es proved
so profitable that the people of England entered into it by chartering
the Royal African Company, with authority to purchase captive Negroes
throughout a large portion of Africa which was assigned to the Company
for that purpose. At one time at least the King of England owned stock
in the Company; and he gave his instruction to the royal Governors of
American colonies that they should not permit the passage through a
colonial legislature of any act which would interfere with the right to
import Negroes and sell them into slavery within the colony.

The third act in the tragedy was that after Virginia and perhaps other
colonies had made many unavailing efforts to check or forbid by
legislation the bringing of more Negroes from Africa, the War of
American Independence was fought and won. In the Constitutional
Convention of the new sovereign states called to create a Federal Union
of them all, the representatives of Virginia and other states fought
bitterly for an immediate prohibition against further importation of
Negro slaves, only to be defeated by the cotton-growing interests of
some states and the shipping interests of others who demanded that the
trade be continued for a period of years. And so the Constitution of
the United States when first put into effect in the Federal Union
permitted for twenty years the importation of captive Negroes from
Africa and their sale into slavery.

The increase in the number of Negro slaves in those states where their
labor proved profitable brought with it the constant fear of a Negro
insurrection; a fear that continued until the ending of slavery in this
country. The presence of the Negroes and of English convicts sold into
servitude made it impossible upon any large plantation for the women
and children of the master's household ever to be left without the
protection of a slave-master who had the power of gun and lash to
protect them from harm.

The preaching of the Christian faith to the heathen Indians, which was
so strongly present in the purposes of the London Company at the first
settlement of Virginia, must have been considered when the custom of
admitting Negro slaves began but there is no recorded evidence bearing
upon that subject. If there had been a bishop in the colony he could
have made the conversion of the Negro to Christianity an important part
of a diocesan program; but without a bishop nothing could be done in
an organized way. The matter was perforc