BEGINNING OF THE SLAVE TRAFFIC.

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and to flourish as rapidly as in the South. It was only after a considerable time that social and commercial conditions arose which led to its gradual abandonment. In New York a mild type of negro slavery was introduced by the Dutch. The relation of master and slave seems in the period of the Dutch rule, to have been free from great severity or cruelty. After the seizure of the government by the English, however, the institution was officially recognized and even encouraged. The slave trade grew in magnitude; and here

again we find a series of oppres sive laws forbidding the meet ing of negroes together, laying down penalties for concealing slaves, and the like. In the early years of the eighteenth century fears of insurrection became prevalent, and these

fears culminated in 1741 in the episode of the so-called Negro Plot. Very briefly stated, this plot grew out of a succession of fires supposed to have been the work of negro incendiaries. The most astonishing contradictions and self-inculpations

are to be found in the involved mass of testimony taken at the different trials. It is certain that the perjury and incoherent accusations of these trials can only be equaled by those of the alleged witches at Salem, or of the famous Popish plot of Titus Oates. The result is summed up in the bare statement that in three months one hundred and fifty negroes were imprisoned, of whom fourteen were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, and seventy-one were transported. Another result was the passing of even more stringent legislation, curtailing the rights and defining the legal status of the slave. When the Revolution broke out there were not less than fifteen thousand slaves in New York, a number greatly in excess of that held by any other Northern colony.

Massachusetts, the home in later days of so many of the most eloquent abolition agitators, was from the very first, until after the war with Great Britain was well under way, a stronghold of slavery. The records of 1633 tell of the fright of Indians who saw a "Blackamoor" in a tree-top whom they took for the devil in person, but who turned out to be an escaped slave. A few years later the authorities of the colony officially recognized the institution. It is true that in 1645 the general court of Massachusetts ordered certain kidnapped negroes to be returned to their native country, but this was not because they were slaves but because their holders had stolen them away from other masters. Despite specious arguments to the contrary, it is certain that, to quote Chief Justice Parsons, "Slavery was introduced into Massachusetts soon after its first settlement, and was tolerated until the ratification of the present constitution in 1780." The curious may find in ancient Boston newspapers no lack of such advertisements as that, in 1728, of the sale of "two very likely negro girls' and of "A likely negro woman of about nineteen years and a child about seven months of age, to be sold together or apart." A Tory writer before the outbreak of the Revolution, sneers at the Bostonians for their talk about freedom when they possessed two thousand negro slaves. Even Peter Faneuil, who built the famous "Cradle of Liberty," was himself, at that very time, actively engaged in the slave trade. There is some truth in the once common taunt of the pro-slavery orators that the North imported slaves, the South only bought them. Certainly there was no more active centre of the slave trade than Bristol Bay, whence cargoes of rum and iron goods were sent to the African coast and exchanged for human cargoes. These slaves were, however, usually taken, not to Massachusetts, but to the West Indies or to Virginia. One curious outcome of slavery in Massachusetts was that from the gross superstition of a negro slave, Tituba, first sprang the hideous delusions of the Salem witchcraft trials. The negro, it may be here noted, played a not insignificant part in Massachusetts Revolutionary annals. Of negro blood was Crispus Attucks, one of the "martyrs" of the Boston riot; it was a negro whose shot killed the

British General Pitcairn at Bunker Hill; and it was a negro also who planned

the attack on Percy's supply train.

As with New York and Massachusetts, so with the other colonies. Either slavery was introduced by greedy speculators from abroad or it spread easily from adjoining colonies. In 1776 the slave population of the thirteen colonies was almost exactly half a million, nine-tenths of whom were to be found in the Southern States. In the War of the Revolution the question of arming the negroes raised bitter opposition. In the end a comparatively few were enrolled, and it is admitted that they served faithfully and with courage. Rhode Island even formed a regiment of blacks, and at the siege of Newport and afterwards at Point's Bridge, New York, this body of soldiers fought not only without reproach but with positive heroism.

With the debates preceding the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States the political problem of slavery as a national question began. Under the colonial system the responsibility for the traffic might be charged, with some justice, to the mother country. But from the day when the Declaration of Independence asserted "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," the peoples of the new, self-governing States could not but have seen that with them lay the responsibility. There is ample evidence that the fixing of the popular mind on liberty as an ideal bore results immediately in arousing anti-slavery sentiment. Such sentiment existed in the South as well as in the North. Even North Carolina in 1786 declared the slave trade of "evil consequences and highly impolitic." All the Northern States abolished slavery, beginning with Vermont, in 1777 and ending with New Jersey in 1804. It should be added, however, that many of the Northern slaves were not freed, but sold to the South. As we have already intimated, also, the agricultural and commercial conditions in the North were such as to make slave labor less and less profitable, while in the South the social order of things, agricultural conditions, and the climate, were gradually making it seemingly indispensable.

When the Constitutional debates began the trend of opinion seemed strongly against slavery. Many delegates thought that the evil would die out of itself. One thought the abolition of slavery already rapidly going on and soon to be completed. Another asserted that "slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." Mr. Jefferson, on the other hand, in view of the retention of slavery, declared roundly that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just. And John Adams urged again and again that “every measure of prudence ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States." The obstinate States in the convention were South Carolina and Georgia. Their delegates declared that their States

SLAVERY ESTABLISHED IN THE SOUTH.

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would absolutely refuse ratification to the Constitution unless slavery were recognized. The compromise sections finally agreed upon avoided the use of the words slave and slavery but clearly recognized the institution and even gave the slave States the advantage of sending representatives to Congress on a basis of population determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, "three-fifths of all other persons." The other persons thus referred to were, it is needless to add, negro slaves.

The entire dealing with the question of slavery, at the framing of the Constitution, was a series of compromises. This is seen again in the postponement of forbidding the slave trade from abroad. Some of the Southern States had absolutely declined to listen to any proposition which would restrict their freedom of action in this matter, and they were yielded to so far that Congress was forbidden to make the traffic unlawful before the year 1808. As that time approached, President Jefferson urged Congress to withdraw the country from all "further participation in those violations of human rights which have so long been continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa." Such an act was at once adopted, and by it heavy fines were imposed on all persons fitting out vessels for the slave trade and also upon all actually engaged in the trade, while vessels so employed became absolutely forfeited. Twelve years later another act was passed declaring the importation of slaves to be actual piracy. This latter law, however, was of little practical value, as it was not until 1861 that a conviction was obtained under it. Then, at last, when the whole slave question was about to be settled forever, a ship-master was convicted and hanged for piracy in New York for the crime of being engaged in the slave trade. In despite of all laws, however, the trade in slaves was continued secretly, and the profits were so enormous that the risks did not prevent continual attempts to smuggle slaves into the territory of the United States.

The first quarter of a century of our history, after the adoption of the Constitution, was marked by comparative quietude in regard to the future of slavery. In the North, as we have seen, the institution died a natural death, but there was no disposition evinced in the Northern States to interfere with it in the South. The first great battle took place in 1820 over the so-called Missouri Compromise. Now, for the first time, the country was divided, sectionally and in a strictly political way, upon issues which involved the future policy of the United States as to the extension or restriction of slave territory. State after State had been admitted into the Union, but there had been an alternation of slave and free States, so that the political balance was not disturbed. Thus, Virginia was balanced by Kentucky, Tennessee by Ohio, Louisiana by Indiana, and Mississippi by Illinois. The last State admitted had been Alabama, of course as a slaveholding State. Now it was proposed to admit Missouri, and, to still maintain the equality of political power, it was contended that slavery should be