[49] Ibid., pp. 368, 369, 388.

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Chapter V

THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION. 1774-1787.

23.  The Situation in 1774. 24.  The Condition of the Slave-Trade. 25.  The Slave-Trade and the “Association.” 26.  The Action of the Colonies. 27.  The Action of the Continental Congress. 28.  Reception of the Slave-Trade Resolution. 29.  Results of the Resolution. 30.  The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War. 31.  The Action of the Confederation.

23. The Situation in 1774. In the individual efforts of the various colonies to suppress the African slave-trade there may be traced certain general movements.  First, from 1638 to 1664, there was a tendency to take a high moral stand against the traffic.  This is illustrated in the laws of New England, in the plans for the settlement of Delaware and, later, that of Georgia, and in the protest of the German Friends.  The second period, from about 1664 to 1760, has no general unity, but is marked by statutes laying duties varying in design from encouragement to absolute prohibition, by some cases of moral opposition, and by the slow but steady growth of a spirit unfavorable to the long continuance of the trade.  The last colonial period, from about 1760 to 1787, is one of pronounced effort to regulate, limit, or totally prohibit the traffic.  Beside these general movements, there are many waves of legislation, easily distinguishable, which rolled over several or all of the colonies at various times, such as the series of high duties following the Assiento, and the acts inspired by various Negro “plots.”

Notwithstanding this, the laws of the colonies before 1774 had no national unity, the peculiar circumstances of each colony determining its legislation.  With the outbreak of the Revolution came unison in action with regard to the slave-trade, as with regard to other matters, which may justly be called national.  It was, of course, a critical period,—­a period when, in the rapid upheaval of a few years, the complicated and diverse forces of decades meet, combine, act, and react, until the resultant seems almost the work of chance.  In the settlement of the fate of slavery and the slave-trade, however, the real crisis came in the calm that succeeded the storm, in that day when, in the opinion of most men, the question seemed already settled.  And indeed it needed an exceptionally clear and discerning mind, in 1787, to deny that slavery and the slave-trade in the United States of America were doomed to early annihilation.  It seemed certainly a legitimate deduction from the history of the preceding century to conclude that, as the system had risen, flourished, and fallen in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and as South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland were apparently following in the same legislative path, the next generation would in all probability witness the last throes of the system on our soil.