bout the same period.[5] Thus early had our
forefathers sown the seeds of an evil, which, like a leprosy, hath
descended upon their posterity with accumulated rancour, visiting the
sins of the fathers upon succeeding generations.--The climate of the
northern states less favourable to the constitution of the natives of
Africa [Dr. Belknap. Zephan. Swift.], than the southern, proved alike
unfavourable to their propagation, and to the increase of their numbers
by importations. As the southern colonies advanced in population, not
only importations increased there, but Nature herself, under a climate
more congenial to the African constitution, assisted in multiplying the
blacks in those parts, no less than in diminishing their numbers in the
more rigorous climates of the north; this influence of climate moreover
contributed extremely to increase or diminish the value of the slave to
the purchasers, in the different colonies. White labourers, whose
constitutions were better adapted to the severe winters of the New
England colonies, were there found to be preferable to the Negroes [Dr.
Belknap. Zephan. Swift.], who, accustomed to the influence of an ardent
sun, became almost torpid in those countries, not less adapted to give
vigour to their laborious exercises, than unfavourable to the
multiplication of their species; in those colonies, where the winters
were not only milder, and of shorter duration, but succeeded by an
intense summer heat, as invigorating to the African, as debilitating to
the European constitution, the Negroes were not barely more capable of
performing labour than the Europeans, or their descendants, but the
multiplication of the species was at least equal; and, where they met
with humane treatment, perhaps greater than among the whites. The
purchaser therefore calculated not upon the value of the labour of his
slave only, but, if a female, he regarded her as "the fruitful mother of
an hundred more:" and many of these unfortunate people have there been
in this state, whose descendants even in the compass of two or three
generations have gone near to realize the calculation.--The great
increase of slavery in the southern, in proportion to the northern
states in the union, is therefore not attributable, _solely_, to the
effect of sentiment, but to natural causes; as well as those
considerations of profit, which have, perhaps, an equal influence over
the conduct of mankind in general, in whatever country, or und