Read Ebook: The Middle Period 1817-1858 by Burgess John William

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It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Madison belonged to the first generation of the Republicans, and that the principle of the party, in the period of its origin, was strict construction of the Constitution in regard to the powers of the general Government. He had been driven by the younger men into the War, and into the national policies which it occasioned and produced, and it is at least intelligible that he returned to his earlier creed as the country settled down again into the humdrum of ordinary life.

The national Republicans looked upon his act, however, as an apostasy, and the House of Representatives repassed the bill by an increased majority and with considerable feeling. The majority was still, however, not sufficient to overcome the veto, and thus the first earnest attempt to commit the nation to a general system of internal improvements failed, failed through the resurrection of a spirit in the retiring President, which was destined soon to take possession of many who denounced it then as mean and narrow, and to lead the whole country back into those cramping tenets of particularism from which war and bloodshed alone could deliver it.

THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA

The Influence of Physical Geography upon Political Development--Defect in the Southern Boundary of the United States before 1819--The Treaty of Paris of 1763--The Boundary between Louisiana and Florida--Occupation of Florida by the United States Forces during the War of 1812--The Hold of the Spaniards on Florida Weakened by the War of 1812--The British Troops in Florida during and after the War of 1812--Nicholls and his Buccaneer State in Florida--The British Government's Repulse of Nicholls' Advances--Destruction of the Nicholls Fort by the United States Forces--The Seminole War--The Fight at Fowltown--The Seminole War Defensive--McGregor on Amelia Island--General Gaines sent to Amelia Island--General Jackson placed in Command in Florida--His Orders--Jackson's Letter to President Monroe--Jackson's Operations in Florida--The First Treaty for the Cession of Florida to the United States--Jackson's Popularity in consequence of the Seminole War--The Attempt in Congress to Censure Jackson--The same Attempt in the Cabinet--The Failure of the Attempt to Censure Jackson in Congress--Assumption of the Responsibility for Jackson's Acts by the Administration--Jackson Triumphant--The Treaty of Cession Attacked in Congress, but Ratified by the Senate--Rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish Government--Resumption of Negotiations--The New Treaty Ratified by the Senate and by the Spanish Government--Political Results of the Seminole War.

It was entirely natural that the quickening of the national spirit and the growth of the national consciousness throughout the United States, in the decade between 1810 and 1820, had, for one of their results, the extension of the territory of the United States, at some point or other, to its natural limits.

The element of physical geography always plays a large part in national political development. The natural territorial basis of a national state is a geographical unity. That is, it is a territory separated by broad bodies of water, or high mountain ranges, or broad belts of uninhabitable country, or climatic extremes, from other territory, and possessing a fair degree of coherence within. If a national state develops itself on any part of such a territory, it will inevitably tend to spread to the natural limits of the same. It will not become a completely national state until it shall have attained such boundaries, for a completely national state is the sovereign organization of a people having an ethnic unity upon a territory which is a geographic unity.

In the second decade of this century, and down to the latter part of it, the United States had not acquired the territory of the country as far as to the natural southern boundary east of Louisiana. This boundary was, of course, the Gulf of Mexico; but Spain held in quasi possession a broad strip, and then a long peninsula, of land along and within this boundary. In other words, the territory called Florida, or the Floridas, was, politically, a colony of Spain, but geographically a part of the United States. It was inhabited chiefly by Indian tribes. Spanish rule in this territory was, therefore, foreign rule, both from the geographical point of view and the ethnical. Indian rule was not to be thought of in the nineteenth century. There was but one natural solution of the question. It was that the United States should annex this territory and extend the jurisdiction of the general Government over it.

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 was the first great international agreement which gave a fair degree of definiteness to the claims of England, France, and Spain, upon the North American continent. In this Treaty, France surrendered Canada, Cape Breton, and all claims to territory east of the Mississippi River, from the source of the river to the point of confluence of the Iberville with it, to Great Britain. From this latter point, the boundary between the two powers was declared to be the middle line of the Iberville, and of the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf of Mexico. It is also expressly stated in this Treaty that France cedes the river and port of Mobile to Great Britain.

In this same instrument, Spain surrendered to Great Britain Florida and every claim to territory east and southeast of the Mississippi.

The boundary between Louisiana and Florida had, to that time, been the River Perdido. After the cessions above mentioned to Great Britain, the British Government united the part of Louisiana received from France with Florida, and then divided Florida into two districts by the line of the River Appalachicola. That part lying to the west of this river was named West Florida, and the part east of it was called East Florida.

The Treaty of 1762 between France and Spain, having been concluded before the Treaty of 1763 between France and Great Britain, gave Spain a certain show of title to the territory between the Mississippi and the Perdido; but the Treaty of 1763, in which France ceded this same territory to Great Britain, was, as we have just seen, known first, and was the Treaty which France executed in respect to this territory. The conflict of claims between Great Britain and Spain, which was thus engendered, continued to be waged for twenty years, and was settled in the year 1783, in so far as these two powers were concerned, by the recession of Florida to Spain.

In this same year, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States, with a southern boundary extending from the point where the Mississippi River is intersected by the thirty-first parallel of latitude, along this parallel to the River Appalachicola, thence down the Appalachicola to its confluence with Flint River, thence on the line of shortest distance to the source of the River St. Mary, and thence by the course of this stream to the Atlantic. Spain thus held, as the result of these several treaties, all of the territory south of this line, unless England reserved in her recession of Florida that portion of Louisiana lying between the Iberville and the Perdido, ceded by France to Great Britain in the Treaty of 1763, and united by Great Britain with Florida. There is no evidence in the text of the Treaty of 1783 that Great Britain made any such reservation, or in the subsequent actions of the British Government.

There was here certainly opportunity for a dispute between Spain and France as to the correct boundary between Louisiana and Florida. France could claim with some reason the Perdido as the eastern boundary of Louisiana, and Spain could meet this with a counterclaim that, after the cession in 1763 of all Louisiana east of the Iberville and the Lakes to Great Britain, and its union by Great Britain with Florida, the line of the Iberville and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain was the eastern boundary of Louisiana.

Before, however, any actual contest arose over the question, France sold Louisiana to the United States, with the same vague description of boundary contained in the cession of the territory from Spain to France by the Treaty of St. Ildefonso. The question of boundary became now one which must be settled between Spain and the United States.

The United States claimed at once that Louisiana reached to the Perdido. Spain disputed the claim, and held that Florida extended to the Iberville and the Lakes. Spain could make out the better abstract of title. Spain certainly did not intend to recede to France in 1800 anything more as Louisiana than France had ceded to her in 1762. But the United States had a show of legal title. It could be held that the ancient boundary of Louisiana was the one intended both in the Treaty of St. Ildefonso and in that of 1803, in which France passed the possession of Louisiana to the United States. The reasons of physical geography and of national development certainly favored the annexation of the whole of Florida to the United States; and with such forces to back the apparent legal claim to a large part of it, the result of the dispute could not well have been otherwise than it was.

The United States enforced its claim by military occupation of the disputed district before the close of the War of 1812.

During the course of the war, the British forces had occupied Pensacola. The Spanish governor either could not, or would not, prevent them from doing so. Florida became thus, in spite of its nominal neutral status, a base of operations for the enemy of the United States. No more convincing evidence of the necessity for its annexation to the United States could have been offered. It was thus seen that not only the geography and the national growth of the Union demanded it, but that the safety of the Union, in case of war with any power, required it. The sea is the natural boundary of the United States on the south, and it was the "manifest destiny" of the Union to reach it.

The occasion was destined soon to appear. The power of Spain upon the American continents was everywhere in rapid decline. At the close of the War of 1812, the Spanish occupation in Florida was confined substantially to three points--Pensacola, St. Mark's, and St. Augustine. The remainder of the province, by far the greater part of it, was a free zone, in which desperate adventurers of every race and land might congregate, from which they might make their raids for murder and pillage into the United States, and into which they might escape again with their prisoners and plunder.

We have noticed the occupation of Pensacola by the British troops during the War of 1812, and their expulsion by General Jackson from this position in November of 1814. After this, they concentrated upon the Appalachicola and established a fort some fifteen miles above the mouth of this stream for their head-quarters and base of operations. The British commander, one Colonel Nicholls, pursued from this point the policy which he had already inaugurated at Pensacola. This policy was the collection and organization of fugitive negroes, Indians, and adventurers of every character, and their employment in raids into the territory, and attacks upon the inhabitants, of the United States.

It appears that Colonel Nicholls did not regard the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain concluding the War as putting an end necessarily to his hostile movements. He remained in command at his fort on the Appalachicola for several months after the ratification of the Treaty, and then went to London, taking with him the Indian priest Francis, for the purpose of securing a treaty of alliance between the British Government and his band of outlaws in Florida.

Before leaving the Appalachicola, he had incited the Indians and their negro auxiliaries to continue hostilities against the United States, by representing to them that the ninth article of the Treaty of Ghent contained a pledge on the part of the United States to reinstate the Indians in all lands held by them in the year 1811. He represented to them that this provision restored to the Creeks the lands in southern Georgia surrendered by them to the United States in the Treaty between the Creeks and the United States made at Fort Jackson in August of 1814, although it was well understood by both of the high contracting parties to the Treaty of Ghent that only those lands were intended under this provision whose seizure by the United States had not been confirmed by an agreement with the Indians; and the pledge as to these only was conditioned upon the immediate cessation of hostilities on the part of the Indians when the Treaty of Ghent should be announced to them. This announcement had been made, and the actual continuation of hostilities, therefore, after the announcement, made this whole article nugatory.

Nicholls left the fort, with all its munitions, in the hands of the negroes and Indians. The garrison consisted of some three hundred negroes and about twenty Indians.

The British Government would not listen to Nicholls' proposition for an alliance between Great Britain and the buccaneering state which he was endeavoring to establish upon territory belonging politically to Spain.

The United States Government waited a year and a half for the disbanding of this hostile force, or for its dispersion by the Spanish authorities, and then, when forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, did the work itself. The fort was destroyed by the explosion of its magazine, which was pierced by a red-hot shot from the batteries of the assailants, and almost the whole garrison perished. It was claimed that the attack was made by the United States forces with the consent of the Spanish authorities, whatever the significance of that may have been.

Professor von Holst, in his great work, has designated the expedition against the Nicholls Fort as a hunt by the United States army for fugitive slaves. He does not seem to have recognized the danger to the peace and civilization of the United States of the growth of a community of pirates and buccaneers upon its borders. It does not appear to have occurred to him that the most humane attitude toward the slaves of Georgia may have been to prevent them from being drawn into any such connection. He does not seem to have comprehended that any public interest was subserved by disposing of the negroes captured in this expedition in such a way as to prevent any future attempts on their part at co-operation with the Indians in their barbarous warfare upon the frontiers of the United States. In a sentence, he seems to have regarded the entire incident as a prostitution of the military power of the United States to the private greed of slave-hunters, and to have discovered in it a most convincing proof of the canting hypocrisy of the free Republic. In view of all the facts of the case, this certainly appears to be a very crude appreciation of the subject.

This same historian calls the attack upon the Nicholls Fort the beginning of the Seminole War. It appears, however, more like the termination of the War of 1812, so far as the negro outlaws of Florida were participant in that War, than like the beginning of a new war. Generals Gaines and Jackson and the War Department of the Government seem to have so comprehended the event.

After the destruction of the Nicholls Fort, or the Negro Fort, as it was then called, there was comparative peace, for a few months, on the frontier. With the beginning of the year 1817, however, hostilities were renewed. It is not known which party gave the first offence. Ex-Governor Mitchell of Georgia, then holding the office of Indian agent for these parts, thought both parties equally at fault. The point is a matter of little moment. The conflict between civilization and barbarism is irrepressible, and arises as often from the encroachments of civilization as from the onslaughts of barbarism.

In November of 1817, General Gaines endeavored to secure an interview with the chief of the hostile Indians, but the chief refused to visit the General, whereupon the General sent a detachment of soldiers to the chief's village, called Fowltown, to repeat his invitation, and to conduct the chief and his warriors to a parley-ground. The soldiers were fired upon by the Indians as they approached the village. They naturally returned the fire, and then seized and destroyed the village. A few Indians were killed in the conflict.

The Indian agent, Mitchell, called this event the beginning of the Seminole War. It was certainly something more like it than was the capture of the Negro Fort. Still it will be more correct to consider it as being only the continuation of the War of 1812, in so far as the participation in that War of Great Britain's Indian allies on the southern border of the United States was concerned. They had never really resumed the status of peace after acting during that War, at the instigation of the British officers in Florida, against the United States.

Following the fight at Fowltown hostilities became much more active. Fowltown was situated north of the Florida line, upon territory ceded by the Creeks to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. If, therefore, the incident of November 20th was the beginning of the Seminole War, it stamps that War as defensive in its character. The troops of the United States were attacked upon the territory of the United States. If the further prosecution of the War should, in the judgment of the President, or of the officer whom he might vest with discretionary power in the execution of his will, require the crossing of the Florida line and the pursuit of the enemy upon Florida territory, the character of the War could not be changed thereby. This could not be regarded as making war on Spain. Spain could meet and satisfy the right of the United States to do this only by dispersing the Indians herself, and preventing Florida from becoming a base of hostile operations against the United States. Spain could claim the rights of neutrality for Florida only when she discharged these duties of neutrality. The general principles of international custom required that of her. When, now, we add to this the consideration that Spain had pledged herself in a specific agreement with the United States to do these very things, and that Florida, nevertheless, was actually a free zone, over which no civilized state had any efficient control, then it certainly appears that the right of the United States to pursue its enemy into Florida was clearly in keeping with the recognized law of nations. The President, therefore, ordered the pursuit of the enemy into Florida, under the qualification that if they took refuge in a Spanish fortification the fortress should not be attacked, but the situation should be reported to the War Department and further orders awaited. This order was issued on December 16th, 1817, to General Gaines, who was then in command of the forces on the Florida frontier.

Meanwhile an adventurer by the name of McGregor had, with a band of freebooters, taken possession of Amelia Island, which lies off the coast of Florida, just below the mouth of the St. Mary's River, and had, in the name of the Governments of Buenos Ayres and Venezuela, proclaimed the independence of Florida against Spain. They made the island an entrep?t for the smuggling of slaves into the United States, a storehouse for the results of their robberies, and head-quarters generally for piratical expeditions.

About ten days later, December 26th, 1817, the President assigned General Jackson to the command of the troops acting against the Indians. The day before the issue of the order to General Jackson, the War Department had received the news of the Indian attack upon Lieutenant Scott's boat while ascending the Appalachicola with supplies for the United States troops at Fort Scott. The cold-blooded massacre of almost the entire crew of the boat apparently moved the War Department to more energetic measures. The order to General Jackson, besides investing him with the command, empowered him to call on the Governors of the adjacent Commonwealths for such military forces as he might deem necessary, with those already in the field, to overcome the Indians, and informed him that General Gaines had been instructed "to penetrate from Amelia Island, through Florida, to the Seminole towns, if his force would justify his engaging in offensive operations." "With this view," the order to Jackson continues, "you may be prepared to concentrate your forces, and to adopt the necessary measures to terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of the President to avoid, but which is now made necessary by their settled hostilities."

When Jackson received these orders he was in Tennessee. He wrote immediately to the President: "Let it be signified to me through any channel that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States and in sixty days it will be accomplished." General Jackson naturally supposed that this letter was duly received and read by President Monroe, and that a subsequent order, giving him discretionary powers in the prosecution of the campaign, contained the answer to it. As we shall see, however, the President claimed later that he did not read Jackson's letter until a year after it was written and sent to him. It was certainly the President's fault if he did not. General Jackson certainly could not be held accountable for the President's strange negligence in examining official correspondence, and he had good reason to think, from the tone of the order issued to him after his letter had had due time to be received and read, that the Administration desired him to occupy Florida.

Upon taking command Jackson called his Tennessee veterans to him, and reached with them the Florida frontier in March of 1818.

When he advanced into Florida he found that the Spanish officials in Florida were in collusion with the Indians, and that the instigators of the hostilities were an Englishman, named Ambrister, and a Scotchman, named Arbuthnot, together with two Indian chiefs named Hillis Hajo and Himallemico.

This settlement of boundary included that of all other claims, of whatever character, of the Government, citizens, or subjects of either power against the Government, citizens, or subjects of the other. All such were mutually renounced.

The results of the Seminole War raised General Jackson to a still higher plane of popularity than he possessed as the hero of the War of 1812. It was evident that here was a character who would have to be reckoned with in future presidential contests. It is possible that Jackson's chief mentor, William B. Lewis, had conceived, at this date, the idea of Jackson's candidacy for the highest place in the gift of the nation. And it is highly probable that the fears of all the existing aspirants for the presidency were excited by the appearance of this new and popular rival for public favor. It is difficult to explain upon any other theory the attempt made in Congress, during the session of 1818-19, to suppress Jackson by a vote of censure.

This procedure certainly had no connection whatsoever with the question of slavery extension through the acquisition of Florida. When we find Tallmadge, of New York, the self-same person who introduced, at the same session, the proposition for restricting slavery in Missouri, defending Jackson's course in every particular, while Cobb, of Georgia, attacked it, and when we consider that John Quincy Adams, the life-long opponent of slavery, sustained Jackson in the cabinet, while Calhoun moved to bring him to account for disobedience to orders, we are bound to conclude that we have here nothing whatsoever to do with the question of slavery.

Crawford, of Georgia, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the prime aspirant for presidential honors, after Monroe should have completed his two terms, and Cobb was Crawford's right-hand man. Clay was also working up his plans. These two men felt it necessary to discredit Jackson in every possible way. Clay made a great bugbear out of Jackson's military heroship, and so threatening did he make it appear to the principle of civil government and republican institutions that he really seemed frightened at it himself. Crawford set up the same strain, through Cobb, in a feebler key. Calhoun seems to have been animated rather by wrath at what he conceived to be the violation of his orders, or, at least, the exceeding of his orders, than by jealousy of a presidential rival. His presidential fever had not, at that moment, reached a high degree. But what shall we say of Adams, who undoubtedly then considered himself a candidate for the successorship to Monroe, and who stood against the whole Cabinet in Jackson's defence, and carried the day against both Crawford and Calhoun combined. Of course it may be said that Adams thought his own turn would come before that of Jackson, and that he would gain Jackson's support by his attitude. But against such a supposition must stand the fact that the Cabinet pledged itself to secrecy in regard to all that was proposed on the subject, and that for ten years Jackson supposed that Calhoun was the friend in the Cabinet who had successfully defended him against the other members under the lead of Crawford. The attitude of Adams in the question was noble and disinterested, as well as patriotic, and had Jackson known of it in 1824, it is altogether probable that he would never have charged an unfair bargain with Clay upon Adams for his own defeat.

Clay and Cobb represented that every movement made by Jackson, from the moment of his appointment to the command of the expedition to the end of hostilities, was illegal and in defiance of the orders of the War Department. They said he had no right to call upon his old soldiers instead of asking the Governor of Tennessee for the militia. They claimed that he waged an offensive war upon his own responsibility against Spain, when the War Department had expressly forbidden him to attack the Spanish forts, and they accused him of murdering two prisoners of war. The House of Representatives showed what it thought of these accusations by voting down the resolutions which contained the censure by a majority of nearly two to one, while the resolutions of like effect introduced into the Senate were laid on the table and never taken up for consideration.

The Administration had, under the influence of the Secretary of State, Mr. Adams, already assumed the responsibility for Jackson's acts, had upheld their legality, and was even then bringing its negotiations with Spain, in regard to the cession of Florida, to a successful close; while the British Government had refrained from any interference on account of the treatment of Ambrister and Arbuthnot.

The attempt to suppress Jackson broke down thus upon all sides, and he emerged from the assaults of his rivals with a greater popularity than he had ever before enjoyed, and with improved prospects as a presidential candidate. With the worship accorded to a hero he now enjoyed the sympathy extended to a martyr.

The Treaty itself, ceding the Floridas, did not escape attack. Adams regarded it as a great diplomatic triumph for the United States, but Clay expressed great disappointment with it, because it sacrificed, as he viewed it, the claims of the United States to the territory between the Sabine and the Rio del Norte. And Crawford, who was seizing every opportunity to discredit the Administration, by encouraging it to false measures from his place in the Cabinet, and then professing publicly his disapprobation of them, also saw in the point emphasized by Clay a prime occasion for making political capital.

The Senate showed what its members thought of such manoeuvres by a speedy and unanimous vote in ratification of the Treaty.

The Spanish Government, on the other hand, rejected the Treaty. Mr. Adams felt, at the moment, that this was a blow to his reputation as a diplomatist, and perhaps to his chances for the presidency. But it did not prove to be such. Had the Treaty been then ratified three large land grants made by the Spanish King to certain Spanish nobles, at a date earlier than Mr. Adams had supposed, would not have been extinguished by it. The rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish Government, which at the same time sent another Ambassador, General Viv?s, to take the place of Don Onis, and to renew negotiations on the subject, gave Mr. Adams the opportunity to insist upon the cession of Florida with the extinguishment of the above mentioned grants.

When the new Ambassador arrived, the country was in the midst of the excitement over the question of slavery extension in the Louisiana territory, the history of which will be related in a succeeding chapter. The effect of this agitation was to arouse some doubt in the minds of those opposed to the extension of slavery in regard to the expediency of any addition to the territory of the United States southward. Mr. Adams himself felt the influence of this doubt, and was prompted, in part at least, by it to assume an attitude of indifference toward the new propositions of the Spanish Ambassador. He gave the Ambassador to understand that Spain could make such a treaty with the United States in regard to the subject as would be satisfactory to the latter, or take the consequences of leaving things as they were. The unshakable determination of Mr. Adams won the day, and the old Treaty, with a new provision extinguishing the above mentioned land grants, was finally ratified by both Governments, two years after the date of the original agreement between Mr. Adams and Don Onis.

The vote of ratification by the Senate of the United States was again practically unanimous. Only four votes were recorded against it; and of these four one was cast by a brother-in-law of Mr. Clay, one by a subservient friend of the same gentleman, and one by a bitter personal enemy of General Jackson. The province was soon transferred to the United States and Jackson became its first territorial governor. With this the United States attained its natural boundary on the south, eastward from the mouth of the Mississippi, and a source of chronic irritation was removed.

It was to be expected that this territory would be erected into a Commonwealth in which the institution of slavery would be legalized; but this did not deter the statesmen of the North from securing the great advantages just indicated. Radical abolitionism had not yet blinded them to the general and paramount interests of the Union. In fact, the results of the Seminole War and of the diplomacy of the Administration in connection with it had the immediate effect of diminishing the ultra-Southern influence in the Government. They brought Adams and Jackson to the front, and set Crawford and Calhoun back in the course of their careers. They had, indeed, much to do, as we shall see later, with the development of the era of personal politics, which prevailed from 1824 to 1832, and which terminated finally in the separation of the all-comprehending Republican party into the Whig party and the Democratic party.

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820

First Appearance of Slavery in the British North American Colonies--Early Theory of the Benefits of Slavery--The Earliest Legal Recognition of Slavery in the Colonies--Northern Colonies not well Adapted to Negro Labor--The Southern Colonies well Adapted to Negro Labor--Negro Slavery a Temporary Necessity in the South--Was Negro Slavery an Error and an Evil from the first?--Slavery Legislation in the Southern Colonies--Partus Sequitur Ventrem--Definitions of the Slave Class--The Test of the Slave Status as Fixed by the Virginia Statute--The Legal Position of the Slave--Tendency Toward Serfage in the Code of 1705--Public Relations of the Slave System--The General Object of the Laws in respect to Slaves--Slavery and the Revolutionary Ideas of the Rights of Man--First Prohibition upon Slave Importation--Abolition of Slavery in the Northern Commonwealths after the Beginning of the Revolution--Slavery and the Constitution of 1787--Reaction against the Humanitarian Principles of the Revolution--Abolition of the Foreign Slave-trade by Congress--Cotton Culture and the Cotton-gin--The Effect of the Return to the Arts of Peace upon the Ideas Concerning Slavery--Slavery During the War of 1812 and the Years just before and just after this War--Slavery in the Louisiana Territory--Slavery in the territory West of North Carolina and Georgia--Slavery in Louisiana a Different Question from Slavery in the North Carolina and Georgia Cessions--Interest in Slavery in Maryland and Virginia Increased by the Acquisition of Louisiana--The Domestic Slave-trade--The Relation of Slavery to the Diplomacy of the United States.

It is not easy to define the term slavery in the abstract without unfitting it for application to the great majority of the systems of servitude which have ever existed. Especially will it be difficult to gain a correct conception of the relation between the white man and the negro in North America previous to 1860 by means of such a definition.

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