There are other facts that we propose to rely upon for the justification of our cause. As far back as 1750, New England ships made regular voyages to England with tobacco, rice, rum, and cured fish, two of which were southern products, and there took on English goods for the Gold Coast. Here they would ex- change these commodities with the English Governors of her coast colonies for Negroes, and return by way of the West Indies, and trade their cured fish for molasses, and bring the molasses and Negroes to the American Colonies, sell the Negroes to the South, and make the molasses into Yankee rum. They would then prepare for another trip.

This barter of the Yankee began to interfere so with English coast trade that Lord Sheffield in his report to Parliament in 1777, said. "that out of the slavers which periodically left Boston, thirteen of them were loaded with rum only, which was exchanged for 2,888 Negroes with the governors of the Gold Coast Colonies, and these Negroes were carried to the Southern States and sold."

This same report says that during the three years ending 1770, New England had sent to the Gold Coast 270,147 gallons of rum, ,To show that certain Southern States were anxious to stop the slave trade, Thomas Jefferson in 1777 introduced in the Virginia Legislature a bill which became a law, to prevent the importation of slaves; but every law passed by any Southern State, looking to this end, exasperated the Eastern Yankee, for it interfered with his lucrative slave trade.

Mr. Jefferson at the same time introduced another bill which became a law, for the gradual emancipation of the Blacks, He also in 17841 in Congress, prepared a clause for the prevention of slaves being carried into the ceded territory north of the Ohio River, this was a part of the Southern scheme of emancipation which was meant as a check on the slave trade carried on by Massachusetts. This clause did not pass, but a clause was passed enjoining the restitution of fugitive slaves, and without this the compact of 1787 would never have been signed, and up to this time it never entered the minds of the people of the United States, but that the Negroes were property, and that the master had a legal right to carry them unmolested to any part of the United States. ( See constitution. Art. IV, Sec. I. )

The Duke de Rochefoucault Lioncourt in his work on the United States in 1795, said, that "twenty vessels from the North were engaged in importing Negro slaves into Georgia." They would ship one Negro for every ton burden, so we see while Virginia was trying to emancipate the Negro. New England was all the while enslaving him.

In 1793 President Washington recommended to Congress an act compelling the restitution of the fugitive slaves, and the same act provided that they should be taxed as property. In 1783 the treaty of peace with Great Britain contained a provision to pay for slaves and other property carried off during the war, and in the treaty of peace at Ghent in 1814, the British Government paid one and a half million dollars for slaves that had been carried away.

Mr. Andrew Stephenson conducted a negotiation with Great Britain, for slaves that were lost ashore by wrecked American vessels on the shores of Bermuda and set free by her authorities, and had England pay £23,500 indemnity.

In regard to the fugitive slave law, there was no trial by jury and no writ of habeas corpus proceedings, which would have been indispensable had the Negro not been considered property.

I t will naturally be asked: Where did the American colonies get their right to own slaves? It does not appear that any laws were ever enacted in Great Britain for the owning or trading in slaves as property. Nevertheless they were so regarded by the opinion of eleven crown judges sitting in council, which extended this privilege to the Navigation Act to the exclusion of Aliens, and this act extended to Great Britain's North American colonies. This is where the Southerner got his authority to own slaves, and this legal right like other common laws of Britain survived our revolution.

If we will take up the histories of our French and Spanish territory, we will find that they as colonies derived the right to own and hold slaves from their church as well as from their State.

The records will show that up to the time of Jefferson's administration, the ownership of the Negro was not profitable, but during his term the invention of the cotton gin took place, which greatly enhanced the value of the cotton staple and gave a broader field for the employment of the Negro, and as the Louisiana purchase took place about this time, these things very much embittered the New England people.

At the same time Governor General Craig of Canada knew this, and in February 1809 sent one John Henry as an agent to Boston to treat with the leading Federalists there, to arrange for a secession convention, when Massachusetts was to declare herself independent and invite a congress of the other New England States, and set up a separate government

Mr. John Adams, in a letter to Mr. Otis in 1828 said, "that the plan had been so far matured as to ask a certain individual to put himself at the head of the military organization."

These schemes went on with these men who were rebels at heart, until this resulted in the Hartford Convention in 1814, which discussed secession in all its bearings, and raised the battle cry "The Potomac as a boundary line and the Negro states to themselves."

Peace with Great Britain soon came and business was good, the Yankee got to making money and this diverted him for a while, and prevented him from breaking up the American Union.

This Missouri territory was a part of the Louisiana purchase, and when owned by Spain, and by her ceded to France, and by France to the United States, all of this time it was slave territory, and the moment that Missouri applied to be admitted as a slave state, the New Englanders, the very men who enslaved the Negro, went into convulsions at the mere idea of any more slave territory, and the only anti-toxin that could be administered, which was only temporary, was, that there should not be. any more slave territory admitted north of 36.30 parallel of latitude. This was the famous Missouri Compromise Bill. New York did not abolish slavery until 1826. About this time Delaware, Maryland and Virginia were all moving in that direction. Also about this time, New Jersey, Ohio and Delaware passed resolutions asking Congress to appropriate the proceeds of the public lands to the gradual emancipation of the Negro. Up to this time it was not thought of emancipating the Negro without paying for him.

About this period of our history nearly all of the Southern States had a leaning that way. Societies in various parts of the South were formed to cooperate with the colonization society, whose duty was to free the Blacks and transport them to Liberia.

Now to sustain the good faith of the Southerners in this emancipation movement, Virginia in March, 1825, passed an act to furnish the colonies in Liberia with implements of husbandry, clothing etc. Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri passed laws about this time prohibiting slaves being brought within their borders for sale, and those that were brought in, should not he sold for two years.

While the good feelings were manifesting themselves strongly in the South: Ohio, Illinois and other Northern States passed acts prohibiting free blacks under any pretense from entering these states: any while person who brought a Negro into their territory was required. to give a $500 bond. Did not these Yankees love the Negro? They did not regard them as citizens of the United States, and said on account of their idle habits they were a nuisance.

To show still further that the South was in earnest about emancipating her slaves, Mr. Tucker, of Virginia, in 1825 introduced a bill in Congress to set aside the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, as a colony for free blacks, but it failed.

About 1825 the seeds of abolition had begun to be sown in New England. Not gradual emancipation and moderate re- numeration, but straight abolition.

This could not have been from any love the Yankee had for the Negro, for it had been but a few years since Massachusetts was forced to give up her slave trade. The idea of the Yankee falling so desperately in love with the Negroes of the South in so short a time is one of those inconsistencies of his that has followed him ever since he set foot on Plymouth Rock.