It will not be necessary to extend our inquiries to any period anterior to the revolution, or in any way to examine the peculiar causes which first established and have long perpetuated slavery amongst us. Prior to that event, it was of course a question between Great Britain and her colonies, and nice casuistry might perhaps be needed to determine the relative amount of guilt chargeable on each of the two parties. The moral value, too, of a solemn judicial decision, “that no slave could breathe the air or stand on the free soil of England,” may be a little questioned, when it is remembered that such property would of necessity be almost worthless in her climate; and that at the very moment when a reluctant Judge pronounced these boasted words, her capitalists were rolling in wealth that grew out of the sweat on negro brows in her American plantations. We have heard of high bred Southern families in which a thousand out-door slaves are never suffered to pollute the pure air of the saloons and chambers that their masters breathe, or tread the rich carpets that their toil has paid for. The custom is undoubtedly refined and agreeable, but we never heard that it boasted to rest on higher grounds than ordinary mortals venture on.
At the time of the declaration of independence, when the colonies escaped from their long pupilage, and, with new rights and new responsibilities, set out to act an independent part among the nations of the earth, the taint of slavery was upon every one of them; in every one, the soil was tilled by negro bondmen. The laws regulating the relations between master and slave, were, it is true, widely different in the different States; in some, as in Connecticut, the privileges annexed to the condition were so wide and the facility of rising from it so great, that the constitutional euphemism which is now-a-days so boldly metaphorical, might with every propriety style them “persons held to service or labor;” in others, they were then, as now, a hopelessly degraded class, whose happiness depended entirely on the arbitrary will of their masters. Of course it is not intended to represent that the various States were equally interested in the institution. Varieties of soil, climate and social habits, had drawn the great mass of this population to what are now known as the Southern States. At the time of the Declaration, no authentic enumeration had been made; but when the first census was taken in 1791, the total number of slaves in what are now known as the Northern States, was 40,370; in the Southern, 653,910. At the earlier period of which we are now speaking, the disproportion was probably less striking, but sufficiently great to make the interests of the two sections totally opposite. The difference, however, did not depend merely upon the amount of capital invested. The feeling in the North, both moral and political, was decidedly and in many cases bitterly hostile to slavery. The most shortsighted, therefore, could not fail to foresee the speedy adoption of those measures which ultimately provided for general emancipation. Even in Virginia and Maryland, not then considered as Southern States, ardent advocates were found to plead the cause of liberty, and organized action had more than once been attempted in its behalf. Below the Virginia line, in the Carolinas and Georgia, an abolitionist was as rare a phenomenon then as he would be now; those States were yet but thinly settled, a great part of their lands unreclaimed, and no prospect of improvement appeared, except in the extensive employment of slave labor, adapted both to the climate and the character of the already established settlers.