aurie
Rev. Stephen B. Balch
Rev. Obadiah B. Brown
James H. Blake
John Peter
Edmund I. Lee
William Thorton
Jacob Hoffman
Henry Carroll

These composed the Board of Managers.

[289] Manuscript Records of the Meeting.

[290] Brown, _Finley_, 65, 66.

THE EVOLUTION OF SLAVE STATUS IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

II

The story of the evolution of the status of the Negro in the North
during the first part of the nineteenth century can be easily told as
it was the result of forces the existence of which we have already
suggested. By far the most important among these were economic and
industrial. Lecky has said somewhere that the masses of men are
influenced far more by the practical implications of daily life in the
pursuit of their callings than they are by abstract ideas and this
finds abundant illustration in the attitude taken by the northern mind
upon the Negro. In Pennsylvania, where slavery existed in its mildest
form and where the moral sentiment of the community was best prepared
for its eradication, thanks to the persistent and effective campaign
of education begun by the Quakers as early as 1688 and prosecuted
under the leadership of such men as the saintly John Woolman and
Benezet, economic interests still played a more important part than
ethical.[291] Slavery flourished only where the plantation system was
profitable and this was not the case in Pennsylvania. The industrial
development of the State was in the direction of small farming,
manufacturing and commerce, all of which were uncongenial to slavery.
In the absence of paramount economic needs, slavery was unable to hold
its own against the moral idealism of the Quaker and the racial
antipathies of the German and the Scotch Irish.

Even in respect to New England the evidence is abundant that it was
economic rather than moral or religious influences that paved the way
to freedom for the slave. At the beginning it was the imperative
demand for labor that led to the enslavement of the Indian and Negro,
which the Puritan justified by an appeal to his high Calvinism. When
this demand ceased because of the increase of white labor and when the
diminished supply rendered it more difficult to get profitable slaves,
the same economic laws tended to encourage the freedom of the
slave.[292] "Fortunately for the moral development of our beloved
colonies," says Weeden, "the climat