in in Florida, had pushed him.

CHAPTER III.

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

Louisiana having become a State in 1812, that portion of the purchase
north of the thirty-third degree took the name of the Missouri
Territory. St. Louis was its centre of population and of influence.

[1818]

Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never
been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was
popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri
Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called
attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi,
and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous
debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the
most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest
hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those
which I feel from this source."

To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need
of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been
nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human
development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery
originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America,
to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The
first notice we have of it in English America is that in
1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch
West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There
were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great
harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the
introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700,
Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern
colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of
morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an
early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though
ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to
be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government,
moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with
the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was
formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries
furthered to the utmost of their power.