Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/32

30 first call your attention to the statistics and history of slavery. In 1790 there were but 697,897 slaves in the Union; in 1840, 2,487,355. At the present day their number probably is not far from 3,000,000. In 1790, Mr Gerry estimated their value at $10,000,000; in 1840 Mr Clay fixed it at $1,200,000,000. They are owned by a population of perhaps about 300,000 persons, and represented by about 100,000 voters.

At the time of the Declaration of Independence slavery existed in all the States; it gradually receded from the North. In the religious colonies of New England it was always unpopular and odious. It was there seen and felt to be utterly inconsistent with the ideas and spirit of their institutions, their churches, and their State itself. After the revolution therefore it speedily disappeared—here perishing by default, there abolished by statute. Thus it successively disappeared from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. By the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, involuntary servitude, except as a punishment after legal conviction of crime, was for ever prohibited in the North-West Territory. Thus the new States, formed in the western parallels, were, by the action of the Federal Government, at once cut off from that institution. Besides, they were mainly settled by men from the eastern States, who had neither habits nor principles which favoured slavery. Thus Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, have been without any legal slaves from the beginning.

In the South the character of the people was different; their manners, their social and political ideas, were unlike those of the North. The Southern States were mainly colonies of adventurers, rather than establishments of men who for conscience^ sake fled to the wilderness. Less pains were taken with the education—intellectual, moral,