eared in the commercial states, leaving behind only such
discriminations as disfranchisement or high property qualifications on
colored voters.

=The Growth of Northern Sentiment against Slavery.=--In both sections of
the country there early existed, among those more or less
philosophically inclined, a strong opposition to slavery on moral as
well as economic grounds. In the constitutional convention of 1787,
Gouverneur Morris had vigorously condemned it and proposed that the
whole country should bear the cost of abolishing it. About the same time
a society for promoting the abolition of slavery, under the presidency
of Benjamin Franklin, laid before Congress a petition that serious
attention be given to the emancipation of "those unhappy men who alone
in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage." When
Congress, acting on the recommendations of President Jefferson, provided
for the abolition of the foreign slave trade on January 1, 1808, several
Northern members joined with Southern members in condemning the system
as well as the trade. Later, colonization societies were formed to
encourage the emancipation of slaves and their return to Africa. James
Madison was president and Henry Clay vice president of such an
organization.

The anti-slavery sentiment of which these were the signs was
nevertheless confined to narrow circles and bore no trace of bitterness.
"We consider slavery your calamity, not your crime," wrote a
distinguished Boston clergyman to his Southern brethren, "and we will
share with you the burden of putting an end to it. We will consent that
the public lands shall be appropriated to this object.... I deprecate
everything which sows discord and exasperating sectional animosities."

=Uncompromising Abolition.=--In a little while the spirit of generosity
was gone. Just as Jacksonian Democracy rose to power there appeared a
new kind of anti-slavery doctrine--the dogmatism of the abolition
agitator. For mild speculation on the evils of the system was
substituted an imperious and belligerent demand for instant
emancipation. If a date must be fixed for its appearance, the year 1831
may be taken when William Lloyd Garrison founded in Boston his
anti-slavery paper, _The Liberator_. With singleness of purpose and
utter contempt for all opposing opinions and arguments, he pursued his
course of passionate denunciation. He apologized for having ever
"assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine