from it."

Frelinghuysen.

Ayllon, a Spaniard, who attempted to find the northwest passage, landed in Virginia as early as 1526, near the same place where the English eighty-one years later founded their colony, and began to build a town, using negro slaves in the work, but this settlement was abandoned. Negro slaves were also used in Florida prior to the Jamestown settlement. These appear to be the first use of negro slaves in territory subsequently a part of the United States. But we are not concerned with these events except as curious historical facts, because they had no influence on the history of the country, and are of no more importance or interest than the discovery of America by the Norsemen before Columbus. But toward the end of August, 1620, an event occurred of the greatest moment to the history and welfare of the country, and which was to have a far-reaching and lasting effect upon the political and social life of the United States. In that month, about thirteen years after the English founded their settlement, a Dutch ship, in great distress for food, entered the James River, and after some negotiation with the settlers, exchanged twenty negroes for a supply of food. This was the beginning of negro slavery in the United States, and thus was the disturbing element planted which was to distract the nation for so many weary years, and the opposition to which was finally to culminate in the founding of the Republican Party.

Not many months after these slaves were landed the Pilgrims established their settlement on the New England shores and began that political and social life whose subsequent development made them an enemy to slavery. If there is one scene or period in American history representing the very genesis of the Republican Party, it is the landing of the Pilgrims in December, 1620; just as the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, was the point from which radiated, by subsequent economical and social developments, the principles of the Democratic Party. Thus it is seen at this early period that slavery and freedom were planted almost side by side to progress along unconsciously until economical conditions and demands were to make them openly antagonistic; and here began that remarkable balancing of power between slavery and freedom, which was to be maintained in later years, after the Union had been formed, by a series of compromises, and indeed also by a balancing of progress along economical lines.

The Virginians at first neither sought nor needed negro slaves; this is proven by the circumstances under which the first slaves were landed, and also by the fact that slavery grew very slowly. In 1622 there were only twenty-two negro slaves in the Colony, and in 1648, twenty-eight years after the first acquisition, there were only three hundred in Virginia; not that the settlers were averse to using them, but because another class of cheap labor was obtainable in the great number of criminals which were sent from England to work out their freedom in the New World, and by other white persons who voluntarily sold themselves and became indented or bond servants for a period of years in payment of their passage to America, or for other considerations. The use of this class of labor began very shortly after the first settlement, but toward the close of the seventeenth century the use of indented servants became less as negro slaves became more numerous.

Negro slaves were introduced into every one of the other Colonies when they were founded, or a short time afterwards, and to the close of the Revolution negro slaves were used in every Colony. The North was for slavery as long as it was necessary and profitable, and the early settlers in New England found no scruple in using as slaves the Indians captured in war; and when negro slavery appeared later, the shrewd Yankees made money in the slave trade along the coast to the South and to the West Indies. The modern Newport, R. I., was the great slave mart of New England, and it is said that the first slave ship used by American colonists was fitted up in a New England port.

Prior to 1715 the number of slaves in America was not so great, but after that year they increased in large numbers, not only by an active demand which sprang up for them, but also by the infamous Asiento Clause in the Treaty of Utrecht between England and Spain, whereby the former for a period of thirty years, from 1713 to 1743, took the exclusive right of importing and selling 144,000 negroes into the Spanish Colonies at the rate of 4,800 per year, and more could be brought in on the payment of a small tax. This made England the greatest slave nation in the world, and her interest demanded, and Parliament saw to it, that nothing adverse to the use of slaves should happen in the American Colonies. The growth of slavery in America from 1715 to 1775, and the slave population in the Colonies at these two periods, were as follows:

                             1715 1775
    New Hampshire …….. 150 629
    Massachusetts …….. 2,000 3,500
    Rhode Island ……… 500 4,373
    Connecticut ………. 1,500 5,000
    New York …………. 4,000 15,000
    New Jersey ……….. 1,500 7,600
    Pennsylvania ……..} 2,500 10,000
    Delaware …………} 9,000
    Maryland …………. 9,500 80,000
    Virginia …………. 23,000 165,000
    North Carolina ……. 3,700 75,000
    South Carolina ……. 10,500 110,000
    Georgia ………….. 16,000
                           ——— ———-
                           58,850 501,102

Of the half million slaves in this country at the opening of the Revolution, 450,000 were in the Southern Colonies. The reasons for this are found in the difference in economical conditions and political and social customs which separated the Northern and Southern Colonies before the Revolution. The Northern group devoted themselves mainly to fishing, commerce and farming. The soil, especially in New England, was unpromising for the production of great staples, and the result in the North was concentration of the people, growth of town life, distribution of political power, great freedom of speech and press, and a wide discussion of political principles. The South devoted herself wholly to the production of three great staples, rice, indigo and tobacco, and the result in the South was just the reverse of that in the North. Great plantations were established, few cities of any importance sprang up, manufacturing did not thrive, the South importing almost every article of use or luxury. Political power was in the hands of a few, and the three great staples demanded cheap labor, working under the most destructive conditions. Thus, influenced almost entirely by environment and economical and political development, the North became the scene of freedom to individuals and protection to industries, because these things were absolutely essential to the existence and happiness of the people; and the South, by the same necessity, was dedicated to slavery and free trade.

It must not be thought that the colonial period was without any development of opposition to slavery. The German Quakers of Pennsylvania in 1688 took a stand against the use of slaves in their community, and they subsequently became the most active opponents to slavery and the slave trade. Their efforts, however, had little effect except in Pennsylvania, but it is important to mark their action as the beginning of the abolition movement in this country. There are records in the Southern Colonies of taxes placed