out of the Territories, and to prevent the new States then
forming from becoming slave States. There is no doubt that these efforts
were illegal and unconstitutional; and yet, in the minds of those who
made them, constitutionality was not a sufficient excuse for slavery,
which, whatever might be its political status, was morally wrong: that
is to say, they believed that such a wrong as slavery could not be
justified by paper constitutions and the like. Some of the more extreme
abolitionists of the North were just as ready to secede from the Union
that recognized slavery as the Southerners were to break up a Union
whose constitutional guaranties meant nothing.

It must be borne in mind that the antislavery movement began in the
South. While slavery was in full blast both North and South, Thomas
Jefferson, the greatest political leader the South has ever produced,
was at the head of an emancipation movement, and in all parts of the
South there were men whose minds revolted at the possibilities that
swarmed about human slavery. Georgia was the only one of the Original
Thirteen Colonies in which slavery was prohibited, and we have seen
how this prohibition was repealed at the demand of the planters. Seven
Northern States, finding slavery unprofitable, abolished the system,
and a majority of the slaves were sold to the Southern States. But the
emancipation movement went on in the South. There were more than fifty
thousand free negroes in Virginia in 1856, and there were a great many
in Georgia. A number of planters in Georgia, the most prominent among
them being Alfred Cuthbert, emancipated their slaves, and arranged to
send them to Liberia.

Nevertheless the invention of the cotton gin did more to strengthen
the cause of slavery than all other events combined. It became more
profitable than ever to own slaves; and in this way, and on this
account, all the cotton-growing States became interested in the system.
They had the excuse not only that slavery was profitable, but
that self-interest combined with feelings of humanity to make it a
patriarchal institution. And such, in fact, it was. It is to the glory
of the American character and name, that never before in the history of
the world was human slavery marked by such mildness, such humanity, as
that which characterized it in the United States.

But all such considerations as these, as well as the moral objections
to slavery of any sort, humane or cruel, were lost sight o