Slavery. Siavery

in the American colonies began with the imp or. tation of a cargo of slaves into Virginia by a Dutch ship in 1619. In the other colonies it was gradually introduced. The slave trade was favored by the British Government during the eighteenth century. Meantime a sentiment unfavorable to it began to develop in the colonies. The German town Quakers drew up a memorial against it in 1688, Boston town-meeting in 1701. Woolman and other Quakers preached against it. Slaves were few in the North, but numerous in the South, where their increase and the danger felt from them caused severe laws respecting them. The Revolution, as a movement for liberty, with its declaration proclaiming all men free and equal, joined with the humanitarian spirit of the close of the century to increase anti-slavery sentiment. ‘The Northern States either abolished slavery or provided for gradual emancipation. All the States but the southernmost forbade the importation of slaves from abroad. But the sentiment soon declined. In the Constitution of 1787, States were given representation in the House of Representatives for three-fifths of their slaves, and Congre was forbidden to prohibit the slave trade until 1808. The invention of the cotton-gin made slave labor more profitable than ever before, and the South began to defend slavery as a positive good, in spite of its obvious economic disadvantages. Abolition socicties, first formed about 1793, languished after 1808. The Mi ouri Compromise of 1820 arranged that the area west of the Mi i ippi and north of 36° 30’ should not be open to slavery, except in the case of Mi ouri. The Ordinance of 1787 had forbidden slavery in the region north of the Ohio. The American Colonization Society tried to palliate the evils of slavery by emancipation and deportation. About 1830 the agitation again at slavery took on a more ardent phase, and henceforth for thirty years slavery was the most absorbing of political themes. Slave labor demanded more and more new land, and the Government was led to the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico largely by this need. After bitter disputes, the territory so acquired was thrown open to slavery if the settlers desired it; this was done by the Compromise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 extended the same permi ion to territory north of 36° 30’, repealing the Mi ouri Compromise; and the Supreme Court (case of Dred Scot) sustained such repeal. The question of slayery in the territories proved the crucial question. Many in the North who had no desire for the abolition of slavery in States where it was already existent and legal were unwilling to see it extended, while slave owners claimed Constitutional right to protection of their property in slaves, as e ential if they were to have any share in the common territories. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the unwillingne of Northern people to execute it a isted to precipitate conflict, Finally, in 1860, “<4 the election of Lincoln was taken by the South as proof that their claims were to be disregarded, and sece ion and Civil War resulted. As a means of crushing rebellion, President Lincoln, on January 1, 1863, i ued his Emancipation Proclamation. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery.—In 1790 there were 698,000 slaves in the United States (40,000 in the North, 293,000 in Virginia, 107,000 in South Carolina, 103,000 in Maryland, 101,000 in North Carolina); in 1800, 894,000; in 1810, 1,191,000; in 1820, 1,538,000; in 1830, 2,009,000; in 1840, 2,487,000; in 1850, 3,204,000; in 1860, 3,954,000, the last being about one-fourth of the total population of the Southern States. 232