SLAVERY 454 SLAVS that as soon as a slave set his foot on English soil he became free; though, if he returned to his master's country, he could be reclaimed. In 1787 a society for the suppression of the slave trade was formed in Lon- don, numbering Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp among its original mem- bers. The most active parliamentary leader in the cause was William Wilber- force, and Zachary Macauley was one of its most zealous friends. The Quakers were the only religious body who as such petitioned the House of Commons on the subject. The United States abolished the slave trade immediately after Great Britain (1808), and the same was in the course of time done by the South American re- publics of Venezuela, Chile and Argen- tina, by Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and, during the Hundred Days after Napo- leon's return from Elba, by France. Great Britain, at the peace, exerted her influence to induce other foreign powers to adopt a similar policy; and eventually nearly all the states of Europe have passed laws or entered into treaties pro- hibiting the traffic. The accession of Portugal and Spain to the principle of abolition was obtained by treaties of date 1815 and 1817; and by a convention con- cluded with Brazil in 1826 it was de- clared piratical for the subjects of that country to be engaged in the slave trade after 1830. By the conventions with France of 1831 and 1833, to which nearly all the maritime powers of Europe have since acceded, a mutual right of search was stipulated within certain seas, for the purpose of suppressing this traffic. The provisions of these treaties were further extended in 1841 by the Quin- tuple Treaty between the five great Eu- ropean powers, subsequently ratified by all of them except France. The Ash- burton treaty of 1842 with the United States provided for the maintenance by each country of a squadron on the Afri- can coast; and in 1845 a joint co-opera- tion of the naval forces of England and France was substituted for the mutual right of search. The steps that hindered or prepared the way for the final abolition of slavery in the United States in 1861-1865 are part of the history of the country. Here it may be noted that in 1800 there were in the United States 893,041 slaves; that Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey emancipated their slaves before 1840, most of them by gradual measures. The average value of slaves was about this period stated at $600. The 3,953,760 slaves at the census of 1860 were in what were known as the Southern States. Eminent leaders of pub- lic opinion from the earliest period of the national existence — such as Washing- ton, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Hamilton — regarded slavery as a great evil and inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The Society of Friends uniformly opposed slavery and agitated against it. The Presbyterian Church made six formal declarations against it between 1787 and 1836. Mohammedanism recognizes the insti- tution; Mohammed's own precepts insist on the kindly usage of the slave; and Moslem slavery is mainly domestic sla- very, household slaves being on the whole well treated. But there is no more awful chapter in the history of human callous- ness and human misery than the story of the slave trade as carried on by "Arab" or Moslem slave traders. The main re- gions from which slaves were procured for the Moslem East were, or still are, the Sudan proper, the Egyptian Sudan, or Valley of the Upper Nile, Somaliland, and the borders of the Portuguese East African territory. English and other men-of-war were long employed in cap- turing slave dhows on the E. coast. In 1869 the Egyptian Khedive Ismail gave Sir Samuel Baker large powers for the suppression of the slave trade, a crusade carried on by Gordon Pasha. The Sultan of Zanzibar signed a treaty for the sup- pression of the trade in 1873. By occupying Caucasia, Russia stopped an important supply for the Turkish ha- rems; it also closed the slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara, and by crushing the Turkomans (Tekkes and others) freed at once 40,000 slaves. Cardinal Lavigerie, who became Archbishop of Algiers in 1867, made the suppression of the slave trade and slavery his life work, and se- cured the help of many zealous fellow workers, men and women. In 1890 an international conference including Tur- key, Persia, Zanzibar and the United States formulated an act for the purpose of repressing the slave trade. Slavery, except among semi-barbarous peoples, is now non-existent. SLAVS, a division of the Aryan or Indo-Germano family, inhabiting eastern and central Europe. They number about 176,000,000. Included in the group (east- ern division) are Great and Little Rus- sians, or Malo-Russians (Ukrainians and Ruthenians) and White Russians; (west- ern division) : Slovenes and Serbo-Croats, Slavic inhabitants of Macedonia and Bul- garia. The Slavs before the great mi- gration of nations inhabited the territory between the Oder and Dneiper rivers and between the 3rd or 4th century and the
