capture of slaves with all possible
difficulties thought compatible with the Constitution. The South
denounced all such laws whatever as unconstitutional, and perhaps some
of them were.

[1835]

Constitutional or not, they were needed. There were regular expeditions
to carry off free colored persons from the coasts of New York and New
Jersey, many of them successful. The foreign slave-trade, with its
ineffable atrocities, proved defiant of law and preternaturally
tenacious of life. A lucrative but barbarous domestic trade had sprung
up between the Atlantic States, Virginia and North Carolina especially,
and those on the Gulf, for the supply of the southern market. Families
were torn apart, gangs of the poor creatures driven thousands of miles
in shackles or carried coastwise in the over-filled holds of vessels, to
live or die--little matter which--under unknown skies and strange,
heartless masters.

The slave codes of the southern States grew severer every year, as did
legislation against free colored people. Laws were passed rendering
emancipation more difficult and less a blessing when obtained. The
Mississippi and Alabama constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and
all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general
emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even
thus early--so it seemed at the North--all too subservient to the
slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule,
partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that
ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate,
the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee having evened
the score, all before 1800, to allow no new northern State to be
admitted unless matched by a southern. In addition to all this, the
North had a vast trade with the South, and northern capitalists held to
an enormous amount mortgages on southern property of all sorts, so that
large and influential classes North had a pecuniary interest in
maintaining at the South both good nature and business prosperity.

CHAPTER II.

"IMMEDIATE ABOLITION"

[1832]

While slavery was thus strengthening itself upon its own soil and in
some respects also at the North, its champions ever more alert and
forward, its old foes asleep, these very facts were provoking thought
about the institution and hostility to it, destined in time to work its
overthrow. Interested people saw th