estimate of less than two thousand in 1782, there were 12,866 in 1790,
20,124 in 1800, and 30,570 in 1810. Thereafter the number advanced more
slowly until it reached 58,042, about one-eighth as many as the slaves
numbered, in 1860.

In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Among
the people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under a
prohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate with
favor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden had
written in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward Henry
Laurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.... The day, I hope
is approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice every
man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the
golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my
negroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow.... Nevertheless I am
devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail
of slavery. Great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country,
my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if
I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not
insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to
a better hand. I am not one of those ... who dare trust in Providence for
defence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wish
to continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as
themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many
as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will
therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden
or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign,
however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community
must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so
outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of
inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect of
discrediting the doctrine itself. Furthermore, the industrial prospect,
the swamps and forests calling for conversion into prosperous plantations,
suggested an increase rather than a diminution of the slave labor supply.
Georgia and South Carolina, in fact, were more inclined to keep open the
African slave trade than to relinquish control of the negro population.
R