the
spirit of reform--intemperance, slavery, and war. The general assembly
of the Presbyterian church, representing the whole country, in 1818, by
a unanimous vote, condemned slavery as "a gross violation of the most
sacred and precious rights of human nature, and utterly inconsistent
with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as
ourselves." In 1824-7 the Legislatures of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New
Jersey passed resolutions calling on Congress to provide for compensated
emancipation, and expressing willingness that their States should pay
their share of the burden. This last sentiment was a rare one; the
self-sacrifice it demanded from the non-slave-holding States was very
little in evidence during the long contest that followed; men would
speak and vote for freedom; when angry enough they would fight--to
defeat the master and incidentally to free the slave--but to pay, in
cold blood, and in heavy measure, for the ransom of the slaves, was a
different matter; and few were they who, like Lincoln, favored that way
out. The action of those three Legislatures marked the height of the
early anti-slavery tide, and prompted a hope which was never fulfilled.

In the decade 1820-30, more than 100 anti-slavery societies were
established in slave States (see _James G. Birney and His Times_, an
admirable exposition of the conservative anti-slavery movement). The
Manumission Society of North Carolina in 1825 took a kind of census of
the State, and concluded that of its people 60 in 100 favored
emancipation in some form. In the same year a pamphlet published in
Charleston, S. C., on "The Critical Situation and Future Prospects of
the Slave-Holding States," bitterly declared that the whole book and
newspaper press of the North and East teemed with articles on slavery.
In Maryland, an anti-slavery party in 1826 elected two members to the
House of Delegates; but this movement disappeared on the election of
Jackson two years later. In Alabama, Birney, a man of a fine type, and
growing toward leadership, secured in 1827 the passage of a law
forbidding the importation of slaves as merchandise; but this was
repealed two years later. So the wave flowed and ebbed, but on the whole
it seemed to advance.

Among local societies in the Northern States, one may be instanced in
New Haven, Ct., in which, in 1825, five young men associated themselves;
among them were Edward Beecher, Leonard Bacon, and Theodore D. Woolsey.
They wer