THE SLAVE TRADE.

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The "Assiento" Treaty was made in 1689, between the king of Spain and other powers, for furnishing the Spanish Dominions in America with slaves from Africa. In 1713, it was transferred to England, and thus Queen Anne obtained a monoply of the trade, agreeing to furnish the Spanish colonies forty-eight hundred negroes a year, and it is estimated that the English took altogether some fifteen thousand negroes annually from Africa. Bancroft says, that the number imported by the English had reached nearly three millions (one tenth of which came to the Colonies), before 1776, when Congress prohibited the trade, "omitting half a million purchased in Africa and thrown into the Atlantic on the passage."

The Northern climate was too severe for the negro. He did not thrive even in Virginia, and it was therefore in the colonies further south that he was found in the largest numbers. England forced negroes upon the Colonies so energetically, however, as to excite opposition to the importation. In 1702, Queen Anne found it necessary to urge her colonial governors to encourage the trade, and in 1712, boasted to Parliament that she had secured in Spanish America, a new market for slaves. The traffic was avowed in England to be "the pillar and support of the British plantation trade in America." Georgia did not suf fer slavery to exist within its borders at first, and Oglethorpe said that at last it was forced upon the colony. George Whitefield, indeed, urged that it was essential to the prosperity of the plantation. In 1676, the Earl of Dartmouth said to a colonial agent, "We cannot allow the Colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation."

In New York, too, the Dutch directed Peter Stuyvesant to use every exertion to promote the sale of negroes. In 1670, the Duke of York was president of

the "African Company," and patron of the slave trade.

In 1701, Boston directed its representatives to make efforts to put a period to negro bondage. Maryland, Virginia and Carolina had already discountenanced the

JEFFERSON ON SLAVERY.

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trade, and in 1712, a petition for "the enlargement" of negro slaves was made to the Legislature of Pennsyl vania. The petition was not listened to. The persistence of the British Government gave Thomas Jefferson * the reason for inserting in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, the following words, which were omitted before the document was presented to the House of Representatives.

He [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating them and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown stand for two differing social forces which have been influential all through our history. From the Massachusetts settlement went out a stream of emigrants which was scattered throughout the West and the Northwest.

* Speaking of the existence of slavery and its influence, Mr. Jefferson said, in 1781, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever." He added, in view of a revolution on the part of the blacks, "The Almighty has no attri bute which can take side with us in such a contest." Three years earlier he had said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the Book of Fate than that this people shall be free." After the freedom had become a fact, James A. Garfield said in the House of Representatives, February 12, 1867, " Sir, the hand of God has been visible in this work."

The South and Southwest were peopled by those who represented the aristocratic form of society.

The people of New England were homogeneous in race and character. They belonged to the yeomanry, country gentlemen and small farmers of England, who sympathized with the Roundheads in the struggle with the Crown. Among these there were those who were recognized as belonging to the aristocracy, and some who possessed large estates, but the major part of the population belonged to the comfortable middle class, and they are typical of New England civilization.

The Virginians were aristocratic in their sympathies. They supported the established Church, and represented the Cavalier element in English politics. They possessed both the virtues and the vices of an aristocracy. From them came George Washington, and they

* An amusing illustration of the care with which rank was guarded in New England is found in the arrangements for "seating the meeting-house" so that each person should have his proper place. In Beverly, near Salem, Mass., an elaborate scheme was drawn up for this purpose by Colonel Robert Hale, before the year 1700, which may be taken as a sample. The following are a few of its stipulations.

That every male be allowed one degree for every complete year of age he exceeds twenty-one.

That he be allowed for a captain's commission twelve degrees, for a lieutenant's, eight degrees, and for an ensign's, four degrees.

That he be allowed three degrees for every shilling for real estate in the last parish tax, and one degree for personal estate and faculty. Every six degrees for estate and faculty of a parent alive, to make one degree among his sons, or where there is none, among the daugh

ters that are seated.

Every generation of predecessors heretofore living in this town, to make one degree for every male descendant that is seated.

That the foremost Magistrate Seat, so called, shall be the highest in rank and the other three in successive order.

That the next in rank shall be in the foremost of the front seats below, then the fore-seat in the front gallery, then the fore-seat in the side-gallery.

On these principles nearly six hundred persons were seated, the women being separated from the men.