Unveiling of the Howitzer Monument.
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grantee for value and the right of one party to a compact to retain the whole consideration moving to him while repudiating every other."
A scheme of gradual emancipation had been proposed by Jefferson as early as 1776 and the general scheme of it approved by the con- vention which framed Virginia's Constitution in that year, but no action was taken, because "the public mind would not bear it." " Nothing," wrote Jefferson, " is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free, nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." Here plainly was a difficult air for statesmanship to breathe, a problem which might well vex the noblest. By what bond, other than the one existing, could darkest Africa and free America, the antipodes in race as in geography, dwell side by side in useful co-operation ? Whatever might be written in the book of fate, when its was equally legible that the two races, equally free, could not live in the same government, what was the solution ? This, on a very different scale from anything which ever existed in the North, was the problem which confronted the South springing from no choice or voice of her own, but against her choice and against her voice. In 1830 there were movements in Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia for the gradual emancipation of their slaves, and in Virginia the movement had nearly succeeded. It was the aggression of the Abolitionists which arrested the movement in all these States.
THE PROBLEM AT THE NORTH.
Connecticut will serve to illustrate the simplicity of the problem encountered at the North. In 1784 a scheme of gradual emancipa- tion was enacted for the slaves, some three thousand in number/then in the State. It was not until 1848 that the emancipation of this small number was completed. Down to 1848 by the law of the State slaves were chattels, which could be sold by legal process, and which were assets in the hands of an executor. Gradual as this emancipation was, the preamble to the act of 1784 declares that it was, as soon as it could be done " consistent with the rights of indi- viduals and the public safety." What "individual right," what "public safety " was ever cared for by the inimical commonwealths which banded with such zeal for the reproof and edification of the
