561    126,732    165,213    182,258    210,981    225,483
La.  . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .     34,660     69,064    109,588    168,452    244,809    331,726
Md.  . . . . . . 103,036  105,635    111,502    107,397    102,994     89,737     90,368     87,189
Miss.  . . . . . . . . .    3,489     17,088     32,814     65,659    195,211    309,878    436,631
Mo.  . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .      3,011     10,222     25,091     58,240     87,422    114,931
N. C.  . . . . . 100,572  133,296    168,824    205,017    245,601    245,817    288,548    331,059
S. C.  . . . . . 107,094  146,151    196,365    258,475    315,401    327,088    384,984    402,406
Tenn.  . . . . .   3,417   13,584     44,535     80,107    141,603    183,059    239,459    275,719
Tex. . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .  . . . . .  . . . . .  . . . . .  . . . . .     58,161    182,566
Va.  . . . . . . 293,427  345,796    392,518    425,153    469,757    449,087    472,528    490,865
                 -------  -------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------
  Totals . . . . 657,527  857,095  1,163,854  1,519,017  2,005,475  2,486,326  3,204,051  3,953,696
                 -------  -------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------
  Grand totals . 697,897  892,741  1,191,364  1,538,125  2,009,043  2,487,455  3,204,313  3,953,760

( 7)  It is curious to note that 1621 dates the first bringing into
Virginia and America bee-hives for the production of honey.

( 8)  The following letter of Cotton Mather will show the Puritan's
intolerance of Wm. Penn and his Society of Friends, and the prevailing
opinion in his time on slavery and the slave trade.

  "Boston, Massachusetts, September, 3, 1681.
"To ye Aged and Beloved John Higginson:  There be now at sea a
skipper (for our friend Esaias Holderoft of London did advise me
by the last packet that it would sail sometime in August) called
ye _Welcome_ (R. Green was master), which has aboard a hundred or
more of ye heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn,
who is ye scamp at ye head of them.

"Ye General court has accordingly given secret orders to master
Malachi Huxtell of ye brig _Porpoise_ to waylaye ye said _Welcome_
as near ye coast of Codd as may be, and make captives of ye Penn
and his ungodly crew, so that ye Lord may be glorified, and not
mocked on ye soil of this new country with ye heathen worshippe of
these people.  Much spoil can be made by selling ye whole lot to
Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rumme and sugar.  We
shall not only do ye Lord great service by punishing the Wicked,
but shall make gayne for his ministers and people.  Yours in the
bowels of Christ,

  "Cotton Mather."

( 9)  Slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia by law of
Congress, passed April 16, 1862.

President Lincoln's proclamation of January 1, 1863, emancipated
all slaves in the seceded States (save in Tennessee and in parts
of Louisiana and Virginia excepted therefrom) to the number of
3,063,395; those remaining were freed by the thirteenth amendment
to the Constitution, December 18, 1865.


III
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

The Declaration of Independence, though accepted at once and to be
regarded through all time by the liberty-loving world as the best
and boldest declaration in favor of human rights, and the most
pronounced protest against oppression of the human race, is totally
silent as to the rights of the slaves in the colonies.  It is true
that Jefferson in his draft of this instrument, in the articles of
indictment against King George III., used this language:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in the
transportation thither, . . . determined to keep open a market
where white men should be bought and sold; he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
restrain this execrable commerce."

To conciliate Georgia and South Carolina, this part of the indictment
was struck out.  These colonies had never sought to restrain, but
had always fostered the slave trade.  Jefferson, in his _Autobiography_
(vol. i, p. 19), suggests that other sections sympathized with
Georgia and South Carolina in this matter.

"Our Northern brethren . . . felt a little tender under these
censures: for though their people had very few slaves themselves,
yet they had been considerable carriers of them to others."

Jefferson said King George preferred the advantage:

"of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American
States and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this
infamous practice."(10)

While it is not true, as has often been claimed, that England is
solely responsible for the introduction of slavery into her American
colonies, it is true that her King and Parliament opposed almost
every attempt to prohibit it or to restrict the importation of
slaves.  Colonial legislative enactments of Virginia and other
colonies directed against slavery were vetoed by the King or by
his command by his royal governors.  Such governors were early
forbidden to give their assent to any measure restricting slavery
in the American colonies, and this policy was pursued until the
colonies became independent.(11)

The treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States,
signed at Paris, September 3, 1783, contained a stipulation that
Great Britain should withdraw her armies from the United States
"with all convenient speed, and without causing any destruction,
or _carrying_ away any _negroes or other property_ of the American
inhabitants."  Both governments thus openly recognized, not only
the existence of slavery in the United States, but that slaves were
merely _property_.

While slavery was deeply seated in the colonies and had many
advocates, including noted divines, who preached the "divinity of
slavery," there were, in 1776, and earlier, many great men, South
as well as North, who looked confidently to an early emancipation
of slaves, and who were then active in suppressing the African
slave trade, among whom were Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and
the two Adamses.

Washington presided at a "Fairfax County Convention," before the
Revolution.  It resolved that "no slaves ought to be imported into
any of the British colonies"; and Washington himself expressed "the
most earnest wish to see an entire stop forever put to such a
wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade."(12)

John Wesley, when fully acquainted with American slavery and the
slave trade, pronounced the latter as "_the execrable sum of all
villanies_," and he inveighed against the former as the wickedest
of human practices.

The Continental Congress of 1776 resolved, "that no slaves be
imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."

There had then been imported by the cruel traffic above 300,000
blacks, bought or stolen from the African shore; and the blacks
then constituted twenty per cent. of the total population, a greater
per centum than at any time since.

During the century previous to 1776, English and colonial slavers
had carried into the West Indies and to English colonies nearly
3,000,000 negroes; and it is estimated that a quarter of a million
more died of cruel treatment on shipboard, and their bodies were
cast into the sea.

The words of the Declaration:  "We hold these truths to be self-
evident:  That _all men are created equal;_ that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
are _life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,_" were not accepted
in fact as a charter of freedom for the enslaved African, but it
remained for a Chief-Justice of the United States (Taney) more than
eighty years later (March 5, 1857), in the Dred Scott decision,
that did so much (as we will hereafter show) to disrupt the Union,
to say:

"The language used in the Declaration of Independence shows that
neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor
their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then
acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included
in the general words used."

And the Chief-Justice said further:

"They [the negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded
as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate
with the white race, either in social or political relations; and
so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his benefit."

Quoting the Declaration, "_that all men are created equal_," he
continued:

"The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole
human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this
day would be so understood.  But it is too clear for dispute that
the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and
formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this
Declaration."

Notwithstanding this interpretation of the Declaration, free negroes
fought for American independence at Bunker Hill; and although later
it was decided that colored men should not be accepted as enlisted
soldiers, General Washington did accept them, and thereafter they
served in his army to the end of the war,(13) notably in large
numbers at Yorktown.

The Royal Governor of Virginia in vain tried to induce slaves to
revolt against their masters by promising them their freedom.

During Lord Howe's march through Pennsylvania it is said the slaves
prayed for his success, believing he would set them free.

The British Parliament discussed a measure to set the slaves in
the colonies free with a view to weaken their masters' ardor for
freedom.  In Rhode Island slaves were, by law, set free on condition
that they enlisted in the army for the war.

(10)  Parton's _Life of Jefferson_, p. 138.

(11)  _History Ready Reference_, etc., vol. iv., p. 2923.

(12)  Sparks's _Life of Washington_, vol. ii., p. 494.

(13)  Bancroft, _History of the United States_, vol. iv., 223,322.


IV
CONTINENTAL CONGRESS--ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 1774-1789

The Continental Congress, which assembled for the first time,
September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, assumed few
powers, and its proceedings were, until the adoption by it of the
Declaration of Independence, little more than protests against
British oppression.  Nor was any central government formed on the
adoption of the Declaration.  That Congress continued, by common
agreement, to direct affairs, though, in the beginning, possessing
no delegated political or governmental powers.

Slavery existed in the colonies or States prior to the Declaration
by the connivance of British colonial authorities without the
sanction of and against English law; and after the Declaration, by
mere toleration as an existing domestic institution, not even by
virtue of express colonial or State authority.

In 1772 Lord Mansfield, from the Court of the King's Bench, announced
that slavery could not exist under the English Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation did nothing more than formulate, in
a weak way, a government for the United States, solely through a
Congress to which was delegated little political power.  This
Congress continued to govern (if government it could be called)
until the Constitution went into effect, March 4, 1789.

The "_Articles of Confederation_," adopted (July 9, 1778) by the
Continental Congress of the thirteen original States in the midst
of the Revolution, were substantially silent on slavery.  They
constituted in all respects a weak and impotent instrument.  But
they recognized the existence of slavery by speaking of _free_
citizens (Art. 4).

They provided for a "Confederation and perpetual Union" between
the thirteen States, but provided no power to raise revenue, levy
taxes, or enforce law, save with the consent of nine of the States.
The government created had power to contract debts, but no power
to pay them; it could levy war, raise armies and navies, but it
could not raise revenue to sustain them; it could make treaties,
but could not compel their observance by the States; it could make
laws, but could not enforce them.

Washington said of it:

"The Confederation appears to be little more than a shadow without
the substance, and Congress a nugatory body."

Chief-Justice Story said:

"There was an utter want of all coercive authority to carry into
effect its own constitutional measures."

The Articles were, professedly, not in the interest of the whole
people.

They provided only for a "_league_" of states, guaranteeing to each
state-rights in all things.

Art. IV. runs thus:

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse
among the people of the different States of this Union, the _free_
inhabitants of each of these States, _paupers, vagabonds, and
fugitives from justice excepted_, shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of _free_ citizens in the several States,"
etc.

What a classification of persons for exception from the privileges
of government!

_Free_ negroes were not of the excepted class.  Nor were criminals,
unless they became fugitives from justice.

For ten years the new Republic existed under these Articles by the
tolerance of a people bound together by the spirit of liberty and
the cohesion of patriotism.

The Articles created no status for slavery, nor did they interfere
with it in the States.  They made no provision for a fugitive-slave
law, if, indeed, such a law was dreamed of until after the Constitution
went into effect.

The Articles of Confederation provided no executive head, no supreme
judiciary, and they provided for no perfect legislative body,
organized on the principle of checks and restraints, possessed of
true republican representation.  Congress--the sole governing power
--was composed of one body, each State sending not less than two
or more than seven representatives.  The voting in this body was
done by States, each State having one vote.

It therefore soon became necessary to frame and adopt a new organic
act, supplementing the many deficiencies of these Articles.


V
ORDINANCE OF 1787

The memorable Congress of 1776 was willing to do much to the end
that slavery might be restricted, hence, as we have seen, it resolved
"_that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United
Colonies_."

Had it been possible thus early to stop effectually the slave trade,
and to prevent the extension of slavery to new territory, slavery
would have died out.  Jefferson sought, shortly after the treaty
of peace, to prohibit slavery extension, and to this end he prepared
and reported an Ordinance (1784) prohibiting slavery _after the
year 1800_ in all the territory then belonging to the United States
above the parallel of 31° North latitude, which included what became
the principal parts of the slave States of Alabama and Mississippi,
all of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the whole Northwest
Territory.  In 1784 the United States owned no territory south of
31° North latitude.

This Ordinance of freedom was lost by a single vote.  Had that one
vote been reversed, what a "hell of agony" would have been closed,
and what a sea of blood would have been saved!  Slavery would have
died in the hands of its friends and the new Republic would have
soon been free in _fact_ as well as name.

Jefferson, though himself a slaveholder, was desperately in earnest
in advocacy of this Ordinance, and, speaking of its prohibitory
slave-clause two years later, he wrote:

"The voice of a single individual would have prevented that abominable
crime.  Heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights
of human nature will in the end prevail."(14)

The most important victory for freedom in the civil history of the
United States (until the Rebellion of 1861) was the Ordinance of
1787, reported by Nathan Dane,(15) of Massachusetts, as a substitute
for the defeated one just referred to, but differing from it in
two important respects:

(1) It applied only to the territory northwest of the River Ohio
recently (March 1, 1784) ceded to the United States by Virginia;

(2) It prohibited slavery at once and forever therein.  Its sixth
section is in these words:

"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the
said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof
the party shall have been duly convicted."

But it has been, with much force, claimed by those who denied the
binding character of this Ordinance, that as it was an act of the
old Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and established
a territorial form of government, not in all respects in conformity
with the Constitution, it was necessarily superseded by it.

This view was general on the meeting of the First Congress (1789)
under the Constitution, but the Ordinance, so dear to the hearts
of Jefferson and other lovers of liberty, was early attended to.

On August 7, 1789, the eighth act of the First Congress, embodying
a long explanatory and declaratory preamble, was passed, and approved
by President Washington.  This act in effect re-enacted the Ordinance
of 1787, adapting and applying it, however, to the Constitution by
requiring the Governor of the Northwest Territory to report and
become responsible to the President of the United States, instead
of to Congress as originally provided.(16)

The territory which the ordinance governed was in area 260,000
square miles, and included what is now the great states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with, in 1890, 13,471,840
inhabitants.

The Ordinance is a model of perfection.  It was the only great act
of legislation under the Articles of Confederation.  There is
evidence that, as some members of the Congress that enacted the
Ordinance were at the same time members of the Convention that
framed the Constitution,(17) there was much intercommunication of
views between the members of the two bodies, especially on the
slavery clause of the Ordinance.  It is probable that the clause
of the Constitution respecting the rendition of slaves, as well as
other provisions, was copied from the Ordinance.(18)

Upon the surpassing excellence of this Ordinance, no language of
panegyric would be extravagant.

It is a matchless specimen of sagacious forecast.  It provides for
the descent of property, for the appointment of territorial officers,
and for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious
liberty by securing religious freedom in the inhabitants.  It
prohibits legislative interference with private contracts, secures
the benefit of the writ of _habeas corpus_, trial by jury, and of
the common law in judicial proceedings: it forbids the infliction
of cruel or unusual punishments, and enjoins the encouragement of
schools and the means of education.

The Ordinance has not only stood, unaltered, as the charter of
government for the Northwest Territory, but its clause respecting
slavery was incorporated into most of the acts passed prior to the
Rebellion providing for territorial governments.

Historically, it will stand as the great _Magna Charta_, which, by
the prescient wisdom of our fathers, dedicated in advance of the
coming civilization the fertile and beautiful Northwest, with all
its possibilities, for all time, to freedom, education, and liberty
of conscience.

Frequent efforts to rescind or suspend the clause restricting
slavery were made, especially after Indiana Territory was formed
in 1800.

At the adoption of the Ordinance some slaves were held in what is
now Indiana and Illinois by immigrants from Southern States.
Slavery also existed at the Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and
other French settlements, where it had been planted under the
authority of the King of France while the territory was a part of
the French possessions.  The Government of Great Britain authorized
the continuance of slavery when the territory was under its
jurisdiction.  Indians as well as black men were held as slaves in
the French settlements.(19)

Immigrants and old inhabitants favorable to slavery united in
memorials to Congress asking a suspension of the article prohibiting
slavery.  The first of these was reported on adversely by a committee
of Congress, May 12, 1796.  Governor William Henry Harrison,
December, 1802, presided, at Vincennes, over a meeting of citizens
of the Indiana Territory, at which it was resolved to make an
effort to secure a suspension of this article.  A memorial was
drawn up, which Governor Harrison, with a letter of his own favoring
it, forwarded to Congress.  They were referred to a special committee,
of which John Randolph, of Virginia, was chairman.

He, March 2, 1803, reported:

"That it is inexpedient to suspend, even for a limited time, the
operation of the sixth article of the compact between the original
States and the people and States west of the river Ohio."

Adding, by way of reason, that:

"The rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently evinces,
in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of slaves is not
necessary to promote the growth and settlement of the colonies in
that region."

This did not end the effort to secure slavery in the Indiana
Territory.  In March, 1804, a special committee of Congress reported
in favor of the suspension of the inhibition for ten years; a
similar report was made in 1806 by Mr. Garnett, of Virginia; and
in 1807 Mr. Parker, delegate from Indiana, reported favorably on
a memorial of Governor Harrison and the Territorial Legislature,
praying for a suspension of that part of the Ordinance relating to
slavery.  These reports were not acted on in the House.  Subsequently,
Governor Harrison and his Legislature appealed to the Senate and
a special committee to suspend the article, but when the committee
reported adversely, all efforts to break down the legal barrier to
slavery in the Northwest Territory ceased.(20)

But notwithstanding the mandatory terms of the Ordinance, and the
repeated failures in Congress to suspend the provision relating to
slavery, it existed in the Northwest throughout its territorial
existence and in the State of Illinois until 1844.(21)  The early
slaveholding inhabitants well understood the Ordinance to mean the
absolute emancipation of their slaves, and hence manumitted them
or commenced to remove them to the Spanish territory beyond the
Mississippi.  Some few of the inhabitants complained to Governor
St. Clair that the inhibition against slavery retarded the growth
of the Territory.  He volunteered the opinion that the Ordinance
was not retroactive; that it did not apply to existing conditions;
that it was "a declaration of a principle which was to govern the
Legislature in all acts respecting that matter (slavery) and the
courts of justice in their decisions in cases arising after the
date of the Ordinance"; and that if Congress had intended the
immediate emancipation of slaves, compensation would have been
provided for to their owners.  But he admitted Congress "had the
right to determine that _property_ of that kind afterwards acquired
should not be protected in future, and that slaves imported into
the Territory after that declaration might reclaim their freedom."(22)
This unfortunate opinion operated to continue slavery in the
Territory, and fostered the idea that the sixth article might be
annulled and slavery be made perpetual in the Territory.  Governor
St. Clair was President of the Congress when the Ordinance was
passed, and his opinion in relation to it was therefore given much
weight.

By Act of Congress, passed May 7, 1800, what is now the State of
Ohio became the Territory of Ohio, and that part of the Northwest
Territory lying west and north of Ohio was erected into the Territory
of Indiana; by like Acts, January 11, 1805, the Territory of Michigan
was formed, and February 3, 1809, all that part lying west of
Indiana and Lake Michigan became the Territory of Illinois.  Prior,
however, to the last Act, the Legislature of Indiana Territory
(September 17, 1807) passed an act "to encourage emigration," making
it lawful to bring negroes and mulattoes into the Territory, "owing
service or labor as slaves."

The act provided that these people and their children should be
held for a term of years, and if they refused to serve as slaves
they might be removed, "within sixty days thereafter," to any place
where they could be lawfully held.  This statute was substantially
re-enacted by the Legislature of the Territory of Illinois in 1812.

The first Constitution (1818) of Illinois did not prohibit slavery.
The first section of Article VI, declared that:  "Neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude _shall hereafter be introduced_ into this
State, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes."  Slavery
existed in Illinois after it became a State.  The French and Canadian
inhabitants or their descendants continued to hold colored and
Indian slaves, and others were held under the Territorial Acts of
1807 and 1812.  The old slaves and their descendants, held at the
time of the cession by Virginia to the United States, were sold
from hand to hand in the State, and transported to and sold in
other slave States.(23)

The Constitution of Indiana (1816) prohibited slavery, but slaves
were held therein until its Supreme Court in 1820, in a _habeas
corpus_ case, held the Constitution freed all persons hitherto held
in bondage, including the old French slaves, regardless of the
Ordinance of 1787, of the deed of cession of Virginia, or of any
treaty stipulations.(24)

After the separation (1805) of Michigan from Indiana, the former's
Territorial Chief Justice held slavery existed in Michigan by virtue
of the Jay treaty (1796) with Great Britain (not otherwise)
notwithstanding the Ordinance of 1787,(25) but Michigan's Constitution
(1837) put an end to slavery in the State, as did also the Constitution
(1802) of Ohio, likewise the Constitution (1848) of Wisconsin.
Slaves shown by census reports in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and
Wisconsin after they became States, were there by tolerance, not
by legal right.

Whatever contrariety of views obtained, and regardless of the
conflicting opinions of the courts or judges as to the effect of
the great Ordinance on the condition of the slaves in the Northwestern
Territory, certain it is that the Ordinance operated to prevent,
after its date, the legal importation of slaves into the Territory,
and hence resulted in each of the States formed therefrom becoming
free States.  In the light of history it seems certain that at
least Indiana and Illinois would have become slave States but for
the Ordinance.(26)

This Ordinance contained a clause requiring the rendition of
fugitives from "service or labor," and being applicable to only a
part of the Territory of the United States, partook of the nature
of a compromise on the slavery question,(27) and was the first of
a series of compromises, some of which are found in the Federal
Constitution, others in the Act of 1820 admitting Missouri as a
State, and also the Compromise Measures of 1850, in which Clay,
Webster, Calhoun, Seward, and others of the great statesmen of the
Union participated, all of which were, however, ruthlessly overthrown
by the Nebraska Act (1854), of which Douglas, of Illinois, was the
author.

The slavery-restriction section of the Ordinance was copied into
and became a part of the Act of 1848 organizing the Territory of
Oregon, the champions of slavery, then in Congress, voting therefor;
and three years after the enactment of the Compromise Measures of
1850, this provision of the Ordinance was again extended over the
newly organized Territory of Washington by the concurrent votes of
substantially the same persons who voted, a year later, that all
such legislation was unconstitutional.

But neither origin, age, nor precedent then sanctified anything in
the interest of freedom,--slavery only could appeal to such things
for justification.  The propagators of human slavery were on the
track of this Ordinance; they overtook and overthrew it by
Congressional legislation in 1854; then by the Dred Scott decision
of 1857, as we shall soon see.  But it reappeared in principle, in
1862, as we shall also see, and spread its wings of universal
liberty (as was its great author's purpose in 1784) over all the
territory belonging to the United States, to remain irrepealable
through time, immortalized by the approval of President Lincoln,
and endorsed by the just judgment of enlightened mankind.

Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia each held territory not
subject to the Ordinance of 1787.

North Carolina (December, 1789), in ceding her territory west of
her present limits, provided that:

"No regulations made or to be made by Congress shall tend to
emancipate slaves."

Thus Tennessee became a slave State.

A year later (1790) Virginia consented to relinquish her remaining
territory; as Kentucky it was (June 1, 1792) admitted into the
Union and became a slave State, without ever having a separate
territorial organization.

Georgia, in 1802, ceded the territory on her west to the United
States, and provided that the Ordinance of 1787 should extend to
the ceded territory, "the article only excepted which forbids
slavery."  Thus, later, Alabama and Mississippi each became a slave
State.(28)

(14)  Jefferson's _Works_, vol. ix., 276.

(15)  The authorship of the admirably-drawn Ordinance has been much
in dispute.  Thomas H. Benton, Gov. Edward Coles, and others
attribute the authorship to Jefferson; Daniel Webster and others
to Nathan Dane, while a son of Rufus King claimed him to be the
author of the article prohibiting slavery.  Wm. Frederick Poole,
in a contribution to the _North American Review_, gives much of
the credit of authorship to Mr. Dane, but the chief credit for the
formation and the entire credit for the passage of the Ordinance
to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i, p. 122.

(16)  On the continuing binding force of the Ordinance on States
formed out of the Northwest Territory there has been some contrariety
of opinion.  In Ohio it was early held the Ordinance was more
obligatory than the State Constitution, which might be amended by
the people of the State, whereas the Ordinance could not.  (5
_Ohio_, 410, 416.)  But see:  10 Howard (_U. S._), 82, and 3 Howard,
589.

(17)  Madison of Virginia, Rufus King of New York, Johnson of
Connecticut, Blount and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, and
Few of Georgia were members of both bodies.--_Historical Ex._,
etc., Dred Scott Case (Benton), p. 37 _n_.

The Ordinance was adopted July 13, 1787; the Constitution was
adopted by the Convention September 17, 1787.

(18)  _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i, p. 134.

(19)  Dunn's _Indiana_, p. 126.

(20)  _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i, pp 120-1, note.  _Historical
Ex_., etc., Dred Scott Case, pp. 32-47, etc.  _Political Text Book_,
1860 (McPherson), pp. 53-4.

(21)  Not until 1844 did the highest court of Illinois decide (four
to three) that a colored man, held as a slave by a descendant of
an old French family, was free.  Jarrot case (2 Gillman), 7 _Ill._, 1.

(22)  _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i., pp. 120, 206, and vol. ii, pp.
117-119, 318, 331.

(23)  Much valuable information in relation to the legal history
of slavery in the Northwest has been obtained from the manuscript
of "An Unwritten Chapter of Illinois," by ex-U. S. Judge Blodgett,
of Chicago.

(24)  State _vs_. Lasselle, 1 _Blatchford_, 60.

(25)  Cooley's _Michigan_, pp. 136-7.

(26)  For an exhaustive legal history of the slavery restriction
clause of the Ordinance and its effect on slavery in the Northwest
Territory, see Dunn's _Indiana_, pp. 219-260.

(27)  _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i., p. 122, note.

(28)  _Political Text-Book_, 1860 (McPherson), p. 53.


VI
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

The Convention to frame the Constitution met in Philadelphia (1787).
George Washington was its President; it was composed of the leading
statesmen of the new nation, sitting in a delegate capacity, but
in voting on measures the rule of the then Congress was observed,
which was to vote by States.

The majority of the thirteen States were then slave States, and
all, save Massachusetts, still held slaves; and all the coast States
indulged in the African slave trade.

Massachusetts provided for the abolition of slavery in 1780 by
constitutional provision declaring that:

"All men are born _free and equal_, and have certain natural,
essential, and unalienable rights," etc., by which declaration its
highest judicial tribunal struck the shackles at once from every
slave in the Commonwealth.

Connecticut provided in 1784 for freeing her slaves.

New Hampshire did not prohibit slavery by express law, but all
persons born after her Constitution of 1776 were free; and slave
importation was thereafter prohibited.

Pennsylvania, in 1780, by law provided for the gradual emancipation
of slaves within her territory.  To her German population and the
Society of Friends the credit is mainly due for this act of justice.
This Society had theretofore (1774) disowned, in its "yearly
Meeting," all its members who trafficked in slaves; and later (1776)
it resolved:

"That the owners of slaves, who refused to execute proper instruments
for giving them their freedom, were to be disowned likewise."

New York adopted gradual emancipation in 1799, but final emancipation
did not come until 1827.

Rhode Island, in the first year of the First Continental Congress
(1774), enacted:

"That for the future no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought
into the colony . . . and that all previously enslaved persons on
becoming residents of Rhode Island should obtain their freedom."

New Jersey in 1778, through Governor Livingstone, made an attempt
at emancipation which failed; it was not until 1804 that she
prohibited slavery in what proved a qualified way, and it seems
she held slaves at each census, including that of 1860, and possibly
in some form human slavery was abolished there by the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution.

The census of 1790 showed slaves in all the original States save
Massachusetts alone; Vermont was admitted into the Union in 1790;
her Constitution prohibited slavery, but she returned at that census
seventeen slaves.

The first census under the Constitution, however, showed, in the
Northern States, 40,370 slaves, and in the Southern States, 657,572;
there being in Virginia alone 293,427, nearly one half of all.

The Convention closed its work September 17, 1787, and on the same
date George Washington, its President, by letter submitted the
"Constitution to the consideration of the United States in Congress
assembled," saying:

"It is obviously impracticable in the Federal Government of these
States to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and
yet provide for the interest and safety of all. . . . In all our
deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view that
which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American,
_the consolidation of our Union_, in which is involved our prosperity,
felicity, safety; perhaps our national existence."

This Constitution by its preamble showed it was, in many things,
to supersede and become paramount to State authority.  It was to
become a _charter of freedom_ for the people collectively, and in
some sense individually.  Its preamble runs thus:

"We, the _people_ of the United States, in order to form a _more_
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America."

Nine States were, by its seventh article, necessary to ratify it
before it went into effect.

The ratification of the Constitution, on various grounds, was
fiercely opposed by many patriotic men, Patrick Henry among the
number.  Some thought it did not contain sufficient guarantees for
individual freedom, others that private rights of property were
not adequately secured, and still others that States were curtailed
or abridged of their governmental authority and too much power was
taken from the people and centered in the Federal Government.
Mason, of Virginia, a member of the Convention that framed it, led
a party who opposed it on the ground, among others, that it authorized
Congress to levy duties on imports and to thus encourage home
industries and manufactories, promotive of free labor, inimical
and dangerous to human slavery.  The best efforts and influence of
Washington and other friends of the Constitution would not have
been sufficient to secure its ratification had they not placated
many of its enemies by promising to adopt, promptly on its going
into effect, the amendments numbered one to ten inclusive. (The
First Congress, September 25, 1789, submitted those ten amendments
according to the agreement, and they were shortly thereafter ratified
and became a part of the Constitution.)

By a resolution of the Old Congress, of September 13, 1788, March
4, 1789, was fixed as the time for commencing proceedings under
the Constitution.  At the date of this resolution eleven of the
thirteen States had ratified it.  North Carolina ratified it November
21, 1789, and Rhode Island, the last, on May 29, 1790.

Vermont, not of the original thirteen States, ratified the Constitution
January 10, 1791, over a month prior to her admission into the
Union.  This latter event occurred February 18, 1791.

Thus fourteen States became, almost at the same time, members of
the Union under the Constitution, and each and all of which then
held or had theretofore held slaves.

Notwithstanding all this, there were many of the framers of the
Constitution and its warmest friends who sincerely desired to
provide for the early abolition of slavery, some by gradual
emancipation, others by heroic measures; and there were many from
the South who favored emancipation, while by no means all the
leading and influential citizens of the Northern States desired it.

It may, however, be assumed, in the light of authentic history,
that the majority of the framers of the Constitution, and a majority
of its friends in the States, hoped and believed that slavery would
not be permanent under it.  In this belief it was framed.  Slavery
was not affirmatively recognized in it, though there was much
discussion as to it in the Constitutional Convention.  There was
no attempt to abolish it; such an attempt would have failed in the
Convention, and the Constitution, so necessary to the new nation,
had it even provided for gradual emancipation, would not have been
ratified by the States.

It can hardly be said that the Constitution was framed on the line
of compromise as to the preservation of human slavery, though it
was necessary, in some occult ways, to recognize its existence.
This was in the nature, however, of a concession to it; the word
_slave_ or _slavery_ was not used in it.

The Supreme Court of the United States, however, early interpreted
the third clause of Section IV., Article 2, as providing for the
return from one State to another of fugitive slaves.  This
interpretation has been, on high authority, and with much reason,
in the light of history, stoutly denied.  The clause reads:

"No person _held to service or labor_ in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor,
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service
or labor is due."

The "service or labor" here referred to, it is claimed, was that
owing by persons who were under indentures of some kind, growing
out of contracts for transportation into the colonies of persons
from the Old World, and possibly growing out of other contract
obligations wherein they had agreed, for a long or short term, to
perform "service or labor."  Many such obligations then existed.

Slaves were not then nor since regarded by their owners as "_persons_"
merely "held to service or labor," but they were held as personal
chattels, owing no duty to their masters distinguishable from that
owing by an ox, a horse, or an ass.

But the supreme judiciary and the executive and legislative
departments of the government came soon to treat this as a fugitive-
slave clause.  It is only now interesting to examine its peculiar
phraseology and the history and surrounding circumstances under
which it became a part of the Constitution, to demonstrate the
great care and desire of the eminent and liberty-loving framers of
the Constitution to avoid the direct recognition of African slavery.

The only other clause in which the adherents of slavery claimed it
was recognized is paragraph 3, Section 2, Article I., which provided
that:

"Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States . . . according to their respective numbers, which
shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,
including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, _three fifths of all other persons_."

The "other persons" referred to here, if only slaves, are very
delicately described.  But this clause, too, came to be recognized
by all the departments of the government as referring to slaves.
It is quite sure that if the good and plain men of the Revolutionary
period had been dealing with a subject not shocking to their
consciences, sense of justice, and humanity, they would have dealt
with it in plain words, of direct and not doubtful import.

The clause of the Constitution giving representation in the House
of Representative of Congress and in the Electoral College in the
choice of President and Vice-President, came soon to be regarded
as unjust to the free States.  Three fifths of all slaves were
counted to give representation to free persons of the South; that
is, three fifths of all _slave property_ was counted numerically,
and thus, in many Congressional districts, the vote of one slaveholder
was more than equal to two votes in a free State.  For example, in
1850, the number of free inhabitants in the slave States was
6,412,605, and in the free States, 13,434,686, more than double.
The representation in Congress from the slave States was 90 members,
from the free States 144.  Three fifths of the slaves were 1,920,182,
giving the South 20 (a fraction more) members, the ratio of
representation then being 93,420.  If the 234 representatives had
been apportioned equally, according to free inhabitants, the North
would have had 159 and the South 75, a gain of fifteen to the free
and a loss of that number to the slave States, a gain of 30 to the
North.

The same injustice was shown in levying direct taxes.  (All this,
however, has been changed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution.)

The same discriminating language is used (Sec. 9, Art. I.) when
obviously referring to the African slave trade.  A strong sentiment
existed in favor of putting an end at once to the traffic in human
being; the Christian consciences of our forefathers revolted at
its wickedness, and there was then beginning a general movement
throughout the civilized world against it.  Some European countries
had denounced it as piracy.

It was, however, profitable, and much capital was invested in it,
and there was even then an increased demand for slaves in the
cotton, rice, and tobacco States.

It was feared so radical a measure as the immediate stoppage of
this trade would endanger the Constitution, and as to this, also,
it was deemed wise to compromise; so Congress was prohibited from
legislating to prevent it prior to the year 1808.  This trade was
not only then carried on by our own people, but, through ships of
other countries, slaves were imported into the United States.  Each
State was left free to prohibit the importation of slaves within
its limits.

We have now referred to all the clauses of the Constitution as
originally adopted relating, by construction or possibility, to
slavery or slave labor.

The Republic, under this _great charter_, set out upon the career
of a nation, properly aspiring to become of the first among the
powers of the earth, and succeeding in the higher sense in this
ambition, it yet remains to be told how near our Republic came, in
time, to the brink of that engulfing chasm which in past ages has
swallowed up other nations for their wicked oppression and enslavement
of man.

Slavery, thus delicately treated in our Constitution, brought that
Republic, in less than three quarters of a century, to the throes
of death, as we shall see.


VII
CAUSES OF GROWTH OF SLAVERY

It may be well here, before speaking of slavery in its legislative
history under the Constitution, to refer briefly to some of the
more important causes of its growth and extension, other than
political.

First in importance was cotton.  It required cheap labor to cultivate
it with profit, and even then, at first, it was not profitable.
The invention by Whitney of the cotton-gin, in 1793, was the most
important single invention up to that time in agriculture, if not
the most important of any time, and especially is this true as
affecting cotton planters.

Cotton was indigenous to America; the soil and climate of the South
were well adapted to its growth.  Its culture from the seed was
there very easy, but the separation of the seed from the fibre was
so slow that it required an average hand one day to secure one
pound.

Whitney's cotton-gin, however, at once increased the amount from
one to fifty pounds.

This invention came at a most opportune time for slavery in the
United States, as the cheapness of rice, indigo, and other staples
of the South were such as to prevent their large and profitable
production even with the labor of slaves.  Cotton was not, in 1794,
the date of Jay's treaty with Great Britain, known to him as an
article of export.  Soon, by the use of the cotton-gin, cotton
became the principal article of export from the United States;
cotton plantations rapidly increased in size and number, and their
owners multiplied their slaves and grew rich.  Cotton production
increased from 1793 to 1860 one thousand fold.

It is highly probably that Eli Whitney's cotton-gin operated to
prevent the much-hoped-for early emancipation of slaves in America,
and that thus the inventive genius of man was instrumental in
forging the fetters of man.

Other products, such as rice and sugar, were successfully produced
in the South, but the demand for them was limited by competition
in other countries, in some of which slave labor was employed.
The ease of producing cotton stimulated its common use throughout
the world, and it soon became a necessary commodity in all civilized
countries.  "Cotton is king" was the cry of the slaveholder and
the exporter.  Southern aristocracy rested on it.  In the more
northern of the slave States, where cotton, on account of the
climate, could not be successfully grown, the breeding of slaves
with which to supply the cotton planters with the requisite number
of hands became a source of great profit; and the slave trade was
revived to aid in supplying the same great demand.

Tobacco and some of the cereals were also produced by slave labor,
but they could be produced by free labor North as well as South.
Of the above 3,000,000 slaves in the United States in 1850, it has
been estimated that 1,800,000 were employed in the growth and
preservation of cotton alone, and its value that year was $105,600,000,
while the sugar product was valued, the same year, at only $12,400,000,
and rice at $3,000,000.  The total domestic exports for the year
ending 1850 were $137,000,000, of which cotton reached $72,000,000,
and all breadstuffs and provisions only $26,000,000.(29)

(29)  DeBow's _Resource_, etc., vol. iii., p. 388.


VIII
FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW--1793

Contemporaneous with the cotton-gin came, in 1793, the first fugitive-
slave law.

The Constitution was not self-executing, if it really contained,
as we have seen, a clause requiring escaped slaves to be surrendered
from one State to their masters in another.

The Governor of the State of Virginia refused the rendition of
three kidnappers of a free negro, on the requisition of the Governor
of Pennsylvania, from which State he had been kidnapped, on the
sole ground that no law required the surrender of fugitive slaves
from Virginia.  The controversy thus arising was called to the
attention of President Washington and by him to Congress, and it
ended by the passage of the first fugitive-slave act.  It was for
a time tolerably satisfactory to the different sections of the
country, though in itself the most flagrant attempt to violate
state-rights, judged from the more modern secession, state-rights
standpoint, ever attempted by Federal authority.

It required _state magistrates_, who owed their offices solely to
state law, to sit in judgment in fugitive-slave cases, and to aid
in returning to slavery negroes claimed as slaves by masters from
foreign States.  The act provided for the return of fugitive
apprentices as well as fugitive slaves.

In time the Northern States became free, and the public conscience
in them became so changed that the magistrates were deterred or
unwilling to act in execution of the law.  Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania each passed a law making it penal for any of their
officers to perform any duties or to take cognizance of any case
under the fugitive-slave law.  Other States, through their judiciary,
pronounced it unconstitutional, even some of the Federal judges
doubted its consonance with the Constitution, but, such as it was,
it lasted until 1850.  It did not provide for a jury trial.  The
scenes enacted in its execution shocked the moral sense of mankind,
and even the slaveholder often shrank from attempting its execution.

But it was not until about the time of the excitement of the fugitive-
slave law of 1850 that the highest excitement prevailed in the
North over its enforcement, and of this we shall speak hereafter.


IX
SLAVE TRADE:  ABOLISHED BY LAW

In the English Parliament, in 1776, the year of the Declaration of
Independence, the first motion was made towards the abolition of
the slave trade, long theretofore fostered by English kings and
queens, but not until 1807 did the British moral sense rise high
enough to pass, at Lord Granville's instance, the famous act for
"the Abolition of the Slave Trade."  As early as 1794 the United
States prohibited their subjects from trading in slaves to foreign
countries; and in 1807, they prohibited the importation of slaves
into any of the States, to take effect at the beginning of 1808,
the earliest time possible, as we have seen, under the Constitution.
But it was not until 1820 that slave-traders were declared pirates,
punishable as such.

The prohibition of the slave trade by law did not effectually end
it, nor was the law declaring it piracy wholly effectual, though
the latter did much, through the co-operation of other nations, to
restrict it.

There were active movements in 1852 and 1858, in the South, to
revive the African slave trade, and especially was there fierce
opposition to the "piracy act."  Jefferson Davis, at a convention
in Mississippi, July, 1858, advocated the repeal of the latter act,
but doubted the practicability then of abrogating the law prohibiting
slave traffic.(30)

It is worthy of mention here that April 20th, eight days after
Sumter was fired upon, Commander Alfred Taylor, commanding the
United States naval ship _Saratoga_, in the port of Kabenda, Africa,
captured the _Nightingale of Boston_, flying American colors, with
a cargo of 961 recently captured, stolen, or purchased African
negroes, destined to be carried to some American part and there
sold into slavery.  This human cargo was sent to the humane Rev.
John Seys, at Monrovia, Liberia, to be provided for.  One hundred
and sixty died on a fourteen-days' sea-voyage, from ship-fever and
confinement, though the utmost care was taken by Lieutenant Guthrie
and the crew of the slaver for their comfort.(31)

The laws abolishing the foreign slave trade and prohibiting the
introduction of African slaves (after 1807) into the United States
even helped to rivet slavery more firmly therein.  They more than
doubled the value of a slave, and, therefore, incited slave-breeding
to supply the increasing demand in the cotton States, and in time
this proved so profitable that the South sought new territory whence
slavery could be extended, and out of which slave States could be
formed.

The "_Declaration against the Slave Trade_" of the world, signed
by the representatives of the "Powers" at the Congress of Vienna,
in 1815, and repeated at the Congress of Paris at the end of the
Napoleonic wars, was potential enough to abate but not to end this
most inhuman and sinful trade.(32)

Even as late as 1816, English merchants, supported by the corporations
of London and Liverpool, through mercantile jealousy, and pretending
to believe that the very existence of commerce on the seas and
their own existence depended on the continuance of the slave trade,
not only opposed the abolition of the black slave traffic, but they
opposed the abolition of _white slavery_ in Algiers.(33)

This nefarious traffic did not cease in the United States, although
at the Treaty of Ghent (1815) it was declared that:  "Whereas the
traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity
and justice," and the two countries (Great Britain and the United
States) therein stipulated to use their best endeavors to abolish it.

The revival of the slave trade was openly advocated by leading
Southern politicians, and the illicit traffic greatly increased
immediately after the admission into the Union of Texas as a State
and the aggressions on Mexico for more slave territory, and especially
just after the discussions over the Compromise measures of 1850
and the Nebraska Act of 1854, followed by the Dred Scott decision
in 1857.  It was principally carried on under the United States
flag, the ships carrying it denying the right of search to foreign
vessels engaged in suppressing the trade.  British officials claimed
in June, 1850, "that at least one half of the successful part of
the slave trade was carried on under the American flag."  The
fitting out of slavers centred at New York city; Boston and New
Orleans being good seconds.  Twenty-one of twenty-two slavers taken
by British cruisers in 1857-58 were from New York, Boston, and New
Orleans.

"During eighteen months of the years 1859-60 eighty-five slavers
are reported to have fitted out in New York harbor, and these alone
transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually to America."(34)

The greed of man for gain has smothered and will ever smother the
human conscience.  The slave trade, under the denunciation of
piracy, still exists, and will exist until African slavery ceases
throughout the world.  So long as there is a demand, at good prices,
this wicked traffic will go on, and in the jungles of Africa there
will be found stealers of human beings.

(30)  Rhode's _Hist. United States_, vol. ii., p. 372.

(31)  Official Records, etc., _Navies of the War of the Rebellion_,
vol. i., p. 11.

(32)  It stands to the eternal credit of Napoleon that on his return
from Elba to Paris (1815) he decreed for France the total abolition
of the slave-trade.  This decree was confirmed by the Bourbon
dynasty in 1818.  _Suppression of African Slave Trade U. S._
(DuBois), p. 247.

(33)  Osler's _Life of Exmouth_, p. 303; _Slavery, Letters_, etc.,
Horace Mann, p. 276.

(34)  _Sup. of African Slave Trade_ (DuBois) pp. 135, 178-9.


X
LOUISIANA PURCHASE

In 1803, Napoleon, fearing that he could not hold his distant
American possession, known as the Louisiana Province, acquired from
Spain, and which by treaty was to be re-ceded to Spain and not
disposed of to any other nation, put aside all scruples and good
faith, and for 60,000,000 francs, on April 30th signed a treaty of
cession of the vast territory, then mostly uninhabited, to the
United States.  This was in Jefferson's administration.

The United States bought this domain and its people just as they
might buy unoccupied lands with animals on it.

It was early claimed as slave territory.  There were only a few
slaves within its limits when purchased, though slavery was recognized
there.  This purchase was a most important one, although at the
time it was not so regarded.

The Louisiana Purchase was much greater, territorially speaking,
than all the States then in the Union, with all its other
possessions.(35)

It comprised what are now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas,
Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, nearly all
of Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, large parts of Colorado
and the Indian Territory, and a portion of Idaho.  These States
and Territories in 1890 contained 11,804,101 inhabitants.

At the time of this great acquisition a conviction prevailed that
slavery was rapidly diminishing.  Adams and Jefferson, each, while
President, entertained the belief that slavery would, ere long,
come to a peaceful end.  It might then have been possible, by law
of Congress, to devote this new region to freedom, but, as slavery
existed at and around New Orleans in 1812 when the State of Louisiana
was admitted into the Union, it became a slave State.  This fate
was largely due to the claim of its original inhabitants that they
were secured the right to hold slaves by the treaty of cession from
France.

Later on, the provision of this treaty, under which it was claimed
slavery was perpetuated, was a subject of much discussion, and on
it was founded the most absurd arguments on behalf of the slave
power.

Its third article was the sole one referred to as fastening forever
the institution of slavery on the inhabitants of this vast empire.
There are those yet living who deny that, even under the present
Constitution of the United States or the constitutions of the States
since erected therein, slavery is _lawfully_ excluded therefrom.

This article reads:

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in
the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible,
according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the
enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens
of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained
and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, _property_, and
the religion they profess."

Justice Catron, of the United States Supreme Court, speaking in
the Dred Scott case, for the majority of the court and of this
article, says:

"Louisiana was a province where slavery was not only lawful, but
where property in slaves was the most valuable of all personal
property.  The province was ceded as a _unit_, with an equal right
pertaining to all its inhabitants, in every part thereof, to own
slaves."

He and others of the concurring justices held that the inhabitants
at the time of the purchase, also all immigrants after the cession,
were protected in the right to hold slaves in the entire purchase.

Near the close of his opinion, still speaking of this article and
the acquired territory, he says:

"The right of the United States in or over it depends on the contract
of cession, which operates to incorporate as well the Territory as
its inhabitants into the Union.

"My opinion is that the third article of the treaty of 1803, ceding
Louisiana to the United States, stands protected by the Constitution,
and cannot be repealed by Congress."

This view was heroically combatted by a minority of the court,
especially by Justices McLean and Curtis.  The latter, in his
opinion, said

"That a treaty with a foreign nation cannot deprive Congress of
any part of its legislative power conferred by the people, so that
it no longer can legislate as it is empowered by the Constitution."

Also, that if the treaty expressly prohibited (as it did not) the
exclusion of slavery from the ceded territory the "court could not
declare that an act of Congress excluding it was void by force of
the treaty. . . . A refusal to execute such a stipulation would
not be a judicial, but a political and legislative question. . . .
It would belong to diplomacy and legislation, and not to the
administration of existing laws."(36)

Plainly no part of the treaty of cession fastened slavery, or any
other institution of France, on the territory ceded to the United
States.  If its provisions were violated by the United States,
France, internationally, or the inhabitants at the date of the
treaty, might have complained and had redress.  Obviously the treaty
had no bearing on the question of slavery in the United States,
but its provisions were seized upon, as was every possible pretext,
by the votaries of slavery to maintain and extend it.

It was also, by a majority of the court, held in this memorable
case (hereafter to be mentioned) that under the third article of
the cession slaves could be taken from any State into any part of
the Louisiana Purchase during its territorial state, and there
held, and hence that the Missouri Compromise, of 1820, forbidding
slavery in the territory north of 36° 30´, was in violation of the
treaty and was unconstitutional, as were all other acts of Congress
excluding slavery from United States territory.  This was in the
heyday (1857) of the slave power, and when it aspired, practically,
to make slavery national.

This aggressive policy, as we shall see when we come to consider
the Nebraska Act of 1854 relating to a principal part of the
Louisiana Purchase, led to a great uprising of the friends of
freedom, the political overthrow of the advocates of slavery in
most branches of the Union; then to secession; then to war, whence
came, with peace, universal freedom, and slavery in the Republic
forever dead.

(35)  For map showing territory acquired by the U. S., by each
treaty, etc., see _History Ready Ref._, vol. v., p. 3286, and
_Louisiana Purchase_ (Hermann, Com. Gen. Land Office).  The original
thirteen States and Territories comprised 8,927,844 sq. mi.  The
Louisiana Purchase, 1,171,931, sq. mi.

(36)  Dred Scott Case, 19 Howard, 393, etc.


XI
FLORIDA

Florida did not become a slave colony even on being taken possession
of by the English in 1763, nor on its re-conquest by Spain in 1781.

By the treaty of peace at the end of the war of the Revolution
(1783) Great Britain recognized as part of the southern boundary
of the United States a line due east from the Mississippi at 31°
of latitude; and at the same time, by a separate treaty, she ceded
to Spain the then two Floridas.  Florida became a refuge for fugitive
slaves from Georgia and South Carolina.

"Georgians could never forget that the _fugitive_ slaves were
roaming about the Everglades of Florida."(37)

The Seminole Indians welcomed to their wild freedom the escaped
negro from the lash of the overseer, and consequently the long and
bloody Florida Indian wars were literally a slave hunt.  The wild
tribes of Indians knew no fugitive-slave law.

In the War of 1812, Spain permitted the English to occupy, for
their purposes, some points in Florida.  When the war ended they
abandoned a fort on the Appalachicola, about fifteen miles above
its mouth, with a large amount of arms and ammunition.  This fort
the fugitive negroes seized and held for about _three years_ as a
refuge for escaped slaves, and, consequently, as a menace to slavery.
It was during this time called "Negro Fort."  At the instigation
of slave owners, it was attacked by General Gaines of the United
States Army.

"A hot shot penetrated one of the magazines, and the whole fort
was blown to pieces, July 27, 1816.  There were 300 negro men,
women, and children, and 20 Choctaws in the fort; 270 were killed.
Only three came out unhurt, and these were killed by the allied
Indians."

Thus slavery established and maintained itself, through individual
and national crime and blood, until the day when God's retributive
justice should come.  And we shall see how thoroughly His justice
was meted out; how "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,"
measure of blood for measure of blood, anguish for anguish, came
to the dominating white race!

It was not until February, 1821, that notice of the ratification
of a treaty, made two years before, was received, by which Spain
ceded Florida to the United States in consideration of their paying
$5,000,000 in satisfaction of American claims against Spain.

This was not all the Republic paid for Florida.  A second Seminole
war (1835-43) ensued, the bloodiest and most costly of all our
Indian wars, in which the Indians were assisted by fugitive slaves
and their descendants, in whom the negro blood was admixed, often
with the white blood of former masters, and again with the
Indian.(38)

At the end of eight years, after many valuable lives had been lost,
and $30,000,000 had been expended, but not until after the great
Seminole leader (Osceola (39)) had been, by deliberate treachery
and bad faith, captured, and the Indians had been worn out rather
than conquered, Florida became an American province, and two years
thereafter (1845) a slave State in the Union.

The extinction of the brave Seminole Indians left no _race_-friend
of the poor enslaved negro.  Untutored as they were, they knew what
freedom was, and, until 1861, they were the only people on the
American continent to furnish an asylum and to shed their blood
for the wronged African.

Florida, as a slave State, was a factor in establishing a balance
of power, politically, between the North and South.

As the war between the United States and Great Britain (1812-15)
did not grow out of slavery, nor was it waged to acquire more slave
territory, nor did it directly tend to perpetuate slavery where
established, we pass it over.

(37)  W. G. Summer's _Andrew Jackson_, ch. iii.

(38)  In 1821 at Indian Springs, Florida, a forced treaty was
negotiated with the Creek Indians for part of their lands by which
the United States agreed to apply $109,000 of the purchase price
as compensation to Georgia claimants for escaped slaves, and $141,000
for "_the offsprings which the females would have borne to their
masters had they remained in bondage_."--_Rise and Fall of Slavery_
(Wilson), vol. i, 132,454.

(39)  _Osceola_, or _As-Se-He-Ho-Lar_ (black drink), was the son
of Wm. Powell, an English Indian-trader, born in Georgia, 1804, of
a daughter of a Seminole chief.  His mother took him early to
Florida.  He rose rapidly to be head war-chief, and married a
daughter of a fugitive slave who was treacherously stolen from him,
as a slave, while he was on a visit to Fort King.  When he demanded
of General Thompson, the Indian agent, her release, he was put in
irons, but released after six days.  A little later, December,
1835, he avenged himself by killing Thompson and four others outside
of the fort, thus inaugurating the second Seminole war.  He hated
the white race, and his ambition was to furnish a safe asylum for
fugitive slaves.

Surprises and massacres ensued for two years, Osceola showing great
bravery and skill, and _not_ excelling his white adversaries in
treachery.  He fought Generals Clinch, Gaines, Taylor and Jesup,
of the U. S. A.  Jesup induced him (Oct. 21, 1837) under a flag of
truce to hold a parley near St. Augustine, where Jesup treacherously
caused him to be seized, and the U. S. authorities (treating him
as England treated Napoleon) immured him in captivity for life,
hopelessly, at Fort Moultrie.  His free spirit could not endure
this, and he died of a broken heart three months later (January
30, 1838), at thirty-four years of age.  His body lies buried on
Sullivan's Island, afterwards the scene of a larger struggle for
human freedom.

The remains of the _civilized_ statesman-champion of perpetual
_human_ slavery, Calhoun, and the remains of the savage, untutored
Seminole _Chief_, Oscoeola, the champion of _human liberty_, lie
buried near Charleston, S. C.  Let the ages judge each--kindly!


XII
MISSOURI COMPROMISE--1820

In pursuance of the policy of trying to balance, politically,
freedom and slavery, and to deal tenderly with the latter, and not
offend its champions, new States were admitted into the Union in
pairs, one free and one slave.

Thus Vermont and Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana,
Mississippi and Illinois were coupled, preserving in the Senate an
exact balance of power.(40)

When Missouri had framed a Constitution (1819) and applied for
admission into the Union, Alabama was on the point of admission as
a slave State, and was admitted the same year, and thus the usage
required the admission of Missouri as a free State.  In 1790 the
two sections were nearly equal in population, but in 1820 the North
had nearly 700,000 more inhabitants than the South.

Missouri was a part of the Louisiana Purchase, and she had in 1820
above 10,000 slaves.

The usual form of a bill was prepared admitting her, with slavery,
on an equal footing with other States.  It came up for consideration
in the House during the session of 1818-1819, and Mr. Tallmadge,
of New York, precipitated a controversy, which was participated in
by all the great statesmen, North and South, who were then on the
political stage.

He offered to amend the bill so as to prohibit the further introduction
of slaves into Missouri, and providing that all children born in
the State after its admission should be free at twenty-five years
of age.

This amendment was a signal for the fiercest opposition.  Clay and
Webster, Wm. Pinckney of Maryland, and Rufus King of New York, John
Randolph of Roanoke, Fisher Ames, and others, who were in the early
prime of their manhood, were heard in the fray.  In it the first
real threats of disunion, if slavery were interfered with, were
heard.  It is more than possible those threats pierced the ears of
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who still survived,(41) and caused
them to despair of the Republic.

It is worthy of note that none of the great statesmen engaged in
this first memorable combat in which the Union was threatened in
slavery's cause, lived to confront disunion in fact, face to face.

Clay, then Speaker of the House, and possessed of great influence,
spoke first in opposition to the amendment.  Though his speech,
like others of that time, was not reported, we know he denied the
power of Congress to impose conditions upon a new State after its
admission to the Union.  He maintained the sovereign right of each
State to be slave or free.  He did not profess to be an advocate
of slavery.  He, however, vehemently asserted that a restriction
of slavery was cruel to the slaves already held.  While their
numbers would be the same, it would so crowd them in narrow limits
as to expose them "in the old, exhausted States to destitution,
and even to lean and haggard starvation, instead of allowing them
to share the fat plenty of the new West."(42)  (What an argument
in favor of perpetuating an immoral thing!  So spread it over the
world as to make it thin, yet fatten it!)

Clay's arguments were the most specious and weighty of those made
against the amendment.  And they did not fail to claim the amendment
was in violation of the third article of the cession of Louisiana,
already, in another connection, referred to.

The Missouri delegate denounced the amendment as a shameful
discrimination against Missouri and slavery, which would endanger
the Union; in this latter cry a member from Georgia joined.

The friends of the amendment fearlessly answered Clay's speech and
the speeches of others.  The House was reminded that the great
Ordinance of 1787, passed contemporaneous with the adoption of the
Constitution, and approved and enforced by its framers (some of
whom were also then members of the Continental Congress) imposed
an absolute inhibition on slavery forever, precedent to the admission
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the other States to be formed from
the Northwest Territory; they showed the treaty with France did
not profess to perpetuate slavery in the ceded Territory; they
denounced slavery as an evil, unnatural, cruel, opposed to the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that it had only
been tolerated, not approved, by the Constitution; and Mr. Talmadge
closed the debate by characterizing slavery as a "scourge of the
human race," certain to bring on "dire calamities to the human
race"; ending by boldly defying those who threatened, if slavery
were restricted, to dissolve the Union of the States.  This amendment
passed the House, 87 to 76, but was beaten, the same session, in
the Senate, 22 to 16; one Senator from Massachusetts, one from
Pennsylvania, and two from Illinois voted with the South.  Again
the too often easily frightened Northern statesmen struck their
colors just when the battle was won.

In January (1820) of the succeeding Congress the measure was again
under consideration in the Senate, then composed of only forty-four
members.  It was then that Rufus King and Wm. Pinckney, the former
for, the latter against, the slavery restriction amendment, displayed
their eloquence.  Pinckney, a lawyer of much general learning,
paraphrased a passage of Burke to the effect that "the spirit of
liberty was more high and haughty in the slaveholding colonies than
in those to the northward."  He also planted himself, with others
from the South, on state-sovereignty, afterwards more commonly
called "state-rights," and in time tortured into a doctrine which
led to nullification--Secession--_War_.

All these speeches were answered in both Houses by able opponents
of slavery extension, but meantime a matter arose which did much
to favor the admission of Missouri as a slave State.

Maine, but recently separated from Massachusetts, applied for
statehood, and could not be refused.

A Senator from Illinois (Mr. Thomas) introduced a proviso which
prohibited slavery north of 36° 30´ in the Louisiana acquisition,
except in Missouri.

Here, again, at the expense of freedom, was an opportunity for
_compromise_.  It was promptly seized upon.  It was agreed that
Maine, where by no possibility slavery would or could go, should
come into the Union as a free State; Missouri as a slave State,
and the proviso limiting slavery in the remaining territory south
of 36° 30´ should be adopted.  This compromise was adopted in the
Senate, and later, after close votes on amendments, the House also
agreed to it.  John Randolph and thirty-seven Southern members
voted against it, and, but for weak-kneed Northern members, it
would have failed.  This compromise Randolph said was a "_dirty
bargain_," and the Northern members who supported it he denounced
as "doughfaces,"--a coined phrase still known to our political
vocabulary.

Missouri, however, did not become a State until August, 1821.
Thus, for the time only was this question settled.

Of it Jefferson wrote, as if in prophecy:

"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
and filled me with terror.  I considered it the knell of the
Union."(43)

Clay wrote of the height to which the heated debate arose:

"The words civil war and disunion are uttered almost without
emotion."(44)

(40)  Later, Arkansas and Michigan (1836-7), Florida and Iowa (March
3, 1845) and Maine and Missouri were, in pairs--slave and free--
admitted as States.

(41)  Both died July 4, 1826.

(42)  Hildreth, vol. vi., p. 664.

(43)  Jefferson's _Works_, vol. vii., p. 159.

(44)  Clay's _Priv. Cor._, p. 61.


XIII
NULLIFICATION--1832-3 (1835)

A debate arose in the United States Senate over a resolution of
Senator Foote of Connecticut proposing to limit the sale of the
public lands, which took a wide range.  Hayne of South Carolina
elaborately set forth the doctrine of nullification, claiming it
inhered in each State under the Constitution.  He boldly announced
that the Union formed was only a _league_ or a _compact_.  This
called forth from Webster his celebrated "Reply to Hayne," of
January 26, 1830, in which he assailed and apparently overthrew
the then new doctrine of nullification.  He denounced its exercise
as incompatible with a loyal adherence to the Constitution, and
showed historically that the government formed under it was not a
mere "compact" or "_league_" between sovereign or independent States
terminable at will.  He then asserted that any attempt of any State
to act on the theory of nullification would inevitably entail civil
war or a dissolution of the Union.

The first real attempt, however, at nullification, or the first
attempt of a State to declare laws of Congress nugatory and of no
binding force when not approved by the State, was made in South
Carolina in 1832, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, then
Vice-President of the United States, and hitherto a statesman of
so much just renown, and esteemed so moderate and patriotic in his
views on all national questions as to have been looked upon, with
the special approval of the North, as eminently qualified for the
Presidency.  He hopefully aspired to it until he quarrelled with
President Jackson; he had been in favor of a protective tariff.

Cotton was, as we have seen, the principal article of export, and
the slaveholding cotton planters conceived the idea that to secure
a market for it there must be no duties on imports, and that home
manufactures of needed articles for consumption would restrict the
foreign demand for the raw material.  Besides, the South with its
slave labor could not indulge in manufacturing.  A tariff on imports
meant protection to home industries and to free white labor, both
inimical to slavery.  Some leading Southern statesmen, adherents
of slavery, had vehemently opposed the ratification of the Constitution
of 1787, on the ground that as it empowered Congress to levy import
duties, it would encourage and build up home industries, with free
labor; and they prophesied that with them slavery would eventually
become unprofitable and therefore unpopular, hence would die.  This
idea never left the Southern mind, so, when the Confederacy of 1861
was formed, its Constitution (framed at Montgomery, Alabama)
prohibited such duties for the express reason that no branch of
industry was to be promoted in the new slave government, using this
language:

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations
be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(45)

This was then supposed to be the highest bulwark of slavery.  Its
votaries understood its strength and weakness.  Independent, well-
paid free labor and industries (46) would ennoble the men of toil,
bring wealth and power, build up populous towns and cities, and
consequently overwhelm, politically and otherwise, the institution
of slavery, or draw into successful social competition with plantation
life wealthy inhabitants who knew not slavery and its demoralizing
influences.

Already, in 1832, the effects of protection on the prosperity of
our country were manifest, especially since the Tariff Act of 1828,
which levied a duty equivalent to 45 per cent. ad valorem.  The
Act of 1832 made a small reduction in the duties, but because it
was claimed it did not distribute them equally, nullification was
determined on as the remedy.

It was agreed by the strict constructionists of that day that a
State Legislature could not declare a law of the United States
void, but to do this the _people_ must speak through a convention.
Such a convention met in South Carolina, in November, 1832, and
passed a Nullification Ordinance, declaring the tariff acts "null
and void," not binding on the State, and that under them no duties
should be paid in the State after February 1, 1833.

Immediately thereafter medals were struck, inscribed "_John C.
Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy_."  Nullification,
thus proclaimed, was the legitimate forerunner of secession.

President Jackson, with his heroic love of the Union, regarded the
movement as only _treason;_ he called it that in his proclamations;
he prepared to collect the duties in Charleston or to confiscate
the cargoes; he warned the nullifiers by the presence of General
Scott there that he would be promptly used to coerce the State into
loyalty; and he seemed eager to find an excuse for arresting,
condemning for treason, and hanging Calhoun, who then went to
Washington as a Senator, resigning the Vice-Presidency.(47)

Jackson tersely said:

"To say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, is
to say that the United States are not a nation."

The situation was too imminent for Calhoun's nerves.  To confront
an indignant nation, led by a fearless, never doubting President,
was a different thing then from what it was in 1860-61 with Buchanan
as President, surrounded as he was by traitors in his Cabinet.
Calhoun and his State backed down, and import duties continued to
be collected in South Carolina, although a gradual reduction of
them was made an excuse for Calhoun and his friends in Congress,
in 1833, to vote for a protective tariff act, so recently before
by them declared unconstitutional.(48)

On a "Force Bill" and a new tariff act being passed (March 15,
1833) the Nullification Ordinance was repealed in South Carolina.
The next Ordinance of Secession of this State (1860) was based on
the principles of the first one and the doctrines of Calhoun,
slavery being the direct, as it had been the indirect, cause of
their first enunciation.  We must not anticipate here.

In the debate, in 1833, between Webster and Calhoun, the former,
as in his great reply to Hayne,(49) expounded the Constitution as
a "Charter of Union for all the States."

"The Constitution does not provide for events that must be preceded
by its own destruction.

"That the Constitution is not a league, confederacy, or compact
between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity,
but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people,
and creating direct relations between itself and individuals.  That
no State authority has power to dissolve these relations.  That as
to certain purposes the people of the United States are one people."

Nullification, attempted first on account of a protective tariff
to foster home and young industries and for needed revenue to carry
on the Federal government, was in two years, by its author, Calhoun,
transferred, for a new cause on which to attempt to justify it--
from the tariff to domestic slavery.  Calhoun soon discovered and
admitted that the South could not be united against the North and
for _disunion_ on opposition to a protective tariff.  He therefore
promptly sought an opportunity to bring forward in Congress the
slavery question, and to attack the "_agitators_" and opponents of
slavery extension in the North, and to threaten disunion if the
institution of slavery was not permitted to dictate the political
policy of the Republic.

The exact method of reviving in Congress the whole subject of
slavery so soon after nullification had been so signally suppressed
by Jackson is worth briefly stating.

President Jackson, in his Annual Message, December, 1835, called
attention to attempts to use the mails to circulate matter calculated
to excite slaves to insurrection, but he did not recommend any
legislation to prevent it.  Mr. Calhoun moved in the Senate that
so much of the message relating to mail transportation of incendiary
publications be referred to a select committee of five.

He was made chairman of this committee, and, on his request, three
others from the South, with but one from the North, were put on
the committee, and he promptly made an elaborate and carefully-
prepared report, going into the whole doctrine of states-rights
and nullification.

In it he said:

"That the States which form our Federal Union are sovereign and
independent communities, bound together by a constitutional _compact_,
and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and
separate States, etc.

"The Compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated
are reserved to the States and the people. . . . On returning to
the Constitution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending
the country against _external_ danger is found among the enumerated,
the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending the
_internal_ peace and security of the States: and of course reserves
to the States this important power, etc.

"It belongs to slave-holding States, whose institutions are in
danger, and not to _Congress_, as is supposed by the message, to
determine what papers are incendiary and intended to excite
insurrection among the slaves, etc.

"It has already been stated that the States which comprise our
Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, united by
a constitutional compact.  Among its members the laws of nations
are in full force and obligation, except as altered or modified by
the compact, etc.

"Within their limits, the rights of the slave-holding States are
as full to demand of the States within whose limits and jurisdiction
their peace is assailed, to adopt the measures necessary to prevent
the same, and, if refused or neglected, _to resort to means to
protect themselves_, as if they were separate and independent
communities."

Here, perhaps, was the clearest statement yet made, not only of
the independence of States from Federal interference and of their
right, on their own whim, to break the "_compact_," but of the
right of the slaveholding States to dictate to the other States
legislation on the subject of slavery.

It was at once a declaration of independence for the Southern
States, and a declaration of their right to hold all the Northern
States so far subject to them as to be obliged, on demand, to pass
and enforce any prescribed law in the interest of slavery.  The
South was to be the sole judge of what law on this subject was
requisite for slavery's purposes.

No duty was demanded on this question of the Federal Government;
and Southern States, according to Calhoun, owed it none where
slavery was concerned.

Calhoun and his committee could discover no power in the Southern
States to enforce their demands save to act as separate and
independent communities--that is, by setting up for themselves.
This led logically to disunion, the result intended.

There was much in this report setting forth and professing to
believe that it was the purpose of the North to emancipate the
slaves, and through the agencies of organized anti-slavery societies
bring about slave insurrections.  The fanaticism of the North was
descanted on, and the character of slavery and its wisdom as a
social institution upheld.

He further said:

"He who regards slavery in those States simply under the relation
of master and slave, as important as that relation is, viewed merely
as a question of property to the slave-holding section of the Union,
has a very imperfect conception of the institution, and the
impossibility of abolishing it without disasters unexampled in the
history of the world.  To understand its nature and importance
fully, it must be borne in mind that slavery, as it exists in the
Southern States, involves _not only the relation of master and
slave, but also the social and political relation of the two races_,
of nearly equal numbers, from different quarters of the globe, and
the most opposite of all others in every particular that distinguishes
one race of men from another."

The whole report was replete with accusations against the North,
and full of warning as to what the South would do should its demands
not be complied with.  The bill brought in by the committee was
more remarkable than the report itself, and wholly inconsistent
with its doctrine.

The bill provided high penalties for any postmaster who should
knowingly receive and put into the mail any pub