THE FIRST EPOCH.

From 1787 to 1820.

CHAPTER II.

The Ordinance of 1787—The Slave Population of 1790—Abolitionism at that time—The Importation of Slaves the Work of Northerners—Statistics of the Port of Charleston, S. C., from 1804 to 1808—Anecdote of a Rhode Island Senator, &c., &c.

The first great epoch in the history of our country at which the spirit of abolitionism displayed itself was immediately preceding the formation of the present government. From the close of the Revolutionary War, in 1783, to the sitting of the Constitutional Convention, was a space of only four years. Two years more brings us to the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789. It was in the summer of 1787, and at the very time the Convention in Philadelphia was framing that instrument, that the Congress in New York was framing the ordinance which was passed on the 13th of July, 1787, by which slavery was forever excluded from all the territory northwest of the river Ohio, which, three years before, had been generously ceded to the United States by Virginia, and out of which have since been organised the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

According to the first census, taken in 1790, under the Constitution, when every State in the Union, with one exception, was a slave State, the number of slaves was as follows:—

States. No. of Slaves.
1Massachusetts
2New Hampshire 158
3Rhode Island 948
4 Connecticut 2,764
5New York 21,340
6New Jersey 11,423
7Pennsylvania 3,737
8Delaware 8,887
9Maryland 103,036
10Virginia 305,057
11North Carolina 100,571
12South Carolina 107,094
13Georgia 29,264
Territory of Ohio 3,417
Total 697,696

In 1820, New York had 10,088 slaves. In 1827, however, by virtue of an Act, passed in 1817, they were declared free, and emancipated, without compensation to their owners. Even in 1830, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had slaves: New Jersey containing 2,254. Since 1790, the increase of slaves has been at the rate of thirty per cent. each decade.

At this period numerous emancipation societies were formed, comprised principally of the Society of Friends, and petitions were presented to Congress, praying for the abolition of slavery. These were received with but little comment, referred, and reported upon by a committee. The reports stated that the general government had no power to abolish slavery as it existed in the several States, and that the States themselves had exclusive jurisdiction over the subject. This sentiment was generally acquiesced in, and satisfaction and tranquility ensued, the abolition societies thereafter limiting their exertions, in respect to the black population, to offices of humanity within the scope of existing laws.

In fact, if we carry ourselves by historical research back to that day, and ascertain men’s opinions by authentic records still existing among us, it will be found that there was no great diversity of opinion between the North and the South upon the subject of slavery. The great ground of objection to it then was political; that it weakened the social fabric; that, taking the place of free labor, society was less strong and labor less productive; and both sections, with an exhibition of no little acerbity of temper and violence of language, ascribed the evil to the injurious and aggrandizing policy of Great Britain, by whom it was first entailed upon the Colonies. The terms of reprobation were then more severe in the South than the North. It is a notorious fact that some of our Northern forefathers were then the most aggravated slave dealers. They transported the miserable captives from Africa, sold them at the South, and were well paid for their work; and, when emancipation laws forbade the prolongation of slavery at the North, there are living witnesses who saw the crowds of negroes assembled along the shores of the New England and the Middle States to be shipped to latitudes where their bondage would be perpetual. Their posterity toil to-day in the fields of the Southern planter.