Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/159

 and, setting out with new energies, advanced to the height of prosperity which they are now enjoying. In truth, as before remarked, by the passage of such an Act, a State would by right, pass, from the side of the Slave States to that of the Free. For, let it be observed, it is not the mere fact of having slaves within its borders, that constitutes what is called a "Slave State:" but it is such from the continuance of slavery being the fixed policy of the State. The moment that policy is abandoned — the moment slavery is given up as a system — that moment the State crosses the line, and steps upon the terra firma of Freedom. This is proved from the facts of the case. For, many years after the Northern States were termed and regarded as Free States, they still had, many or most of them, slaves within their borders. It was only so late, for instance, as the year 1846, that the State of New Jersey passed an Act liberating a considerable number of slaves that yet remained within her limits. At the census of 1840, there remained in the Free States 1,102 slaves, which number we are glad to see from the census of 1850 is now reduced to 225. As to the border State of Delaware, which, by the census-tables for 1850, contains yet 2,289 slaves, and is there reckoned among the slave-holding States, — there seems to be a doubt, in speaking of her, whether to count her among the Slave or the Free States, though in common parlance, we believe, she is often placed among