Page:The Slave Struggle in America.djvu/10

 chosen annually, and a governor nominated by them. Penn also bought the three counties of Delaware, which were then inhabited chiefly by Dutch and Swedes.

Charles II. granted certain territories, between 36° and 31° N. lat., to Lord Clarendon and others, to be erected into a province named Carolina. A little later the boundaries were extended; settlements were made, and temporary Governments were established—one in the north at Albermarle, and one in the south at Cape Fear. This was unsatisfatoryunsatisfactory [sic] to the proprietaries, and they signed a constitution for the whole of the province. This constitution was drawn up by John Locke, and contained a clause providing that every freeman was to have "absolute power and authority over his negro slaves." In 1729 the charter was surrendered and the government revested in the Crown. For convenience the province was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina.

In 1732, George II. granted a charter to a company for the colonisation of the district lying between the rivers Savannah and Altamaha. The object of the company was to provide a refuge for the suffering poor of England, for the persecuted Protestants of Europe, and to attempt the conversion and civilisation of the natives. This territory was to be called Georgia. In 1751 the charter was surrendered, and henceforward Georgia became a royal province.

These few words give a rough idea of the manner of settlement of the North American colonies, and will enable you to judge the part that each state took in the struggle I am about to sketch, and to more easily comprehend the diversities of thought on this great slave problem. Virginia—the "Old Dominion"—settled by desperate adventurous spirits; New England, by Puritans flying from their oppressors; New York, the Jerseys, and Pennsylvania, by men of many nationalities, absorbed, but not annihilated, by their English conquerors; Maryland, by loyalist Catholic noblemen and their followers; Georgia, soon to become the great slave-state, by men claiming to civilise and convert.

Europeans had in Europe bought and sold their fellow-men long before their discovery of America, and when this vast continent was discovered they stole men from it and enslaved them—Columbus himself enslaved 500 and sent them to Spain to be sold. It was not the actual colonists who introduced slavery into America, nor did they find it there. The native Indians were free men, and never—like the Africans—aided the slave-merchant, but always resisted him. It is the Dutch who may claim the questionable honor of being the first to introduce negro slavery into the English colonies. In August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war entered James River, and landed twenty negroes for sale. The first time the colonists took part in the slave trade