Part 181

"For the New England States the Revolution was the death knell of slavery and of the slave-trade protected by the law [see action in Massachusetts and Rhode Island detailed above and below]. … In New Hampshire the institution died a natural death. As Belknap said in 1792, 'Slavery is not prohibited by any express law. … Those born since the constitution was made [1776] are free.' Although the legal status of the negro was somewhat different, he was practically treated in the same manner in New Hampshire that he was treated in Rhode Island. Connecticut did not change her royal charter into a state constitution until 1818, and her slaves were freed in 1784. The slave-trade in New England vessels did not cease when the state forbade it within New England territory. It was conducted stealthily, but steadily, even into the lifetime of Judge Story. Felt gives instances in 1785, and the inference is that the business was prosecuted from Salem."

_W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, volume 2, pages 834-835._

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"Connecticut was one of the first colonies to pass a law against the slave-trade. This was done in 1769. The main cause of the final abolition of slavery in the State was the fact that it became unprofitable. In 1784 the Legislature passed an Act declaring that all persons born of slaves, after the 1st of March in that year, should be free at the age of 25. Most of those born before this time were gradually emancipated by their masters, and the institution of slavery had almost died out before 1806."

_E. B. Sanford, History of Connecticut, page 252._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1774. The bringing of slaves into Rhode Island prohibited.

"Africans had been brought to the shores of this colony in the earliest of the vessels in which the commerce of Newport had reached across the Atlantic. Becoming domesticated within the colony, the black population had in 1730 reached the number of 1,648, and in 1774 had become 3,761. How early the philanthropic movement in their behalf, and the measures looking towards their emancipation, had gained headway, cannot be determined with accuracy. It is probable that the movement originated with the Society of Friends within the colony. But little progress had been made towards any embodiment of this sentiment in legislative enactment, however, until the very year of the First Continental Congress, when at the direct instance of Stephen Hopkins (himself for many years an owner of slaves, though a most humane master), the General Assembly ordained [June, 1774] 'that for the future no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into the colony,' and that all previously enslaved persons on becoming residents of Rhode Island should obtain their freedom. 'In this decided action,' once more, as has been so often seen to be the case with movements led by Stephen Hopkins, 'Rhode Island,' says Arnold, 'took the lead of all her sister colonies.'"

_W. E. Foster, Stephen Hopkins, part 2, pages 98-100._

ALSO IN: _W. D. Johnston, Slavery in Rhode Island, part 2._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1776-1808. Antislavery sentiment in the Southern (American) States. The causes of its disappearance.

Jefferson's "'Notes on Virginia' were written in 1781-2. His condemnation of slavery in that work is most emphatic. 'The whole commerce between master and slave,' he says, 'is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it. … The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. With what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies—destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriæ of the other? … Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis—a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God; that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just—that His justice cannot sleep forever.' … On the practical question, 'What shall be done about it?' Mr. Jefferson's mind wavered; he was in doubt. How can slavery be abolished? He proposed, in Virginia, a law, which was rejected, making all free who were born after the passage of the act. And here again he hesitated. What will become of these people after they are free? … He thought they had better be emancipated and sent out of the country. He therefore took up with the colonization scheme long before the Colonization Society was founded. He did not feel sure on this point. With his practical mind he could not see how a half million of slaves could be sent out of the country, even if they were voluntarily liberated; where they should be sent to, or how unwilling masters could be compelled to liberate their slaves. While, therefore, he did not favor immediate emancipation, he was zealous for no other scheme. … Mr. Jefferson, in August, 1785, wrote a letter to Dr. Richard Price, of London, author of a treatise on Liberty, in which very advanced opinions were taken on the slavery question. Concerning the prevalence of anti-slavery opinions at that period, he says: 'Southward of the Chesapeake your book will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve its theory, and it will find a respectable minority, a minority ready to adopt it in practice; which, for weight and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of a property which, how·ever, keeps their consciences unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, as you find, here and there, a robber and murderer, but in no greater number. In that part of America there are but few slaves, and they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put in such train that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. These [the inhabitants of Virginia] have sucked in the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mothers' milk, and it is to these I look with anxiety to turn the fate of this question. Be not, therefore, discouraged.'" M. Brissot de Warville visited Washington, at Mount Vernon, in 1788, and conversed with him freely on the subject of slavery. "This great man declared to me," he wrote in his narrative, afterwards published, "that he rejoiced at what was doing in other States on the subject [of emancipation—alluding to the recent formation of several state societies]; that he sincerely desired the extension of it in his own State; but he did not dissemble that there were still many obstacles to be overcome; that it was dangerous to strike too vigorously at a prejudice which had begun to diminish; that time, patience, and information would not fail to vanquish it."

_W. F. Poole, Anti-Slavery Opinions before the year 1800, pages 25-35, and foot-note._

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"In Virginia all the foremost statesmen—Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Randolph, Henry, and Madison, and Mason—were opposed to the continuance of slavery; and their opinions were shared by many of the largest planters. For tobacco-culture slavery did not seem so indispensable as for the raising of rice and indigo; and in Virginia the negroes, half-civilized by kindly treatment, were not regarded with horror by their masters, like the ill-treated and ferocious blacks of South Carolina and Georgia. After 1808 the policy and the sentiments of Virginia underwent a marked change. The invention of the cotton-gin, taken in connection with the sudden prodigious development of manufactures in England, greatly stimulated the growth of cotton in the ever-enlarging area of the Gulf states, and created an immense demand for slave-labour, just at the time when the importation of negroes from Africa came to an end. The breeding of slaves, to be sold to the planters of the Gulf states, then became such a profitable occupation in Virginia as entirely to change the popular feeling about slavery. But until 1808 Virginia sympathized with the anti-slavery sentiment which was growing up in the northern states; and the same was true of Maryland. … In the work of gradual emancipation the little state of Delaware led the way. In its new constitution of 1776 the further introduction of slaves was prohibited, all restraints upon emancipation having already been removed. In the assembly of Virginia in 1778 a bill prohibiting the further introduction of slaves was moved and carried by Thomas Jefferson, and the same measure was passed in Maryland in 1783, while both these states removed all restraints upon emancipation. North Carolina was not ready to go quite so far, but in 1786 she sought to discourage the slave-trade by putting a duty of £5 per head on all negroes thereafter imported."

_J. Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, page 73._

ALSO IN: _T. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, query 18._

_J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, chapters 16-17 (volume 1._

_J. R. Brackett, The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789 (Essays in Constitutional History)._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1777. Prohibited by the organic law of Vermont.

See VERMONT: A. D.1777-1778.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1781. Emancipation in Massachusetts.

See, SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1638-1781.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1787. The compromises in the Constitution of the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AM.: A. D. 1787.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1787. Exclusion forever from the Northwest Territory of the United States.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1787.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1790. Guaranteed to Tennessee.

See TENNESSEE: A. D. 1785-1796.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1791-1802. The Revolt of the Haytian blacks, under Toussaint L' Ouverture, and the ending of slavery on the island.

See HAYTI: A. D. 1632-1803.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1792. The institution entrenched in the Constitution of the new state of Kentucky.

See KENTUCKY: A. D. 1789-1792.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1792-1807. Earliest measures for the suppression of the slave-trade.

"In 1776 the first motion against the trade was made in the English parliament; and soon leading statesmen of all parties, including Fox, Burke, and Pitt, declared themselves in favour of its abolition. In 1792 the Danish King took the lead in the cause of humanity by absolutely prohibiting his subjects from buying, selling, and transporting slaves; and at last, in 1807, the moral sense of the British public overrode the vested interests of merchants and planters; parliament, at Lord Grenville's instance, passed the famous act for the Abolition of the Slave trade; and thenceforward successive British governments set themselves steadily by treaty and convention to bring other nations to follow their example. … In 1794 the United States prohibited their subjects from slave-trading to foreign countries, and in 1807 they prohibited the importation of slaves into their own."

_C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, volume 2, pages 67-68._

ALSO IN: _T. Clarkson, History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1799. Gradual emancipation enacted in New York.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1799.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1806. Act of the English Parliament against the slave-trade.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1812.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1815. Declaration of the Powers against the slave-trade.

The following are passages from the Declaration against the Slave Trade, which was signed by the representatives of the Powers at the Congress of Vienna, February 8, 1815: "Having taken into consideration that the commerce known by the name of 'the Slave Trade' has been considered by just and enlightened men of all ages as repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality; … that at length the public voice, in all civilized countries, calls aloud for its prompt suppression; that since the character and the details of this traffic have been better known, and the evils of every kind which attend it, completely developed, several European Governments have, virtually, come to the resolution of putting a stop to it, and that, successively all the Powers possessing Colonies in different parts of the world have acknowledged, either by Legislative Acts, or by Treaties, or other formal engagements, the duty and necessity of abolishing it: That by a separate Article of the late Treaty of Paris, Great Britain and France engaged to unite their efforts at the Congress of Vienna, to induce all the Powers of Christendom to proclaim the universal and definitive Abolition of the Slave Trade: That the Plenipotentiaries assembled at this Congress … declare, in the face of Europe, that, considering the universal abolition of the Slave Trade as a measure particularly worthy of their attention, conformable to the spirit of the times, and to the generous principles of their august Sovereigns, they are animated with the sincere desire of concurring in the most prompt and effectual execution of this measure, by all the means at their disposal. … The said Plenipotentiaries at the same time acknowledge that this general Declaration cannot prejudge the period that each particular Power may consider as most desirable for the definitive abolition of the Slave Trade. Consequent]y, the determining the period when this trade is to cease universally must be a subject of negociation between the Powers; it being understood, however, that no proper means of securing its attainment, and of accelerating its progress, are to be neglected."

_L. Hertslet, Collection of Treaties and Conventions, volume 1, page 11._

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SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1816-1849. The organization of the American Colonization Society. The founding of Liberia.