iples of
government. The French sought to make a master-stroke at immediate
achievement and they incurred counterrevolutions and delays. The
Americans moved in a more moderate and tentative manner towards the
great achievement, but with them also a counter-revolution finally
appeared in the rise of an influential class who, by openly defending
slavery, repudiated the principles upon which the government was
founded.

At first the impression was general, in the South as well as in
the North, that slavery was a temporary institution. The cause of
emancipation was already advocated by the Society of Friends and some
other sects. A majority of the States adopted measures for the gradual
abolition of slavery, but in other cases there proved to be industrial
barriers to emancipation. Slaves were found to be profitably employed in
clearing away the forests; they were not profitably employed in general
agriculture. A marked exception was found in small districts in the
Carolinas and Georgia where indigo and rice were produced; and though
cotton later became a profitable crop for slave labor, it was the
producers of rice and indigo who furnished the original barrier to the
immediate extension of the policy of emancipation. Representatives from
their States secured the introduction of a clause into the Constitution
which delayed for twenty years the execution of the will of the country
against the African slave-trade. It is said that a slave imported from
Africa paid for himself in a single year in the production of rice.
There were thus a few planters in Georgia and the Carolinas who had an
obvious interest in the prolongation of the institution of slavery and
who had influence enough, to secure constitutional recognition for both
slavery and the slave-trade.

The principles involved were not seriously debated. In theory all were
abolitionists; in practice slavery extended to all the States. In some,
actual abolition was comparatively easy; in others, it was difficult. By
the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, actual abolition
had extended to the line separating Pennsylvania from Maryland. Of the
original thirteen States seven became free and six remained slave.

The absence of ardent or prolonged debate upon this issue in the early
history of the United States is easily accounted for. No principle
of importance was drawn into the controversy; few presumed to defend
slavery as a just or righteous institution.