It was a mere accident that the line drawn by Mason and Dixon between
Pennsylvania and Maryland became known in later years as the dividing
line between slavery and freedom. The six States south of that line
ultimately neglected or refused to abolish slavery, while the seven
Northern States became free. Vermont became a State in 1791 and Kentucky
in 1792. The third State to be added to the original thirteen was
Tennessee in 1796. At that time, counting the States as they were
finally classified, eight were destined to be slave and eight free. Ohio
entered the Union as a State in 1802, thus giving to the free States
a majority of one. The balance, however, was restored in 1812 by the
admission of Louisiana as a slave State. The admission of Indiana in
1816 on the one side and of Mississippi in 1817 on the other still
maintained the balance: ten free States stood against ten slave States.
During the next two years Illinois and Alabama were admitted, making
twenty-two States in all, still evenly divided.
The ordinance for the government of the territory north of the Ohio
River, passed in 1787 and reenacted by Congress after the adoption
of the Constitution, proved to be an act of great significance in its
relation to the limitation of slavery. By this ordinance slavery was
forever prohibited in the Northwest Territory. In the territory south
of the Ohio River slavery became permanently established. The river,
therefore, became an extension of the original Mason and Dixon's Line
with the new meaning attached: it became a division between free and
slave territory.
It was apparently at first a mere matter of chance that a balance was
struck between the two losses of States. While Virginia remained a slave
State, it was natural that slavery should extend into Kentucky, which
had been a part of Virginia. Likewise Tennessee, being a part of North
Carolina, became slave territory. When these two Territories became
slave States, the equal division began. There was yet an abundance of
territory both north and south to be taken into the Union and, without
any special plan or agitation, States were admitted in pairs, one free
and the other slave. In the meantime there was distinctly developed the
idea of the possible or probable permanence of slavery in the South and
of a rivalry or even a future conflict between the two sections.
When in 1819 Missouri applied for admission to the Union with a state
constitution permitting slavery, there was a prolonged debate over the
whole question, not only in Congress but throughout the entire country.
North and South were distinctly pitted against each other with rival
systems of labor. The following year Congress passed a law providing
for the admission of Missouri, but, to restore the balance, Maine was
separated from Massachusetts and was admitted to the Union as a State.
It was further enacted that slavery should be forever prohibited from
all territory of the United States north of the parallel 36 degrees 30',
that is, north of the southern boundary of Missouri. It is this part of
the act which is known as the Missouri Compromise. It was accepted as
a permanent limitation of the institution of slavery. By this act Mason
and Dixon's Line was extended through the Louisiana Purchase. As the
western boundary was then defined, slavery could still be extended into
Arkansas and into a part of what is now Oklahoma, while a great empire
to the northwest was reserved for the formation of free States. Arkansas
became a slave State in 1836 and Michigan was admitted as a free State
in the following year.
With the admission of Arkansas and Michigan, thirteen slave States were
balanced by a like number of free States. The South still had Florida,
which would in time become a slave State. Against this single Territory
there was an immense region to the northwest, equal in area to all the
slave States combined, which, according to the Ordinance of 1787 and the
Missouri Compromise, had been consecrated to freedom. Foreseeing this
condition, a few Southern planters began a movement for the extension
of territory to the south and west immediately after the adoption of
the Missouri Compromise. When Arkansas was admitted in 1836, there was a
prospect of the immediate annexation of Texas as a slave State. This did
not take place until nine years later, but the propaganda, the object of
which was the extension of slave territory, could not be maintained by
those who contended that slavery was a curse to the country. Virginia,
therefore, and other border slave States, as they became committed to
the policy of expansion, ceased to tolerate official public utterances
against slavery.
Three more or less clearly defined sections appear in the later
development of the crusade. These are the New England States, the Middle
States, and the States south of North Carolina and Tennessee. In New
England, few negroes were ever held as slaves, and the institution
disappeared during the first years of the Republic. The inhabitants had
little experience arising from actual contact with slavery. When slavery
disappeared from New England and before there had been developed in the
country at large a national feeling of responsibility for its continued
existence, interest in the subject declined. For twenty years previous
to the founding of Garrison's Liberator in 1831, organized abolition
movements had been almost unknown in New England. In various ways
the people were isolated, separated from contact with slavery. Their
knowledge of this subject of discussion was academic, theoretical,
acquired at second-hand.
In New York and New Jersey slaves were much more numerous than in New
England. There were still slaves in considerable numbers until about
1825. The people had a knowledge of the institution from experience and
observation, and there was no break in the continuity of their organized
abolition societies. Chief among the objects of these societies was the
effort to prevent kidnapping and to guard the rights of free negroes.
For both of these purposes there was a continuous call for activity.
Pennsylvania also had freedmen of her own whose rights called for
guardianship, as well as many freedmen from farther south who had come
into the State.
The movement of protest and protection did not stop at Mason and Dixon's
Line, but extended far into the South. In both North Carolina and
Tennessee an active protest against slavery was at all times maintained.
In this great middle section of the country, between New England and
South Carolina, there was no cessation in the conflict between free
and slave labor. Some of these States became free while others remained
slave; but between the people of the two sections there was continuous
communication. Slaveholders came into free States to liberate their
slaves. Non-slaveholders came to get rid of the competition of slave
labor, and free negroes came to avoid reenslavement. Slaves fled thither
on their way to liberty. It was not a matter of choice; it was an
unavoidable condition which compelled the people of the border States to
give continuous attention to the institution of slavery.
The modern anti-slavery movement had its origin in this great middle
section, and from the same source it derived its chief support. The
great body of active abolitionists were from the slave States or
else derived their inspiration from personal contact with slavery. As
compared with New England abolitionists, the middlestate folk were
less extreme in their views. They had a keener appreciation of the
difficulties involved in emancipation. They were more tolerant towards
the idea of letting the country at large share the burdens involved
in the liberation of the slaves. Border-state abolitionists naturally
favored the policy of gradual emancipation which had been followed in
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Abolitionists who continued
to reside in the slave States were forced to recognize the fact that
emancipation involved serious questions of race adjustment. From
the border States came the colonization society, a characteristic
institution, as well as compromise of every variety.
The southernmost section, including South Carolina, Georgia, and the
Gulf States, was even more sharply defined in the attitude it
assumed toward the anti-slavery movement. At no time did the cause of
emancipation become formidable in this section. In all these States
there was, of course, a large class of non-slaveholding whites, who
were opposed to slavery and who realized that they were victims of an
injurious system; but they had no effective organ for expression. The
ruling minority gained an early and an easy victory and to the end held
a firm hand. To the inhabitants of this section it appeared to be a
self-evident truth that the white race was born to rule and the black
race was born to serve. Where negroes outnumbered the whites fourfold,
the mere suggestion of emancipation raised a race question which seemed
appalling in its proportions. Either in the Union or out of the Union,
the rulers were determined to perpetuate slavery.
Slavery as an economic institution became dependent upon a few
semitropical plantation crops. When the Constitution was framed, rice
and indigo, produced in South Carolina and Georgia, were the two most
important. Indigo declined in relative importance, and the production
of sugar was developed, especially after the annexation of the Louisiana
Purchase. But by far the most important crop for its effects upon
slavery and upon the entire country was cotton. This single product
finally absorbed the labor of half the slaves of the entire country. Mr.
Rhodes is not at all unreasonable in his surmise that, had it not been
for the unforeseen development of the cotton industry, the expectation
of the founders of the Republic that slavery would soon disappear would
actually have been realized.
It was more difficult to carry out a policy of emancipation when slaves
were quoted in the market at a thousand dollars than when the price
was a few hundred dollars. All slave-owners felt richer; emancipation
appeared to involve a greater sacrifice. Thus the cotton industry went
far towards accounting for the changed attitude of the entire country
on the subject of slavery. The North as well as the South became
financially interested.
It was not generally perceived before it actually happened that the
border States would take the place of Africa in furnishing the required
supply of laborers for Southern plantations. The interstate slave-trade
gave to the system a solidarity of interest which was new. All
slave-owners became partakers of a common responsibility for the system
as a whole. It was the newly developed trade quite as much as the system
of slavery itself which furnished the ground for the later anti-slavery
appeal. The consciousness of a common guilt for the sin of slavery grew
with the increase of actual interstate relations.
The abolition of the African slave-trade was an act of the general
Government. Congress passed the prohibitory statute in 1807, to go into
effect January, 1808. At no time, however, was the prohibition entirely
effective, and a limited illegal trade continued until slavery was
eventually abolished. This inefficiency of restraint furnished another
point of attack for the abolitionists. Through efforts to suppress the
African slave-trade, the entire country became conscious of a common
responsibility. Before the Revolutionary War, Great Britain had been
censured for forcing cheap slaves from Africa upon her unwilling
colonies. After the Revolution, New England was blamed for the activity
of her citizens in this nefarious trade both before and after it was
made illegal. All of this tended to increase the sense of responsibility
in every section of the country. Congress had made the foreign
slave-trade illegal; and citizens in all sections gradually became
aware of the possibility that Congress might likewise restrict or forbid
interstate commerce in slaves.
The West Indies and Mexico were also closely associated with the United
States in the matter of slavery. When Jamestown was founded, negro
slavery was already an old institution in the islands of the Caribbean
Sea, and thence came the first slaves to Virginia. The abolition of
slavery in the island of Hayti, or San Domingo, was accomplished during
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. As incidental to the
process of emancipation, the Caucasian inhabitants were massacred
or banished, and a republican government was established, composed
exclusively of negroes and mulattoes. From the date of the Missouri
Compromise to that of the Mexican War, this island was united under a
single republic, though it was afterwards divided into the two republics
of Hayti and San Domingo.
The "horrors of San Domingo" were never absent from the minds of those
in the United States who lived in communities composed chiefly of
slaves. What had happened on the island was accepted by Southern
planters as proof that the two races could live together in peace only
under the relation of master and slave, and that emancipation boded
the extermination of one race or the other. Abolitionists, however,
interpreted the facts differently: they emphasized the tyranny of the
white rulers as a primary cause of the massacres; they endowed some
of the negro leaders with the highest qualities of statesmanship and
self-sacrificing generosity; and Wendell Phillips, in an impassioned
address which he delivered in 1861, placed on the honor roll above the
chief worthies of history--including Cromwell and Washington--Toussaint
L'Ouverture, the liberator of Hayti, whom France had betrayed and
murdered.
Abolitionists found support for their position in the contention that
other communities had abolished slavery without such accompanying
horrors as occurred in Hayti and without serious race conflict. Slavery
had run its course in Spanish America, and emancipation accompanied or
followed the formation of independent republics. In 1833 all slaves
in the British Empire were liberated, including those in the important
island of Jamaica. So it happened that, just at the time when Southern
leaders were making up their minds to defend their peculiar institution
at all hazards, they were beset on every side by the spirit of
emancipation. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were fully convinced
that the attainment of some form of emancipation in the United States
was certain, and that, either peaceably or through violence, the slaves
would ultimately be liberated.