d, 1636, the first slave ship
built in America was launched at Marblehead, Mass. It brought a large
cargo of slaves to be sold to the settlers. During the one hundred years
preceding 1776, millions of slaves had been imported to the States. King
George III favored the institution, and forbade any interference with
the colonies in this matter. The horrors of slavery in Massachusetts,
as recorded by reliable documents of the period, far exceed all that
has been charged against the South, by Uncle Tom's Cabin, or any other
records of fact or romance. The Encyclopedia of Political Economy and
United States History, Vol. 3, page 733, has the following taken from
the New York Evening Post:

"During the eighteen months of the years 1859-60 eighty-five slave
ships (giving their names) belonging to New York merchants, brought
in cargoes annually of between 30,000 and 60,000 African slaves, who
were sold in Brazil, there being great demand for them in that country,
owing to new industries. Old Peter Faneuil built Faneuil Hall with
slave money, and many other fortunes were thus made."

Thomas Jefferson says in his autobiography that though the Northern
people owned very few slaves themselves, at the time of the writing of
the Declaration of Independence, yet they had been pretty considerable
carriers of slaves to others. In 1761 Virginia and South Carolina,
alarmed at the rapid increase of slaves, passed an act restricting
their importation, but as many persons in England were growing rich
from the trade the act was negatived, or vetoed. While providing in the
Constitution of the United States for the Southern planters to hold
slaves, the North thought that the laws that were in the course of
events to be passed for prohibiting their foreign importation, would so
work out so that the institution would die a natural death. They little
dreamed that economical and political conditions were destined to fasten
it upon the South. At the framing of the Constitution slaves were held
in all the States except Massachusetts, and she had only very lately
abolished the institution. The South owned twice as many, by reason
of her special agricultural products, and even at this early day the
slavery question became sectional. Mason's and Dixon's line, which was
an imaginary boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, was recognized
as the division line between the free and slave states.

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