Ohio alone had nearly eighteen thousand more scholars in its primary schools than all the slave States, and New York State had two and a half times as many. In the high schools of Massachusetts there were 158,351 scholars, or more than four times as many as in schools of similar grade at the South (35,935). At the South one in ten of the free white population was unable to read or write; at the North the proportion was one in one hundred and fifty-six; but this ratio, which applied to persons over twenty years of age, disclosed its significance more startlingly when individual States were contrasted: in Connecticut 526 persons over twenty years of age were illiterate; in South Carolina there were 20,615 illiterate free whites over that age, that is, out of each 626 free whites more than 58 were wholly illiterate; out of that number in Connecticut less than two. This fact signified that more than one-sixth of the voting population of South Carolina were unable to read their ballots.

There were at this time 377 newspapers published at the South to 1,135 at the North; as late as 1860 the contrast was yet more significant: 2,263 secular papers and 214 religious published at the North; 979 secular and 63 religious, at the South. Considering that the circulation of newspapers was from fifty to seventy-five per cent less at the South than at the North-a slaveholding community containing relatively fewer readers-the people of the South were shut off from one of the chief forces in modern civilization. The churches at the South taught that slavery was a divine ordinance; ministers and church-members owned slaves. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church voted in 1836 "not to interfere in the civil and political relations between master and slave," urged its members "to abstain from all abolition movements," and later declared that American slavery "is not a moral evil;" the Presbyterian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, in the South, sustained slavery, and the churches at the North joined with them in the belief: if America was a Christian land in 1840, most of the slaves in it were the property of

so-called Christians. Of the many sects professing the principles of Christianity, one alone rejected slavery and refused to suffer slaveholders to be enrolled-namely the Society of Friends, who from the days of the Revolution not only refused to be a slaveholding body but advocated the abolition of slavery. That the churches of America should ever declare in favor of slavery as "an ordinance of God" only shows the persistency of a state of mind which made slavery possible. That state of mind proved but a phase in the moral and spiritual development of a people: this at least is the most charitable, if not the philosophic interpretation to put upon it.

In population, in value of manufactures, in number of schools, in number of scholars in the several grades of schools from primary to the university, in value of agricultural products, in number of newspapers, in the number and tonnage of ships, in mileage of railroads and cost of railroad construction, in the number and value of private residences and of new buildings constructed each year, the North, in 1840 exceeded the South. But in moral sentiment, in attitude toward slavery as an institution, the North joined with the South; and the North profited indirectly in slavery, because she obtained her raw cotton from the South, profited largely by the manufacture of it and also through its sale and use. Morally, North and South were not in notable contrast, in 1840, on the slavery question. Even the religious sects, save that of the Society of Friends, joined hands in pronouncing slavery to be of divine origin.

Who can estimate the force of this conjoint moral sentiment as a basis of the slave power in America? To what extent was slavery caused, if not sustained, by the teachings of Christian churches in America, North and South, in 1840?

But there was another element of strength in the slave power. By the Constitution of the United States representation and direct taxes were apportioned to population, and three-fifths of the slave population counted as a free

population. The size of the House of Representatives is regulated by the House itself by an apportionment law which is enacted soon after a census is taken. By the apportionment after the census of 1840, one Representative was allowed to every 70,680 free men, by which law the House, then consisting of 255 members, contained twenty Representatives on account of the slaves, or one-twelfth of the entire membership: the inequality of the apportionment disclosed itself in the actual basis of representation-the number of free men at the North required to elect a Representative in Congress being 70,680, while at the South every 55,725 free persons elected a Representative. As the population of the North increased relatively faster than that of the South, the discrepancy grew apace with the years. If slaves were property and were thus represented in Congress equity demanded that property at the North should also be represented. Four times did the United States levy a direct tax-in 1798, 1813, 1814, and in 1816-the aggregate being $14,000,000; of this the South paid $1,256,553 on her slaves. During President Jackson's administration (1837), the surplus revenue of the United States was distributed among the States according to their electoral votes, by which arrangement the slave States, though having scarcely half the population of the free, received for each free man $4.20; the North received but $3.05 for each free man.

From 1789 to 1845, of the eleven incumbents of the presidency, but three were of Northern birth; one of these, Van Buren, held Southern principles. No Northern man was re-elected president. During this period of fifty-six years, of the one hundred and seventy appointments of ministers and chargés, ninety-two were from the South. Forty-three of the seventy ministers plenipotentiary sent to Europe before 1846 were from slave States; eighteen of the thirty-three judges of the Supreme Court of the United States were from the South and fourteen of the eighteen attorney-generals of the United States during that time. Nineteen of the thirty Congresses had elected a Speaker

from the South, and the minor appointments, department clerks, Indian agents, military and naval officers showed the same preferment. The Government of the United States was controlled by the slave power. And yet in population, in wealth, in resources, mechanical, educational, economic, that power fell below the free States.

The conclusion is irresistible that slavery, in 1845, owed its real support to the moral sentiment of the American people, North and South; that of itself it was not equal to coping with free institutions; that it was less productive as an economic force and that unless constantly acquiring fresh soil or additional protection by the country at large, it was a self-consuming force, unable to sustain itself throughout its domains.

The political aspect of slavery down to the decision in the Dred Scott case was of a power ever demanding more land and more complete protection. Slavery extension was the cry as soon as the Louisiana country was acquired in 1803. It was demanded steadily and save with the temporary denial by the Compromise of 1820, and that of 1850, it was given as by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and, completely, by the decision in the Dred Scott case. Down to the outbreak of the Civil War the preponderance of Southern over Northern men in the diplomatic service of the United States; in the Federal Courts; in the army and navy; in the administrative work of the government-the heads of departments, clerkships and commissions-continued. The South controlled the government from 1845 to 1861 as effectively as from 1789 to 1845. The administrations of Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan were in no sense hostile to slavery; Jefferson Davis was secretary of war throughout Pierce's administration and not one of the twelve men who served at one time or another as advisers to President Buchanan was anti-slavery. However much John A. Dix, or Edwin M. Stanton-who came late into Buchanan's Cabinet-may have deplored the existence of slavery, they used their official authority in its defense during their

ministry, though both, after the outbreak of the Civil War, became the one as a distinguished general, the other as secretary of war-active supporters of an anti-slavery policy which at last culminated in the overthrow of the institution. Edwin M. Stanton had the unique experience of serving the last pro-slavery administration in the United States as attorney-general, and of serving the first antislavery administration as secretary of war. This fact hints at the suddenness with which the change came at last.

In a republic, sectional antagonisms ultimately take political form. In November, 1838, the Liberty party organized in convention at Albany, New York, and nominated James G. Birney, of New York, for president, and Francis Lemoyne, of Pennsylvania, for vice-president, on a platform, the principal resolution of which, adopted by the convention on the 13th, declared:

"That, in our judgment, every consideration of duty and expediency which ought to control the action of Christian freemen requires of the Abolitionists of the United States to organize a distinct and independent party, embracing all the necessary means for nominating candidates for office and sustaining them by public suffrage." At the presidential election of 1840 Birney and Lemoyne received 7,059 votes. But the conviction which thus culminated in these epochmaking votes had been forming for many years. In 1774, an abolition society, composed chiefly of Friends, was organized in Philadelphia. In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, written two years later, Jefferson pronounced against slavery, but the passage was cut out to please the Carolinas and Georgia. Ten years before the Declaration a movement took form in eastern Massachusetts to abolish slavery; abolition bills were introduced into the legislature but failed, usually because of the refusal of the governor to sign them: at this time England favored slavery and slavery extension. The Association of 1774, which expressed the changing attitude of America toward England, pronounced against slavery and the slave trade and