of only four years—were called, one after the other, to preside, each for a period of eight years, over the affairs of the young Republic and to shape its policy. In the meantime Virginia gave to the new Government the whole of her northwest territory, to be held by it in trust for the benefit of all the States alike. Under the wise rule of her illustrious sons in the Presidential chair, the Republic grew and its citizens nourished and prospered as no people had ever done.
During this time, the African slave-trade having ceased, the price of negroes rose in the South; then the Northern people discovered that it would be better to sell their slaves to the South than to hold them, whereupon acts of so-called emancipation were passed in the North. They were prospective, and were to come in force after the lapse, generally, of twenty years,[1] which allowed the slave-holders among them ample time to fetch their negroes down and sell them to our people. This many of them did, and the North got rid of her slaves, not so much by emancipation or any sympathy for the blacks as by sale, and in consequence of her greed.
About this time also Missouri—into which the earlier settlers had carried their slaves—applied for admission into the Union as a State. The North opposed it, on the ground that slavery existed there. The South appealed to the Constitution, called for the charter which created the Federal Government, and asked for the clause which gave Congress the power to interfere with the domestic institutions of any State, or with any of her affairs, further than to see that her organic law insured a republican form of Government to her people. Nay, she appealed to the force of treaty obligations; and reminded the North that in the treaty with France for the acquisition of Louisiana, of which Missouri was a part, the public faith was pledged to protect the French settlers there, and their descendants, in their rights of property, which includes slaves. The public mind became excited, sectional feelings ran high, and the Union was in danger of being broken up through Northern aggression and Congressional usurpations at that early day. To quiet the storm, a son of Virginia came forward as peace-maker, and carried through Congress a bill that is known as "The Missouri Compromise." So the danger was averted. This bill, however, was a concession, simple and pure, to the North on the part of the South, with no equivalent whatever, except the gratification of a patriotic desire to live in harmony with her sister States and preserve the
- ↑ Slavery did not cease in New York till 1827.
