Island and New
York for the abrogation of slavery. At the end of the war the proportion
of free people to slaves was greatly increased; and, whatever wilful
blindness may assert, the free black had the privileges of a citizen.

Here, then, was an opening for relieving the body politic from the great
anomaly of bondage in the midst of freedom. But though divine justice
never slumbers, the opportunity was but partially seized. The diminution
of the number of laborers at the South revived the importation of
slaves. The first Congress had agreed not to tolerate that traffic; the
Confederacy left its encouragement or prohibition to the pleasure of
each State; and the Constitution continued that liberty for twenty
years. At the same time slavery was excluded from the whole of the
territory of the United States. The vote of New Jersey only was wanting
to have sustained the proposition of Jefferson, by which it would have
been excluded not only from all the territory then in their possession,
but from all that they might gain.

The jealousy of the Southern States of the power of the North may be
traced through the annals of Congress from the first, which assembled in
1774. The old notions of the independence and sovereignty of each
separate State, though the Constitution was framed for the express
purpose of modifying them, clung to life with tenacity. When John Adams
was elected President, before any overt act, before any other cause of
alarm than his election, the Legislature of Virginia took steps for an
armed organization of the State, and old and long-cherished sentiments
adverse to Union were renewed. The continuance of the Union was in
peril. It was then that the great Virginia statesman, now perfectly
satisfied with the amended Constitution, came to the rescue. By the
simple force of ideas, embodying in one system all the conquests of the
eighteenth century in behalf of human rights, the freedom of conscience,
speech, and the press, he ruled the willing minds of the people. The
South, where his great strength lay with the poor whites, and where he
was known as the champion of human freedom, trusted in his zeal for
individual liberty and for the adjusted liberty of the States; the North
heard from him sincere and consistent denunciations of slavery, such as
had never been surpassed, except by George Mason. The thought never
crossed the mind of Jefferson that the General Government had not proper
powers of coercion. On t