Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/276

 270 Southern Historical Society Papers.

themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others." The importation of slaves into the South was continued by Northern merchants and Northern ships until it was prohibited by the spontaneous action of the Southern States themselves, which preceded, or was contemporaneous with, the legislation of Congress in 1807. Antecedent to the adoption of the Constitution, South Caro- lina passed an act prohibiting, under severe penalties, the importa- tion of negroes from Africa. In 1803 this act was repealed for the reason, assigned in Congress by Mr. Lowndes, that it was impossible, without aid from the general government, "to prevent our Eastern brethren from introducing them into the country." "Had we received," he said, " the necessary aid from Congress, the repeal would never, in my opinion, have taken place. * I wish the time had

arrived when Congress could legislate conclusively on the subject."

FAVORED AS LONG AS PROFITABLE.

I fail to find the evidence that property in man was an obnoxious doctrine at the North until property in man wholly ceased there to be lucrative. Small as the number of slaves necessarily was to the north of Maryland, in several of them slavery existed for more than fifty years after the adoption of the Constitution. Where the interest was so limited and the emancipation so gradual, no great shock to society could well occur, especially as in the bulk of cases the eman- cipator, with no qualms of conscious whatever, received the full value of his slaves from those who bought them. The historian Bancroft is authority for the statement that more slaves were emanci- pated by last will and testament in Virginia than were ever set free in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts. Moreover, emancipation in the North, when it came, was accompanied by no recognition of equality. Prior to 1861 no negro in Massachusetts had ever been a member of its Legislature, or served upon the jury, or in the militia, or been appointed to any office beyond one of menial grade. This was free- dom, with the recognition and opportunity of freedom severely omitted " the name of freedom graven on a heavier chain " heavier because it was the expression of a more invincible barrier than that of law, and breathed a more superlative scorn. In the second volume of his Commentaries, Chancellor Kent thus describes the relation of the races: "The African race are essentially a degraded caste of inferior rank and condition in society. Marriages are forbidden