time. They threatened to withdraw from the Union, if it were not sufficiently respected in the new Constitution. If the other States had said, "You may go, soon as you like, for hitherto you have been only a curse to us, and done little but brag," it would have been better for us all. However, partly for the sake of keeping the peace, and still more for the purpose of making money by certain concessions of the South, the North granted the southern demands. After the adoption of the Constitution, the anti-slavery spirit cooled down; other matters occupied the public mind. The long disasters of Europe; the alarm of the English party, who feared their sons should be "conscripts in the armies of Napoleon," and the violence of the French party, who were ready to compromise the dignity of the nation, and add new elements to the confusion in Europe; the subsequent conflict with England, and then the efforts to restore the national character, and improve our material condition,—these occupied the thought of the nation, till the Missouri Compromise again disturbed the public mind. But that was soon forgotten; little was said about slavery. In the eighteenth century, it was discussed in the colleges and newspapers, even in the pulpits of the North; but, in the first quarter of the nineteenth, little was heard of it. Manufactures got established at the North, and protected by duties; at the South, cotton was cultivated with profit, and a heavy duty protected the slave-grown sugar of Louisiana. The pecuniary interests of North and South became closely connected, and both seemed dependent on the peaceable continuance of slavery. Little was said against it, little thought, and nothing done. Southern masters voluntarily brought their slaves to New England, and took them back, no one offering the African the conventional shelter of the law, not to speak of the natural shelter of justice. We well remember the complaint made somewhat later, when a Judge decided that a slave, brought here by his master's consent, became, from that moment, free!
But where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. There rose up one man who would not compromise, nor be silent,—who would be heard.[1] He spoke of the evil,
- ↑ William Lloyd Garrison.
