he worst he sent to the West Indies to be sold as food for slaves. With
the proceeds the skipper bought molasses and carried it home, where it
was turned into rum; the rum went to Africa and was exchanged for
slaves, and the slaves were carried to the West Indies, Virginia, and
the Carolinas. Rum and slaves, two chief staples of New England trade
and sources of its wealth; slave labor the foundation on which was
planted the aristocracy of Virginia and the Carolinas,--alas for our
great-grandfathers! But what may our great-grandchildren find to say of
us?

The social conscience was not developed along this line; men were
unconscious of the essential wrong of slavery, or, uneasily conscious of
something wrong, saw not what could be done, and kept still. Here and
there a voice was raised in protest. There was fine old Samuel Sewall,
Chief Justice of Massachusetts; sincere, faithful man; dry and narrow,
because in a dry and narrow place and time; but with the capacity for
growth which distinguishes the live root from the dead. He presided over
the court that adjudged witches to death; then, when the community had
recovered from its frenzy, he took on himself deepest blame; he stood up
in his pew, a public penitent, while the minister read aloud his humble
confession, and on a stated day in each year he shut himself up in
solitude to mourn and expiate the wrong he had unwittingly done, and,
almost alone among his people, he spoke out clear and strong against
human slavery.

A little later, in the generation before the Revolution, came the
Quaker, John Woolman,--a gentle and lovely soul, known among his people
as a kind of lay evangelist, traveling among their communities to utter
sweet persuasive words of holiness and uplifting; known in our day by
his _Journal_, a book of saintly meditations. Sensitive and shrinking,
he yet had the moral insight to see and the courage to speak against the
wrong of slavery. The Quakers, rich in the virtues of peace and
kindliness, were by no means unpractical in the ways of worldly gain, or
inaccessible to its temptations; they had held slaves like their
neighbors, though we should probably have preferred a Quaker master. But
the seed Woolman sowed fell on good ground; slavery came into disfavor
among the Quakers, and when sentiment against it began to grow they lent
strength to the leadership of the public conscience.

CHAPTER II

THE ACTS OF THE FATHERS

The revolt of the col