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 into its own.  And when Eli Whitney’s gin was perfected, cotton was crowned king.  Statistics tell the story:  the South produced about 8000 bales of cotton in 1790; 650,000 bales in 1820; 2,469,093 bales in 1850; 5,387,052 bales in 1860.[10] This vast increase in production called for human muscle which apparently only the negro could supply.

Once it was shown that slavery paid, its status became fixed as adamant.  The South forthwith ceased weakly to apologize for it, as it had formerly done, and began to defend it, at first with some hesitation, then with boldness, and finally with vehement aggressiveness.  It was economically necessary; it was morally right; it was the peculiar Southern domestic institution; and, above all, it paid.  On every basis of its defense, the cotton kingdom would brook no interference from any other section of the country.  So there was formed a race feudality in the Republic, rooted in profits, protected by the political power of the slave lords, and enveloped in a spirit of defiance and bitterness which reacted without mercy upon its victims.  Tighter and tighter were drawn the coils of restrictions around the enslaved race.  The mind and the soul as well as the body were placed under domination.  They might marry to breed but not to make homes.  Such charity and kindness as they experienced, they received entirely from individual humane masters; society treated them merely as chattels.