ich changed the economic aspect of the modern
world, making slavery an institution offering means of exploitation to
those engaged in the production of cotton. This revolution rendered
necessary a large supply of cheap labor for cotton culture, out of which
the plantation system grew. The Negro slaves, therefore, lost all hope of
ever winning their freedom in South Carolina and Georgia; and in Maryland,
Virginia, and North Carolina, where the sentiment in favor of abolition
had been favorable, there was a decided reaction which soon blighted their
hopes.[3] In the Northern commonwealths, however, the sentiment in behalf
of universal freedom, though at times dormant, was ever apparent despite
the attachment to the South of the trading classes of northern cities,
which profited by the slave trade and their commerce with the slaveholding
States. The Northern States maintaining this liberal attitude developed,
therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes who were oppressed in the South.

The Negroes, however, were not generally welcomed in the North. Many of
the northerners who sympathized with the oppressed blacks in the South
never dreamt of having them as their neighbors. There were, consequently,
always two classes of anti-slavery people, those who advocated the
abolition of slavery to elevate the blacks to the dignity of citizenship,
and those who merely hoped to exterminate the institution because it was
an economic evil.[4] The latter generally believed that the blacks
constituted an inferior class that could not discharge the duties of
citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks into the body
politic was clearly presented to these agitators their anti-slavery ardor
was decidedly dampened. Unwilling, however, to take the position that a
race should be doomed because of personal objections, many of the early
anti-slavery group looked toward colonization for a solution of this
problem.[5] Some thought of Africa, but since the deportation of a large
number of persons who had been brought under the influence of modern
civilization seemed cruel, the most popular colonization scheme at first
seemed to be that of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the West.
As this region had been lately ceded, however, and no one could determine
what use could be made of it by white men, no such policy was generally
accepted.

When this territory was ceded to the United States an effort to provide
for the government