CHAPTER I.

INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY ON THE WHOLE POLICY AND LEGISLATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

§ 1. FROM THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION TO THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

1787-1820.

By a striking coincidence, slavery and liberty, good and evil, were born in the same year in the United States. In the winter of 1620, the bark Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock a handful of pious, honest, intelligent men, lovers of justice and equality, these were the founders of the illustrious nation which takes the name of the United States of America. The same year, another ship, supposed to be Dutch, touched at Jamestown in Virginia, and landed nineteen negro slaves, the first that ever set foot on and polluted the soil of North America. These two powerful influences still endure, and unceasingly divide the country. From the decks of the Mayflower has issued one of the freest and most flourishing nations that the world has ever seen, composed at present of nearly thirty million men. The sad passengers of the negro vessel have had four million successors. Virginia, which was destined to become the cradle of independence, was also that of slavery.*

The example was rapidly imitated, and the custom of employing slaves was propagated from the South to the

* Beverley, History of Virginia. P. Van Biervliet, Etudes sur l'esclavage aux États Unis, (Louvain, 1859,) p. 31. Charles Sumner's Speech, September 19, 1860 (Boston)

North. In 1639, political rights were already refused to slaves in Maryland. The two Carolinas became the principal market of the slave-trade. From the middle of the seventeenth century, slavery existed in all of the Southern States. It was propagated more slowly in the Northern States, where the number of slaves never reached that of freemen, while it greatly exceeded it in the South. It cannot be doubted that the English government warmly encouraged the importation of negroes. Virginia several times remonstrated against this, and in 1776,* among the grievances enunciated against George III., the Williamsburg Convention reproached him with the inhuman use of the royal prerogative which had prevented Virginia from prohibiting by law the introduction of negroes. The same opposition is found in a declaration of Congress, dated October 8, 1774.†

In Georgia, a law interdicted the importation of negroes and that of spirituous liquors; it became necessary to abrogate this in 1749.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Pennsylvania succeeded by degrees in freeing themselves from the contagion. Sustained by more lively religious principles, having a less imperative need of laborers accustomed to the climate, these States triumphed over the invasion, example, and pressure of the mother country.

After the Declaration of Independence, when the immortal founders of the American Republic were framing the Constitution of September 17, 1787, a law which still rules and secures to the most modern people of earth the honor of possessing one of the most ancient constitutions, Jefferson, having proclaimed in solemn terms that "all

* Channing, Introduction of Slavery, Laboulaye's translation.

↑ Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Documents collected by Gregory, ex-Bishop of Blois, Tom. VIII. of the French documents. I owe access to this curious collection of documents of the eighteenth century to the courtesy of M. P. Lacroix, librarian of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.

men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights, among which are liberty," etc., wished to add an article condemning slavery.

A majority of a single vote rejected this resolution. Interest prevailed then, as since, over the convictions of the most illustrious fathers of American liberty. Washington emancipated his slaves by testament, Franklin wrote against slavery, the celebrated judge, John Jay, and many other great men, shared the same feeling. But, in the fear of weakening or breaking the bond of federation, already so fragile, they did not insist on it, and the monstrous nuptials of liberty and servitude were hallowed.

This arrangement was disguised like a shameful deed under the evasive silence of an equivocation. No article of the Constitution is polluted by the word slavery. The abolition of the slave-trade, in the year 1808, is shadowed forth in these words of Article I. Section IX. § 1: "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the existing States shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 1808." Furthermore, in Article I. Section II. § 3, by which the representatives are distributed in proportion to the amount of population, we read that "to the whole number of free persons shall be added three fifths of all other persons." This is all! "A stranger might read the Constitution," says Channing,* "without suspecting that slavery exists among us."

Thus the Constitution, like the Gospel, is silent upon slavery; but the Gospel does not speak of it because, in its sight, all men are equal; the Constitution is silent because, in its sight, slaves are not men!

Happily, the blast of liberty that swept over Europe made itself felt in America. The American Congress of 1794 prohibited the slave-trade; the same principle entered into the treaties contracted in 1814 and 1842 between Eng*Note to a letter to Mr. Clay, p. 349, Laboulaye's edition.

land and the United States, but without the latter having ever consented to submit to the right of search, at length abandoned in the sequel of the diplomatic disputes and negotiations of 1858.

At the same time, the Northern States set a memorable example. In 1780, before the end of the Revolutionary war, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts voted the gradual extinction of slavery. All the States situated north of the Delaware followed this example in succession; at the census of 1820 slavery had virtually become extinct in seven of the thirteen States which originally composed the confederation; viz. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York.

Slavery remained confined within the six other States : Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.

But at this epoch the federation already numbered in these States alone 1,620,340 slaves; * while in 1790 it did not include, in both North and South, more than 670,633 in all.†

Divisions and annexations have increased the number of the States of the Union to thirty-four, ‡ nineteen free States,

† Oration delivered at New Haven, in 1790, by Rev. James Dana. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Gregorian Collection, English documents, Tom. III.

Without counting several Territories. The following are the dates of birth

of the several States, with their extraction:

1564. A colony of French Protestants, under Ribault, settled in Florida. 1565. St. Augustine founded by Pedro Melendez.

1584. Sir Walter Raleigh obtains a patent, and despatched two ships to the coast which received the name of Virginia.

1607. First establishment of the London Company at Jamestown, Virginia. 1614. A fort founded by the Dutch on the site of New York. 1615. Fort Orange built near the site of Albany, New York.

and fifteen slave States; viz. Free States, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin; Slave States, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.

It was hoped that, if the example of the Northern States did not suffice, the abolition of the slave-trade would check the increase of slaves at the South, and bring about the gradual disappearance of the negro race; inasmuch as rice

1619. First General Assembly convened in Virginia. 1620. Arrival of the Puritan Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.