e cheerless words: "No satisfactory plan has yet been
devised for taking out the stain."

The men of the Revolution passed away; a new generation sprang up,
impatient that an institution to which they clung should be condemned
as inhuman, unwise, and unjust. In the throes of discontent at the
self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre of wealth to
be acquired by the culture of a new staple, they devised the theory
that slavery, which they would not abolish, was not evil, but good.
They turned on the friends of colonization, and confidently demanded:
"Why take black men from a civilized and Christian country, where
their labor is a source of immense gain, and a power to control the
markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry,
and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not
theirs? Slavery is a blessing. Were they not in their ancestral land
naked, scarcely lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course of the
sun, controlled by nature? And in their new abode have they not been
taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough, and plant,
and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse, to exchange their scanty
dialect for the richest of all the languages among men, and the stupid
adoration of follies for the purest religion? And since slavery is
good for the blacks, it is good for their masters, bringing opulence
and the opportunity of educating a race. The slavery of the black is
good in itself; he shall serve the white man forever." And nature,
which better understood the quality of fleeting interest and passion,
laughed as it caught the echo, "man" and "forever!"

A regular development of pretensions followed the new declaration with
logical consistency. Under the old declaration every one of the States
had retained, each for itself, the right of manumitting all slaves by
an ordinary act of legislation; now the power of the people over
servitude through their legislatures was curtailed, and the privileged
class was swift in imposing legal and constitutional obstructions of
the people themselves. The power of emancipation was narrowed or taken
away. The slave might not be disquieted by education. There remained
an unconfessed consciousness that the system of bondage was wrong, and
a restless memory that it was at variance with the true American
tradition; its safety was therefore to be secured by political
organization. The generation that made the Constitution too