Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/438

 430 Southern Historical Society Papers,

law for their gradual emancipation, and the census taken in 1840 found but sixty-four in servitude within her boundaries. In 1784 Connecticut followed her example, and in 1840 she had only seven- teen persons in voluntary servitude. Virginia prohibited the intro- duction of slaves from abroad in 1776, and North Carolina in 1786, Maryland in 1783, New Hampshire abolished slavery in 1793, and but few remained in the year 1800. In 1799 New York adopted gradual emancipation, and had but few slaves left in the year 1840. New Jersey followed in the year 1820, but did not fairly rid herself of the evil prior to the first election of Abraham Lincoln. She had twenty slaves in the summer of i860.

Our country was therefore called upon to wrestle with popular slavery as a domestic institution during those years, and under those limitations and obstructions in her way when asserting her own inde- pendence, and legislating for the establishment of her own popular liberty. The importation of slaves into her borders was not, there- fore, forbidden by the general government until the year 1808.

The census of 1790 kindly gives us 59,456 free colored persons in the United States, the great majority of whom were of pure African descent. The second census gives us 108,395, the third makes the figures 186,466, the fourth raises the figures to 233,524, the fifth in- creases them to 319,599. In 1840 the whole number was 386,303, and in 1850 the census brought in 434,495, which was increased to about 500,000 in the year i860. The slave population in 1790 was about 700,000, which increased to nearly 4,000,000 by the year i860. The States were at this time half slave and half free, and slavery had so far receded, that the territories north of 36° 30' were free soil, and but five slave States remained north of that line, which were after- wards designated border States. The growth and development of the free soil doctrine, therefore, had for its counterpart the history of that legislation, those common debates and discussions which had restricted and confined the American system of African slavery to the southern part and parts of our common country. The history of this legislation begins with the year 1783.

In 1790 two distinct and separate doctrines of civil government prevailed among the statesmen of our country, the one the Federal idea, which comprised the doctrines of a strong and centralized sys- tem, dominant over all local colonies, and into which the original thirteen States with ceded territory in their separate capacities should become merged in one comnion whole, constituting one strong and centralized power ; and the other, the democratic theory,