reasurer certainly by comparison deserves commendation for
having accounted for all moneys coming into his hands, being in this
particular a remarkable exception. EDWARD D. WHITE, JAMES D. HILL, SAM
H. BUCK."--Report of Joint Committee to Investigate the Treasurer's
Office, State of Louisiana, to the General Assembly, 1877, pp. 7-12,
Majority Report.

NOTES ON CONNECTICUT AS A SLAVE STATE

On June 17 Mr. E. B. Bronson, the Winchester historian and president
of the Winchester Historical Society, delivered before the woman's
club and the students of the Gilbert School an address on "Connecticut
as a Slave State." The address in part was:

"The caste system was in full being in church, business and
social life. There was no more question about his right of
keeping slaves than of his owning sheep. The minister--the leader
and aristocrat of the day--invariably owned his slave or slaves.
Even the heavenly-minded John Davenport and Edward Hopkins were
not adverse to the custom, and Rev. Ezra Stiles, one time
president of Yale college and later a vigorous advocate of
emancipation, sent a barrel of rum to Africa to be traded for a
'Blackamoor,' because, he said, 'It is a great privilege for the
poor Negroes to be taken from the ignorant and wicked people of
Guiana and be placed in a Christian land, where they can become
good Christians and go to heaven when they die.' Religious
freedom was an inherent right of the mind, but slaveholding was a
matter of the pocketbook, and an entirely different proposition
in the Puritan eyes. The fact of the matter is, he kept them
because it paid.

"The high-water mark of slavery in Connecticut was reached in
1774, and thereafter steadily declined. To speak in the Billy
Sunday vernacular, 'Connecticut had hit the sawdust path.' The
number of slaves rapidly decreased from 6,562 in 1774 to only
2,759 in 1790, and 10 years later, in 1800, there were only 951
slaves in the state. Still the good work went on, and in 1810
only 310 were left. In 1820 but 97, and in 1830, 200 years from
the commencement of the evil system, there were only 25 slaves
owned within Connecticut's borders. In 1840 there were 17. In
1848 Connecticut experienced a full change of heart and enacted a
law forever doing away with this blot upon her fair escutcheon,
and emancipated