ition society_ was
organized by the citizens of the State of New York, with John Jay at its
head. Two years subsequently, the Pennsylvanians did the same thing,
electing Benjamin Franklin to the presidency of their association. The
same year, too, slavery was forever excluded, by act of Congress, from
the Northwest Territory. This year is also memorable as having witnessed
the erection of the first cotton mill in the United States, at Beverley,
Massachusetts.

During the year that the New York Abolition Society was formed, Watts,
of England, had so far perfected the _steam engine_ as to use it in
propelling machinery for spinning cotton; and the year the Pennsylvania
Society was organized witnessed the invention of the _power loom_. The
_carding machine_ and the _spinning jenny_ having been invented twenty
years before, the power loom completed the machinery necessary to the
indefinite extension of the manufacture of cotton.

The work of emancipation, begun by the four States named, continued to
progress, so that in seventeen years from the adoption of the
constitution, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey, had also
enacted laws to free themselves from the burden of slavery.

As the work of manumission proceeded, the elements of slavery expansion
were multiplied. When the four States first named liberated their
slaves, no regular exports of cotton to Europe had yet commenced; and
the year New Hampshire set hers free, only 138,328 lbs. of that article
were shipped from the country. Simultaneously with the action of
Vermont, in the year following, the _cotton gin_ was invented, and an
unparalleled impulse given to the cultivation of cotton. At the same
time, Louisiana, with her immense territory, was added to the Union, and
room for the extension of slavery vastly increased. New York lagged
behind Vermont for six years, before taking her first step to free her
slaves, when she found the exports of cotton to England had reached
9,500,000 lbs.; and New Jersey, still more tardy, fell five years behind
New York; at which time the exports of that staple--so rapidly had its
cultivation progressed--were augmented to 38,900,000 lbs.

Four years after the emancipations by States had ceased, the slave trade
was prohibited; but, as if each movement for freedom must have its
counter-movement to stimulate slavery, that same year the manufacture of
cotton goods was commenced in Boston. Two years after that event, the
ex