prime cause of resentment and bitterness when, at a
later date, the North began to reproach the South with the guilt of
slave-owning. For the South was faced with no such easy and manageable
problem. Its coloured population was almost equal in number to its white
colonists; in some districts it was even greatly preponderant. Its staple
industries were based on slave labour. To abolish Slavery would mean an
industrial revolution of staggering magnitude of which the issue could
not be foreseen. And even if that were faced, there remained the sinister
and apparently insoluble problem of what to do with the emancipated
Negroes. Jefferson, who felt the reproach of Slavery keenly, proposed to
the legislature of Virginia a scheme so radical and comprehensive in its
character that it is not surprising if men less intrepid than he refused
to adopt it. He proposed nothing less than the wholesale repatriation of
the blacks, who were to set up in Africa a Negro Republic of their own
under American protection. Jefferson fully understood the principles and
implications of democracy, and he was also thoroughly conversant with
Southern conditions, and the fact that he thought (and events have
certainly gone far to justify him) that so drastic a solution was the
only one that offered hope of a permanent and satisfactory settlement is
sufficient evidence that the problem was no easy one. For the first time
Jefferson failed to carry Virginia with him; and Slavery remained an
institution sanctioned by law in every State south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

While the States were thus dealing with the problems raised by the
application to their internal administration of the principles of the
new democratic creed, the force of mere external fact was compelling
them to attempt some sort of permanent unity. Those who had from the
first a specific enthusiasm for such unity were few, though Washington
was among them, and his influence counted for much. But what counted for
much more was the pressure of necessity. It was soon obvious to all
clear-sighted men that unless some authoritative centre of union were
created the revolutionary experiment would have been saved from
suppression by arms only to collapse in mere anarchic confusion. The
Continental Congress, the only existing authority, was moribund, and
even had it been still in its full vigour, it had not the powers which
the situation demanded. It could not, for instance, levy taxes on the
State