In order to induce the Southern States to accept the Federal constitution in the beginning and have the country become a Union of States, the opposers of slavery had to compromise the use of terms, and take measures that seemed expedient.  They fondly hoped as time rolled on, to legislate the freedom of slaves.  But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793, immensely increased the value of slave labor, and forever fastened the institution upon the southern planters, so far as future legislation was concerned.  It had been so difficult to separate the cotton fiber by hand, requiring a whole day to one pound, that it was only a minor product; but now the wonderful source of revenue made possible by the new invention, caused the importation of many more slaves, and cotton growing in a million acres became king of the marts.  The planter would not willingly give up his property honestly acquired, and plainly permitted by the constitution.

Slavery was a constant obstacle to the perfect Union of States.  In 1790 during the second session of the first congress, the Quakers and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, through Benjamin Franklin, its President, prayed Congress to restore to liberty those held in bondage.  The question was debated in the House in a warm, excited manner.  Members from South Carolina and Georgia argued that slavery, being commended by the Bible, could not be wrong; that the Southern States would not have entered into the Confederacy unless their property had been guaranteed them, and any action of the general government looking to the emancipation of slavery would not be submitted to.  They said that South Carolina and Georgia could only be cultivated by negro slaves, for the climate, the nature of the soil, and ancient habits, precluded the whites from performing the labor.  If the negro were freed he would not remain in those States; hence all the fertile rice and indigo swamps must be deserted and would become a wilderness.  Furthermore the prohibiting of the slave trade was at that time unconstitutional.  James Madison poured oil on the troubled waters by stating that Congress could not interfere according to constitutional restrictions, “Yet,” he said, “there are a variety of ways by which it could countenance the abolition; and regulations might be made to introduce the freed slaves into the new states to be formed out of the Western territory.” (In parenthesis I remark that if Madison could have looked down the years, he would have found that even though emancipated, the negro will not leave the white settlements.  Take our own little city of Lexington where some 17,000 of them are congregated, living in discomfort and poverty in most cases; yet their nature is to depend in some fashion upon their white neighbors and employers.)

It was finally decided in the House that Congress could not prohibit the slave trade until the year 1808—­that Congress had no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the States.  This last resolution which is of great historic importance, may be found on page 1523 of the II Vol. of Annals of Congress.