The local governments of the South had been organized upon the fundamental principles of the Locke Constitution.  The government was lodged with the few, and their rights were built upon landed estates and political titles and favors.  Slaves in the Carolinas and Virginias answered to the vassals and villeins of England.  This aristocratic element in Tory politics was in harmony, even in a republic, with the later wish of the South to build a great political “government upon Slavery as its chief corner-stone.”  Added to this was the desire to abrogate the law of indenture of white servants, and thus to the odium of slavery to loan the powerful influence of caste,—­ranging the Caucasian against the Ethiopian, the intelligent against the ignorant, the strong against the weak.

New England had better ideas of popular government for and of the people, but her practical position on slavery was no better than any State in the South.  The Whig party was the dominant political organization throughout the Northern States; but the universality of slavery made dealers in human flesh members of all parties.

The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence deprecated slavery, as they were pronounced Whigs; but nevertheless many of them owned slaves.  They wished the evil exterminated, but confessed themselves ignorant of a plan by which to carry their desire into effect.  The good desires of many of the people, born out of the early days of the struggle for independent existence, perished in their very infancy; and, as has been shown, all the States, and the Congress of the United States, recognized slavery as existing under the new political government.

But public sentiment changes in a country where the intellect is unfettered.  First, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Congress and nearly all the States pronounced against slavery; a few years later they all recognized the sacredness of slave property; and still later all sections of the United States seemed to have been agitated by anti-slavery sentiments.  In 1780 the Legislature of Pennsylvania prohibited the further introduction of slaves, and gave freedom to the children of all slaves born in the State.  Delaware resolved “that no person hereafter imported from Africa ought to be held in slavery under any pretense whatever.”  In 1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island modified their slave-code, and forbade further importations of slaves.  In 1778 Virginia passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves, and in 1782 repealed the law that confined the power of emancipating to the Legislature, only on account of meritorious conduct.  Private emancipations became very numerous, and the sentiment in its favor pronounced.  But the restriction was re-enacted in about ten years.  The eloquence of Patrick Henry and the logic of Thomas Jefferson went far to enlighten public sentiment; but the political influence of the institution grew so rapidly that in 1785, but two years after the war, Washington wrote LaFayette,