the city, where there were
also many free negroes, and on the large estates along the Hudson.
Twice the white people of the city for reasons that have not been
preserved, believing that slave insurrections were imminent, resorted
to extreme and brutal measures. In 1712 they burned to death two
negroes, hanged in chains a third, and condemned a fourth to be
broken on the wheel. In 1741 they went so far as to burn fourteen
negroes, hang eighteen, and transport seventy-one.

In New England where their numbers were relatively small and the laws
were less severe, the negroes were employed chiefly in domestic
service. In Quaker Pennsylvania there were many slaves, the proprietor
himself being a slave owner. Ten years after the founding of
Philadelphia, the authorities ordered the constables to arrest all
negroes found "gadding about" on Sunday without proper permission.
They were to remain in jail until Monday, receiving in lieu of meat or
drink thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.

Protests against slavery were not uncommon during the colonial period;
and before the Revolution was accomplished several of the States had
emancipated their slaves. Vermont led the way in 1777; the Ordinance
of 1787 forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory; and by 1804 all
the Northern States had provided that their blacks should be set free.
The opinion prevailed that slavery was on the road to gradual
extinction. In the Federal Convention of 1787 this belief was
crystallized into the clause making possible the prohibition of the
slave trade after the year 1808. Mutual benefit organizations among
the negroes, both slave and free, appeared in many States, North and
South. Negro congregations were organized. The number of free negroes
increased rapidly, and in the Northern States they acquired such civil
rights as industry, thrift, and integrity commanded. Here and there
colored persons of unusual gifts distinguished themselves in various
callings and were even occasionally entertained in white households.

The industrial revolution in England, with its spinning jenny and
power loom, indirectly influenced the position of the negro in
America. The new machinery had an insatiable maw for cotton. It could
turn such enormous quantities of raw fiber into cloth that the old
rate of producing cotton was entirely inadequate. New areas had to be
placed under cultivation. The South, where soil and climate combined
to make an ideal cotton land, came int