ration, and when the Convention came
to deal with the question the same curious alliance thwarted the efforts
of those who demanded the immediate prohibition of the trade. Eventually
the Slave Trade was suffered to continue for twenty years, at the end of
which time Congress might forbid it. This was done in 1808, when the
term of suffrance had expired.

Thus was Negro Slavery placed under the protection of the Constitution.
It would be a grave injustice to the founders of the American
Commonwealth to make it seem that any of them liked doing this.
Constrained by a cruel necessity, they acquiesced for the time in an
evil which they hoped that time would remedy. Their mind is
significantly mirrored by the fact that not once in the Constitution are
the words "slave" or "slavery" mentioned. Some euphemism is always used,
as "persons held to service or labour," "the importation of persons,"
"free persons," contrasted with "other persons," and so on. Lincoln,
generations later, gave what was undoubtedly the true explanation of
this shrinking from the name of the thing they were tolerating and even
protecting. They hoped that the Constitution would survive Negro
Slavery, and they would leave no word therein to remind their children
that they had spared it for a season. Beyond question they not only
hoped but expected that the concession which for the sake of the
national unity they made to an institution which they hated and deplored
would be for a season only. The influence of time and the growth of
those great doctrines which were embodied in the Declaration of
Independence could not but persuade all men at last; and the day, they
thought, could not be far distant when the Slave States themselves would
concur in some prudent scheme of emancipation, and make of Negro Slavery
an evil dream that had passed away. None the less not a few of them did
what they had to do with sorrowful and foreboding hearts, and the author
of the Declaration of Independence has left on record his own verdict,
that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just.

CHAPTER IV

THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON

The compromises of the Constitution, on whatever grounds they may be
criticized, were so far justified that they gained their end. That end
was the achievement of union; and union was achieved. This was not done
easily nor without opposition. In some cities anti-Constitut