s now to show, in a summary way, how slavery
and the slave trade were treated and regarded by the different
sections of the United States after allegiance to England was thrown
off.

While slavery died out from local and natural causes, if not wholly
for moral, social, and religious reasons, in the States north of
Maryland, it flourished and ripened into strength and importance
in States south, casting a controlling influence and power over
the whole of the United States socially, and for the most part
dominating the country politically. The greatest statesmen and
brightest intellects of the North, though convinced of the evils
of slavery and of its fatal tendencies, were generally too cowardly
to attack it politically, although but about one fifth of the whole
white population of the slave states in 1860, or perhaps at any
time, was, through family relationship, or otherwise, directly or
indirectly interested in slaves or slave labor.

Old political parties were in time disrupted, and new ones were
formed on slavery issues.

The slavery question rent in twain the Methodist Episcopal and
Presbyterian churches. The followers of Wesley and Calvin divided
on slavery. It was always essentially an aristocratic institution,
and hence calculated to benefit only a few of the great mass of
freemen.

In 1860, there was in the fifteen slave States a white population
of 8,039,000 and a slave population of 3,953,696. Of the white
population only 384,884 were slaveholders, and, including their
families, only about 1,600,000 were directly or indirectly interested
in slaves or their labor. About 6,400,000 (80 per cent.) of the
whites in these States had, therefore, no interest in the institution,
and yet they were wholly subordinated to the few who were interested
in it.

Curiously enough, slavery continued to exist, until a comparatively
recent period, in many of the States that had early declared it
abolished. The States formed out of the territory "Northwest of
the River Ohio" cannot be said to have ever been slave States.
The sixth section of the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery
forever therein. The slaves reported in such States were only
there by tolerance. They were free of right. The Constitution of
Illinois, as we shall presently see, did not at first abolish
slavery; only prohibited the introduction of slaves.

The rebellion of the thirteen colonies in 1776 and the war for
independence did not grow out