Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/298

260 England States, with all other Northern slave-holding States, in 1776 (following the course of Massachusetts) abolished slavery without the sale of a single slave; had the slave trade been discontinued as the Southern States (except Georgia and South Carolina) desired; had the views of Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina been fostered and made effective by Northern hearty co-operation, it is entirely reasonable to believe that the freedom of all the slaves would have been rapidly secured.

An emancipation measure was proposed in the Virginia Legislature as late as 1832 and discussed. The general course of the debate shows a readiness in that day to give freedom to negroes, and was of such strength that a motion to postpone with a view to ascertain the wishes of the people was carried by a vote of 65 to 58. In Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky legislation leading to emancipation had already been under consideration. North Carolina and Tennessee contained large populations of whites averse to slavery, and no doubt exists as to the action of those States at any time during the first years of the century. The Louisiana and Florida purchase and the Texas annexation having not yet taken place, and nearly the entire West and Southwest being a wild, the question of emancipation with moderate compensation would have easily prevailed through the South. The barrier in the beginning was the profitable sale of the slaves from Northern States, and from the slave trade carried on in the ships of foreign nations and New England, and the commercial advantage of the trade in the products of slave labor.

The interests of all Southern States except South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, only thirty years prior to the election of Lincoln, lay on the side of emancipation. The first named States were alone dependent for their development on the labor of the slave, and even in those States only their southern areas demanded slave labor. The northern parts of these