The vote of ratification by the Senate of the United States was again practically unanimous. Only four votes were recorded against it; and of these four one was cast by a brother-in-law of Mr. Clay, one by a subservient friend of the same gentleman, and one by a bitter personal enemy of General Jackson. The province was soon transferred to the United States and Jackson became its first territorial governor. With this the United States attained its natural boundary on the south, eastward from the mouth of the Mississippi, and a source of chronic irritation was removed.
| Political results of the Seminole War. |
It was to be expected that this territory would be erected into a Commonwealth in which the institution of slavery would be legalized; but this did not deter the statesmen of the North from securing the great advantages just indicated. Radical abolitionism had not yet blinded them to the general and paramount interests of the Union. In fact, the results of the Seminole War and of the diplomacy of the Administration in connection with it had the immediate effect of diminishing the ultra-Southern influence in the Government. They brought Adams and Jackson to the front, and set Crawford and Calhoun back in the course of their careers. They had, indeed, much to do, as we shall see later, with the development of the era of personal politics, which prevailed from 1824 to 1832, and which terminated finally in the separation of the all-comprehending Republican party into the Whig party and the Democratic party.
CHAPTER III.
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820
[First Appearance of Slavery in the British North American Colonies]—[Early Theory of the Benefits of Slavery]—[The Earliest Legal Recognition of Slavery in the Colonies]—[Northern Colonies not well Adapted to Negro Labor]—[The Southern Colonies well Adapted to Negro Labor]—[Negro Slavery a Temporary Necessity in the South]—[Was Negro Slavery an Error and an Evil from the first?]—[Slavery Legislation in the Southern Colonies]—[Partus Sequitur Ventrem]—[Definitions of the Slave Class]—[The Test of the Slave Status as Fixed by the Virginia Statute]—[The Legal Position of the Slave]—[Tendency Toward Serfage in the Code of 1705]—[Public Relations of the Slave System]—[The General Object of the Laws in respect to Slaves]—[Slavery and the Revolutionary Ideas of the Rights of Man]—[First Prohibition upon Slave Importation]—[Abolition of Slavery in the Northern Commonwealths after the Beginning of the Revolution]—[Slavery and the Constitution of 1787]—[Reaction against the Humanitarian Principles of the Revolution]—[Abolition of the Foreign Slave-trade by Congress]—[Cotton Culture and the Cotton-gin]—[The Effect of the Return to the Arts of Peace upon the Ideas Concerning Slavery]—[Slavery During the War of 1812 and the Years just before and just after this War]—[Slavery in the Louisiana Territory]—[Slavery in the territory West of North Carolina and Georgia]—[Slavery in Louisiana a Different Question from Slavery in the North Carolina and Georgia Cessions]—[Interest in Slavery in Maryland and Virginia Increased by the Acquisition of Louisiana]—[The Domestic Slave-trade]—[The Relation of Slavery to the Diplomacy of the United States.]
It is not easy to define the term slavery in the abstract without unfitting it for application to the great majority of the systems of servitude which have ever existed. Especially will it be difficult to gain a correct conception of the relation between the white man and the negro in North America previous to 1860 by means of such a definition.