ish Crown did not imply death to
the Tory party. It doubtless suffered organically; but its individual
members did not forfeit their political convictions, nor suffer their
interest in the slave-trade to abate. The new States were ambitious to
acquire political power. The white population of the South was small
when compared with that of the North; but the slave population, added
to the former, swelled it to alarming proportions.

The local governments of the South had been organized upon the
fundamental principles of the Locke Constitution. The government was
lodged with the few, and their rights were built upon landed estates
and political titles and favors. Slaves in the Carolinas and Virginias
answered to the vassals and villeins of England. This aristocratic
element in Tory politics was in harmony, even in a republic, with the
later wish of the South to build a great political "government upon
Slavery as its chief corner-stone." Added to this was the desire to
abrogate the law of indenture of white servants, and thus to the odium
of slavery to loan the powerful influence of caste,--ranging the
Caucasian against the Ethiopian, the intelligent against the ignorant,
the strong against the weak.

New England had better ideas of popular government for and of the
people, but her practical position on slavery was no better than any
State in the South. The Whig party was the dominant political
organization throughout the Northern States; but the universality of
slavery made dealers in human flesh members of all parties.

The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence deprecated slavery,
as they were pronounced Whigs; but nevertheless many of them owned
slaves. They wished the evil exterminated, but confessed themselves
ignorant of a plan by which to carry their desire into effect. The
good desires of many of the people, born out of the early days of the
struggle for independent existence, perished in their very infancy;
and, as has been shown, all the States, and the Congress of the United
States, recognized slavery as existing under the new political
government.

But public sentiment changes in a country where the intellect is
unfettered. First, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Congress and
nearly all the States pronounced against slavery; a few years later
they all recognized the sacredness of slave property; and still later
all sections of the United States seemed to have been agitated by
anti-slavery sentim