Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/34

Rh The Puritans of New England made no very strong objection to Slavery. It was established in all the colonies of the North and South. White servitude continued till the Revolution. As late as 1767, white men were kidnapped, " spirited away," as it was called in Scotland, and sold in the colonies.

Negro slavery began early. Even the gentler Puritans at Plymouth had the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to the coloured race. The black man must sit .aloof from the whites in the meeting-house, in a "negro pew;" he must "not be joined unto them in burial;" a place was set apart, in the graveyard at Plymouth, for coloured people, and still remains as "from time immemorial." In 1851, an Abolitionist, before his death, insisted on being buried with the objects of his tender solicitude. The request was complied with.

After the Revolution, the Northern States gradually abolished slavery, though not without violent opposition in some places. In 1788 three coloured persons were kidnapped at Boston and carried to the West Indies; the crime produced a great excitement, and led to executive and legislative action. The same year, the General Presbyterian Assembly of America issued a pastoral letter, recommending "the abolition of Slavery, and the instruction of the negroes in letters and religion." In 1790, Dr. Franklin, president of the "Pennsylvanian Society for the Abolition of Slavery," signed a memorial to Congress, asking that body "to countenance the restoration of liberty to the unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amid the general joy of surrounding provinces, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will permit mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."

The memorial excited a storm of debate. Slavery was defended as a measure of political economy, and a principle of humanity, South Carolina leading in the defence of her favourite institution. Yet many eminent Southern