slave labor. Whether or not slave labor is, in the true sense, "cheap"-labor, that is, whose cost is small in proportion to the value of what it produces --is a question that has been much discussed. It is probable that for a time, while America was in every way a new country, the net profit of slave labor was as great as that of free labor would have been; but there was a future as well as a present to consider. Slavery, like many other social institutions, has always been somewhat a matter of climate. In modern times, at least, it has never flourished outside of tropical or semitropical regions. In America it was early seen that the central and northern portions of the Atlantic coast, not being fit for such staple products as rice or tobacco, did not present the conditions necessary for the development of negro slavery; and although slaves continued to be employed in all the northern colonies for many years, they were mainly house servants, and their numbers steadily declined. In the South, on the other hand, slavery grew with the growth of a staple agriculture, until by the beginning of the eighteenth century free white labor, save for a few skilled employments, had been either driven out altogether or put socially under the ban. The contrast between the sections is shown in some figures returned to the English Board of Trade in 1715. New England, with a total population of 161,650, had but 4150 slaves. In the middle group of colonies the proportion was higher, 8000 of the total of 99,300 being slaves. In the four southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on the other hand, the total population of 173,150 included 46,700 slaves, or a little less than four times as many as in the other eight colonies together. In South Carolina the negroes outnumbered the whites by more than one-half. It is not easy to speak with positiveness regarding the treatment of the slaves by their masters in either the colonial or the constitutional period. If one were to judge solely from the statute book, punishments must in many cases have been ferocious; but, happily for the good name of America, the severer penalties of the slave codes seem to have been rarely imposed. We do not read in the records many accounts of serious offences committed by negroes, nor in general of any greater lawlessness in the slave colonies or States than elsewhere. The harsh or brutal owner or overseer was undoubtedly to be found, as one finds the harsh or brutal employer or overseer among free laborers to-day, but the better opinion of society frowned upon him in the one case as in the other. As a rule, the slaves seem to have been well fed, well cared for, well treated, and not overworked. If they were unhappy, they were at least not keenly conscious of it. On one point, however, there was tolerable unanimity of opinion, and that was that the negro was of inferior race, incapable of civilization beyond a rudimentary stage, and hence the foreordained hewer of wood and drawer of water for the white, who alone was made in the image of God. The doctrine of "divine right" is most commonly associated in history with the occupants of thrones; in the United States it was the tacit assumption of the whole white race. By the beginning of the government under the Constitution, in 1789, the United States was clearly divided into two sections, in one of which slavery flourished, while in the other it had either disap peared or else was in process of disappearance. Slavery obviously was of no consequence north of Delaware and Maryland. Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had already, by constitution or statute, declared against it, and they were shortly to be followed by New York and New Jersey. It was in the constitutional convention of 1787, however, that the sectional divergence first became unmistakably visible--that divergence which, two generations later, was to force the United States into civil war. The issue was certainly a perplexing one. If, in the apportionment of members of the national House of Representatives, only whites were to be counted, the North would overbalance the South. If slaves were to be counted, every northern freeman would find himself offset by a negro who could not vote, and who had in law few rights that his owner was bound to respect. How the controversy was settled has already been told. By one compromise the South was allowed to count three-fifths of its slaves in choosing its representatives, while by another its slave-trade was shielded from national interference until 1808, save for the empty privilege of taxing imported slaves at the rate not exceeding ten dollars a head—a privilege which Congress never exercised. Slavery was thus, in the language of later debates, "imbedded in the Constitution," and given thereby a strong legal claim to consideration. But was it a national or a State institution? Had Congress any power over it? The answer came in 1790, when the House of Representatives, replying to memorials submitted to it by the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery-of which the |