human beings! It was a marvelous sight to General Lafayette, who had brought upon himself the reprehension of his own government and braved the perils of the sea and his capture in behalf of the struggling people of the New World, to behold the "black domestiques" held in bondage by those for whose own liberty he was about to hazard his immense fortune and his life.

Slavery's influence had become so great that, after the Revolution, it was a great embarrassment in the formation of the new government. The best statesmen, South and North, believed it in the course of ultimate extinction. That all the colonies might be induced to enter the Union, compromises were incorporated in the Constitution whereby, (1) It was made a reserved right of the several States to retain or abolish slavery; (2) States retaining the system were allowed a three-fifths representation in congress and the electoral college for their slaves; (3) The foreign slave trade was permitted to continue for twenty years; (4) The rendition to their masters of slaves escaping to another State. The "institution," as it came to be called, gradually receded from the Northern States, and Washington, as an example, manumitted his own slaves at his death.

INFLUENCE OF THE COTTON GIN.

About this period slavery received a great stimulus in the South from the invention of the cotton gin a few years before by

Eli Whitney, a school-master from Connecticut teaching in the South. It was a machine so simple that the rudest African could operate it and separate the cotton seeds from the fibre. The great demand for cotton and its preparation for the market made thus easy, its production was

enhanced, and slavery became profitable in the cotton growing States. These States, upon the termination of the foreign slave trade, relied upon the border, or slave States adjacent to the free States, for their supply of human chattels, and thus the system became a source of profit to the entire South. For this it was fostered, and its extension and protection became the chief effort and study of Southern statesmen.

COMPROMISES FOR SLAVERY ITS BARBARISM.

Slavery became a power in the Nation. Scarcely a question arose in State or Church, but had slavery as a factor in its determination. Its demands were usually made with the alternative of a dissolution of the Union. Under such threats, in 1820, a new compromise was granted the South, by which, in lieu of the admission of Missouri as a slave State, all territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' should ever after be free. This became known as the Missouri Compromise. In 1845, it demanded the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, all for the acquisition of territory from which to carve new slave States. In 1850, it again threatened the Union without new guaranties. Its behests were granted with the odious Fugitive Slave Law, which not only returned the escaped slave to his master, but gave the latter power to carry off any colored person, bond or free, without jury trial, or permission of such colored person to testify in his own behalf, and consign him to life-long bondage. Its enforcement permitted the tearing away of parents and husbands from wives and children, and making Northern people parties to the inhumanity, or suffer fine and imprisonment for refusal to act the part of slave hounds at the bidding of the master.

The South had always practiced the inter-state slave trade, which was not a reserved right of the States. Children were taken from mothers and husbands from wives, like animals, and sold from each. other forever! The decks of boats going down the Chesapeake, or Ohio and Mississippi, frequently contained chained gangs of human beings of both sexes and all ages-guilty of no crime-destined for the slave marts of the far South. The people of the North had a right to protest against this internal (and infernal) slave traffic, as a matter of inter-state commerce; but legislation thereon had never been attempted, under threats that the South would dissolve the

ABOLITIONISM AGITATION "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN."

While Southern statesmen and divines were arguing the christianizing effects of slavery upon the African race, and complaining against its agitation, they seemed to forget that their own conduct of their system was largely the cause of such agitation by a few scattered "Abolitionists" in the North. The barbarism of slavery begot abolitionism. While a portion of the South was fostering the foreign slave trade which had been outlawed as piracy, the few abolitionists in the North, believing that slavery was not divine, but the "sum of all villainies," kept the "underground railroad" in operation, by which slaves were spirited away and on towards the free soil of Canada.* The abolitionists were a despised set, North and South, much like the anarchists of the present time. They believed that slavery should be abolished, but just exactly how this could be brought about they knew not, but ever wound up their arguments with the averment that the Almighty would in time devise some plan to such end. In 1852, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which aroused the deep conscience of the North by mildly disclosing the enormities of slavery. Doubtless, no book, except the bible, was ever translated into so many languages about the globe, and having been dramatized is at this day the most popular play on the stage, in any land. It was a most powerful generator of anti-slavery sentiment, and began to make abolitionism respectable in the North. Yet, notwithstanding the growth of this feeling, the two great political parties of the country-Whig and Democratic-insisted as late as 1852, in their national platforms, that the constitutional provisions relating to slavery must be kept in honor. For two years slavery agitation seemed to cool off. Abolitionism and free-soilism seemed to have lost much of the force. which "Uncle Tom's Cabin" gave them. Had the South rested its case where the compromises of 1850 had left it, and as endorsed by the great political parties of the land, the troublous times which followed would have been postponed, without doubt, for some indefinite time, if not generations.

The Detroit was the "Jordan River" for these escaping slaves. For many years, the last station on this "underground railroad" was located about Pullen's Corners, Romulus Township, Wayne County. By night the fugitives were driven to the Detroit river and rowed across to their "Canaan shore."

GRASPING POWER OF SLAVERY REPEAL OF MISSOURI

COMPROMISE.

But slavery would not be satisfied. Every census showed a rapid advance in population in the North and West. Not so in the South, to which immigration, which usually follows isothermal lines, could not be diverted. Its political power was waning. It must have more territory out of which to form new slave States. So, in 1854, it demanded and secured the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, thereby opening up to slavery all the remaining territory of the Louisiana Purchase, including Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Idaho. The North became aroused at the grasping behest of the slave power, and a firm stand was made against any extension of slavery beyond the limits of the States in which it then existed. The Republican party came into existence at this time and embodied the principle of non-extension of slavery as its central idea. The Whig party went out of existence. The free-soilers and abolitionists generally voted with the new Republican party as being nearest to their views. The largest portion of the Democratic party in the South and North, with many old line Whigs, adhered to the Democratic party, whose central idea, as opposed to the Republicans, was, that the question of slavery, with other local issues, in the territories, should be left to a vote of the people therein. This doctrine was popularly called by its friends in those days, "squatter sovereignty." And thus the now two great parties of the country Democratic and Republican,—so divided on the question of slavery, went into the presidential election of 1856.

AGITATION-CANING OF SUMNER-JOHN BROWN RAID.

And thus were the floodgates of slavery agitation re-opened. The years from 1854 to 1860 were almost wholly, in congress and the public press, devoted to acrimonious disputes over questions involving slavery. In country stores, on the streets, at church, and everywhere, when two men met of opposite political faith, a raspish debate with hot words was sure to follow on the subject of slavery. Its adherents and opponents met in Kansas Territory and in fighting out the question of its being a free or a slave State, on the "squatter sovereignty" line, bloodshed resulted between the contestants from the North and South who met there. The presidential election of 1856 was the bitterest and most exciting that ever occurred in this country. James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, received the

vote of all but the entire solid South, defeating John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate, who received the electoral vote of the solid. North except four States. And thus party lines became distinctly sectional upon the slavery question, and the agitation went on

-the South making new demands under threats of dissolving the Union in the event of the election of a Republican president, and the North passing personal liberty bills, under the reserved rights of the States, rendering difficult the execution of the odious fugitive slave law.

Within the space of three years, during this period, occurred two events which did more than all else to fire the hearts of the two sections, yet, vulgarly speaking, they were mere side shows, but attracted more attention than the entire menagerie. One was an aggression against the North, and created more recruits for the Republican party than all other issues. The other was an aggression against the South, which did more than all else to advance the secession sentiment of the South.

(1). In 1856, Senator Butler, of South Carolina, delivered in the United States Senate a harsh speech against Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts. Soon after, the latter made an able but sarcastic