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the system as right; and while, before, they had been in the habit of apologizing for its existence, now many of them spoke and wrote of it as being highly beneficial even to the slaves themselves. As the owners of the large plantations acquired more and more slaves, they were more and more opposed to the idea of emancipation. As the negroes did all the work of the plantations, their masters had only to enjoy the blessings of life, with few of its hardships.

511. Slaves. The condition of the slaves varied greatly under different circumstances. Those that were employed in the household were treated with great kindness and sometimes were affectionately loved by their masters and mistresses. Those that worked in the field, especially upon the large plantations, under the care of overseers, were often used harshly. They were frequently whipped, sometimes very severely, and at times their suffering was extreme. It was the policy of the slave-owners not to enlighten the slaves, and in some of the States it was a crime to teach even a free negro to read. The auction-block sales, where negroes were bought to be carried to the cotton-fields, were, in Northern eyes, the most offensive features of the whole slave system. The separating of parents from children, husbands from wives, as one or the other was taken away, never to be seen again by their friends, seemed to be one of the worst evils of the system.

512. The Effect upon the South. If there were any question as to the evil effects of slavery upon the negro himself, there is none as to the great injury which the system did to the South. The possession of a large number of slaves made life easy for the owner, but added no real wealth to the State. Slave labor was and always must be one of the most wasteful forms of human industry. The slaves had no interest in their labor, and did as little work as possible. Intelligence and industry are requisite for national as well as individual

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Another serious evil resulting from slavery was its effect upon the whites who did not own slaves. The largest portion of the work was done by the slaves, and therefore labor came to be considered a disgrace. White men would not work side by side with the blacks, and there was but little other work for those who did not own land. The "poor whites" naturally became shiftless, did only enough to keep body and soul together, and dragged out a mere existence.

It has frequently been remarked that slavery inflicted much greater injuries upon the white people of the South than upon the negroes.

513. Colonization. Previous to the year 1820 (T 447) the question of slavery was treated almost entirely as a local matter, and attracted but little attention either in the free or the slave States. In 1808, the first date at which the Constitution permitted it, a law went into effect, forbidding the importation of negroes from Africa, or, in other words, abolishing the foreign slave-trade. In 1811 the American Colonization Society was formed, whose purpose was to send back the free blacks to Africa. The

section to which they were to be sent was called Liberia, and a small settlement of these negroes was eventually formed at that place. The matter was, however, wholly voluntary, and, as the number of free blacks in the South was very small, the society had very little success in its philanthropic design. The antislavery societies formed a few years later vigorously opposed the colonization idea, and weakened the usefulness of the society.

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Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser," was born in Virginia, April 12th, 1777. A member of the Kentucky legislature in 1803, he was made its speaker in 1808. He was elected to the House of Representatives, and was chosen Speaker in 1811. became at once the leader of the war party, and in 1814 was one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty of peace. Mr. Clay was, later, again made Speaker of the House, was Secretary of State under President Adams, was member of the Senate, and was three times an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency. He died July 29th, 1852. Mr. Clay, by his various compromise measures, was able to ward off, for the time, serious dangers from the country. In 1820, he presented the Missouri Compromise; in 1833, he prepared the Compromise Tariff; and in his old age, he introduced the Compromise of 1850. He was the most enthusiastic advocate of the "American System" and the leader of the Whig party.

514. Equal Representation. When the first real struggle over slavery came, in 1820 ( 448), it turned on the question of the admission of free and slave States. For many years it had been the custom to admit simultaneously free and slave States. After 1820, the twelve free and the twelve slave States seemed to work together in harmony, believing that the Missouri Compromise had finally settled the troublesome dispute. For ten years the whole nation remained quiet; and when the fire blazed up again in 1831, it was not over the question of the admission of States.

515. Abolition. · In 1831 an insurrection broke out among the slaves in Virginia. The State authorities very easily quelled the rebellion, although the disturbance spread over nearly the whole State. Slave-owners were everywhere badly frightened, and many

harsh laws were passed throughout the slave States to prevent a possible repetition. At about the same time moral sentiment against slavery itself began to be shown in the North. This new abolition movement was principally inaugurated by William Lloyd Garrison, who edited and printed an antislavery weekly newspaper, called "The Liberator." Garrison's purpose was to awaken an interest in a movement to remove slavery from the country. No obstacle, no constitutional hindrance, no claim to damages from the slave-owner, ought, in his judgment, to delay immediate emancipation.

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516. Antislavery Societies. The first society formed for the direct purpose of fighting slavery was the New England Antislavery

Society, established in 1832, and the second, the American Antislavery Society, was started the same year. The membership in these and similar organizations was greatly stimulated in 1833 by the act of the British government in emancipating the eight hundred thousand slaves in the British West Indies. Nevertheless, the societies remained comparatively small, the majority of the Northern people seeing no constitutional way of abolishing slavery, and disliking to awaken any hostility between the sections. The opposition to the movement, even in the free States, was very great. Meetings of the societies were frequently broken up, the presses, on which antislavery documents were printed, were destroyed, and in October, 1835, a mob in Boston attacked Mr. Garrison, and probably would have severely injured him, had he not taken refuge in a jail.

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William Lloyd Garrison. (From a photograph in the possession of his son.)

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517. Petitions. The sending of antislavery tracts through the mails into the South caused great indignation among the Southern leaders. The presenting of petitions to Congress, asking for the abolition of slavery, resulted in what was called the "Gag Rule." The advocates of slavery succeeded in passing a resolution through Congress refusing to receive any such abolition petitions. This was

a mistake on their part. Many, who had refused to join the antislavery societies, were much incensed at this denial of what they called the "sacred right of petition." Not only did the membership of the abolition societies grow rapidly, but the number of the petitions increased to a remarkable extent, and, although not officially read in Congress, obtained the desired result of arousing the attention of the country. John Quincy Adams did the best work of his life in his service, though an ex-President, as a member of the House of Representatives, where he constantly fought for the "Right of Petition," although he himself was not in favor of immediate abolition. It was a great victory for him when, in 1844, the "Gag Law" was repealed, after having been on the statute-books for eight years.

518. Later Antislavery Movements. -Though the methods pursued by Mr. Garrison and his most enthusiastic supporters were not always wise or judicious, yet they resulted in awakening the North to a realization of the evil of slavery. The murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, in Alton, Ill., in 1837, for printing abolition tracts and papers, caused a wave of indignation through the free States.

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Wendell Phillips, the

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

silver-tongued orator," took up the cause of the slave in 1837, and became one of the greatest of the abolition leaders. Mr. Adams was for a time the only man in Congress upon whom the agitators could rely, but in 1841 Ohio elected Joshua R. Giddings to the House of Representatives, and for many years this so-called "apostle of liberty" upheld the cause of the despised slave in Congress.

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519. The Liberty Party. In 1840 the Liberty party was established in order to make the slavery question a political matter. It nominated, as its candidate for the Presidency, James G. Birney, a former slave-owner, who had freed his slaves and removed to Michigan. The vote cast by this party was very small, scarcely large enough to be called anything but scattering. In 1844 the same candidate was

again nominated, and obtained a larger vote than before. The result proved a disaster to the antislavery cause, as the vote of the Liberty party in New York State practically resulted in the election of Mr. Polk, the admission of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the purchase of New Mexico and California, all of which the slavery leaders desired.

520. "Uncle Tom's Cabin.". - However much the lovers of the Union may have desired to keep the troublesome question of slavery out of Congress, it proved to be an impossibility. The admission of Texas, the Wilmot Proviso, and the Mexican purchase, all tended to keep the matter before the public. The compromise of 1850 was adopted in the hope that the agitation would now cease, but the Fugitive-Slave Law had a directly opposite effect. The publication of Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in 1852, greatly increased the moral opposition to slavery. It told the story of some of the worst phases of slave life, and won the sympathies of thousands of Northerners who could not have been interested in any other way. From this time on, no other issue of importance came before the people, and the struggle between slavery and freedom was destined to continue until one or the other should finally become supreme.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

KANSAS AND NEBRASKA. 1853-1857.

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521. Stephen A. Douglas. - One of the new leaders of the politics of the day was Stephen A. Douglas, a senator from Illinois. was a Democrat from a free State, and desired to do something that would bring to an end the discussions over the slavery question. With this purpose in view he proposed in the Senate a bill organizing the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, leaving to the people of those territories the right to decide whether, as territories, they should sanction or prohibit slavery. This bill was called the KansasNebraska Act, and was passed by Congress after a bitter fight.

522. The Struggle for Kansas.—It was hoped by the friends of this bill that by it the slavery question would be removed from Congress,

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