vants with their
masters. Slavery was thereby changed from a patriarchal to an economic
institution. Thereafter most owners of extensive estates abandoned the
idea that the mental improvement of slaves made them better servants.
Doomed then to be half-fed, poorly clad, and driven to death in this
cotton kingdom, what need had the slaves for education? Some planters
hit upon the seemingly more profitable scheme of working newly
imported slaves to death during seven years and buying another supply
rather than attempt to humanize them.[1] Deprived thus of helpful
advice and instruction, the slaves became the object of pity not only
to abolitionists of the North but also to some southerners. Not a
few of these reformers, therefore, favored the extermination of the
institution. Others advocated the expansion of slavery not to extend
the influence of the South, but to disperse the slaves with a view to
bringing about a closer contact between them and their masters.[2]
This policy was duly emphasized during the debate on the admission of
the State of Missouri.

[Footnote 1: Rhodes, _History of the United States_, vol. i., p. 32;
Kemble, Journal, p. 28; Martineau, _Society in America_, vol. i., p.
308; Weld, _Slavery_, etc., p. 41.]

[Footnote 2: Annals of Congress, First Session, vol. i., pp. 996 _et
seq._ and 1296 _et seq._]

Seeking to direct the attention of the world to the slavery of men's
bodies and minds the abolitionists spread broadcast through the South
newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets which, whether or not they had much
effect in inducing masters to improve the condition of their slaves,
certainly moved Negroes themselves. It hardly required enlightenment
to convince slaves that they would be better off as freemen than as
dependents whose very wills were subject to those of their masters.
Accordingly even in the seventeenth century there developed in the
minds of bondmen the spirit of resistance. The white settlers of the
colonies held out successfully in putting down the early riots of
Negroes. When the increasing intelligent Negroes of the South,
however, observed in the abolition literature how the condition of the
American slaves differed from that of the ancient servants and even
from what it once had been in the United States; when they fully
realized their intolerable condition compared with that of white men,
who were clamoring for liberty and equality, there rankled in the
bosom of slaves that insurrec