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to the number of slaves they contained-each slave being counted as three fifths of a human being. Thus the slave-owner who owned five hundred slaves had a power in Congress and in electing the President of the United States, equal to three hundred and one people in the free States. In South Carolina-if I mistake not the Representatives to Congress were not elected directly by the people, but by the vote of the Legislature—in the same way as were the members of the United States Senate. The slave States naturally sent slave-holders to the national Capitol. Thus the strange anomaly in a republican government was seen of the legislative representation of people by their masters. Slave-holders, once getting the political affairs in their States under their own control could so manage them that sometimes, if not indeed often, the majority of the whites, even though made up largely of tax-payers and of men capable of bearing arms in the slave States, would be unrepresented in legislative councils. The slave-holders were able to elect more men than the non-slave-owners, and thus the States could be virtually ruled, not by the people through their elected representatives, but by a combination of slave-holders. Any statesman who opposed the wishes of the slave power was liable to be stricken down. It is related of Lincoln that, in a conversation with a Mr. Gillespie on some events which had attracted his attention, he said: "There were about six hundred thousand non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand slave-holders; in the convention then recently held, it was expected that the delegates would represent these classes about in proportion to their respective numbers; but, when the convention assembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding class: every one was in the interest of the slave-holders." These

remarks by Abraham Lincoln are not here introduced to re-open wounds which were once cruel indeed, but to draw due attention to the fact that the cause of public education was sacrificed to a great extent—as were many other interests of the whites who were poor-to the interests of slavery. The rich planter could send his children to private schools. There were indeed some public schools in the Southern States-thanks to the wise measures which Jefferson, when President of the United States, had been led to take, by which an immense amount of land was consecrated to the cause of public education. But under the upas tree of slavery such beneficent institutions did not flourish as they did on soil uncursed by the demoralizing spectacle of human beings living in a state of hopeless bondage. Among the slave population were sometimes individuals of AngloSaxon blood who had, when children, been kidnapped in Northern cities, or had been sold to the domestic slavetrader by indigent and depraved whites. In the veins of a considerable percentage of slaves, owing to one feature of the demoralization often caused by the relation of slave and master, there flowed Anglo-Saxon blood.* In a letter to Francis C. Gray, under date of March 4th, 1815, Jefferson drew attention to the fact that if a human being was fifteen sixteenths of Anglo-Saxon blood, having only one sixteenth of African blood, he or she was virtually white; but that, nevertheless, if the mother was a slave, by the laws of Virginia, her children were also slaves, unless emancipated.

The slave codes of the Southern States could do much towards utterly crushing the spirit of the slave. Who will fully describe the wickedness which could be committed under the authority of some of the slave codes!

* See "John Jay on Slavery," p. 144.

Extracts from these codes could be given, which would amaze and fill with sorrow and indignation a true friend of liberty. The pious John Wesley could not forbear characterizing the "peculiar institution" as "the sum of all villainies."

It is strange how people under various circumstances view moral questions. Many a one, who has perhaps known only kind and considerate owners of slaves, has naturally felt otherwise than did Jefferson or Wesley respecting slavery. The Legislature of South Carolina sent as her champion John C. Calhoun to the national Capitol. This able man, in 1849, draughted a very inflammatory address to the people of the slave States. The address was signed by himself and by Jefferson Davis, and by forty-six Congressmen and Senators from the slave States. In the course of this singular and very violent address on the slavery question, it was declared that there were people in the Northern States who were opposed “to the peculiar institution of the South," and that the owners of slaves were in danger of not being allowed to take their slaves into the Territories of the United States, and that, if such a policy were allowed by the slave States, it would come about in course of time that free States would be formed out of the territories, until three fourths of all the States in the Union would be free,States;-that then the Abolitionists would vote for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and that "the social and political superiority of the white race" was in danger of being destroyed, so that the whites would have to exchange places with the blacks. In this address it was claimed that England had made a mistake when she paid one hundred millions of dollars for the liberation of slaves in the West Indies, and the citizens of the slave States were exhorted, "without looking to consequences," to resort

"to all means necessary" to repel " a blow so dangerous." In this address Abolitionists were bitterly and in very heated language stigmatized as "fanatics."

This is not the place to dwell upon the stern boldness with which John Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings and others in Congress opposed the slave power, or how William H. Seward, a United States Senator, contended that the struggle between slavery and liberty was an "irrepressible conflict," inasmuch as slavery was a local, a sectional institution, while liberty was national. Nor is this the place to dwell at length upon how it came about that Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency of the United States by citizens who believed that in all constitutional ways the National Government should prevent the introduction of slavery into new and vast territories.

When the Southern leaders decided to make the Southern States secede from the United States, they formed for the slave States a Constitution. In the Constitution of the United States the word "slave" had not been allowed a place, as the name was odious to such men as Hamilton and Franklin. In the Constitution which the leaders in the slave States formed for themselves they inserted the word "slaves." They provided that in all territory which the new Confederacy should ever acquire -and there were vast territories which it might conquer -slavery should exist. They provided, to use the words of their Constitution, that "in all such territories, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States."

It may here be incidentally noticed that while the advocates of the extension of slavery were in many respects controlling the government of the United States, the opponents of slavery were often timid, and easily frightened by the excitement which followed debate on the slavery question. Already a statesman, destined to become a central figure in history, had attracted much public attention. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, a slave State, on February 12th, 1809,-in the same State and in the same year as was Jefferson Davis. He was of Southern birth, both of his parents having been born in Virginia. This is not the place to dwell upon his early history. In the year 1818, Lincoln was living in Indiana, a State which adjoins Illinois, and was formed out of the rich territory which Jefferson had labored to save from the evil of slavery, and in which large provision had been made for the intellectual culture of its future citizens. It will be remembered that in Illinois, from time to time, a certain class of people had striven to have the prohibition of slavery removed, and had endeavored to elect public officers in sympathy with their plans. The echoes of the conflict when slavery was about to be introduced into Illinois would naturally be heard in Indiana. In 1830 Lincoln settled in Illinois. The excitement incident to such a strife as Edward Coles had waged in Illinois was not soon to be forgotten. It would be difficult to think of any nobler leader, or more praiseworthy example for youth, than was Jefferson's friend, the cultured Edward Coles. By an interesting providence Abraham Lincoln's father settled with his family in a county named after Coles and known to this day as Coles County. The noble impetus which Coles and the men whom he had rallied around him had given the cause of freedom in Illinois had made its very air inspiriting. A degree of culture

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