DORR'S REBELLION 477 were taxed only thirty per cent. The measure was called a free-trade tariff, but it afforded a moderate degree of protection, besides nearly doubling the revenue. In 1857 rates were reduced materially for a time, to a real "tariff for revenue" basis. Webster kept his unpleasant position as Secretary of State under Tyler in order to complete an important negotiation with England. Soon after the settlement of the Websterdispute regarding the St. Croix River (page 325), Ashburton another difference of opinion had arisen regarding Treaty the northern boundary of Maine farther to the west. England claimed one line, and the United States another, from different interpretations of the words of the Treaty of 1783. The King of the Netherlands, to whom as arbitrator the contention was submitted, exceeded his province by drawing a compromise line without reference to the merits of the question; and the United States refused to accept the award. In 1842 the question was settled by the WebsterAshburton Treaty, which gave each country about half the disputed territory. No story of this period can afford to ignore a striking episode in the struggle for democracy within Rhode Island. In that state in the latter part of the colonial Dorr's period, the franchise had become the narrowest Rebellion perhaps, in any colony. No man could vote unless he owned real estate worth $134, or unless he were the oldest son of such a man. Moreover, the smallest town had as much weight in the legislature as the capital city which contained about a third of the whole population. For sixty years after the Revolution, these abuses continued. The people had long clamored for reform, but the close oligarchy paid no attention to the cry. In 1841, unable to get action through the oligarchic legislature, a People's party arranged, without legislative approval, for the election of a constitutional convention by manhood suffrage. The great mass of the citizens took part in choosing the convention; and its new constitution was duly ratified by a popular vote. Then the people chose their leader in this revolution, Thomas Wilson Dorr, for governor under the new constitution. The old "charter government" refused to surrender possession of the government, and was supported by President Tyler, with the promise of Federal troops. The revolutionary government then vanished, and Dorr was tried for treason, and condemned to imprisonment for life at hard labor. The democratic uprising is known as Dorr's Rebellion. The oligarchic "charter government" saw, however, that it must give way, but it sought, successfully, to save something from the wreck. It called a constitutional convention, while hundreds of democratic leaders were in jail under martial law sentences; and though its new constitution (1842) provided for manhood suffrage for native Americans, the landed qualification for naturalized citizens was maintained (until 1882), along with the "rotten borough" basis for the upper House of the legislature, and with the appointment of local officers by that House. The first legislature of the new government set Dorr free by special act, — not by the usual form of pardon; but this martyr to the cause of constitutional freedom died some years later from disease contracted in his unwholesome prison life. PART IX SLAVERY CHAPTER XXVIII SLAVERY TO 1844 IN 1844 the Slave Power began to demand more territory; and, for the next twenty years, slavery was the dominant question in American politics. This chapter is an introduction to that story. defensive The Revolution, with its emphasis upon human rights, created the first antislavery movement.' This movement lasted until about 1820, though it spent its Slavery greatest force before 1800. It was moral and before 1820 religious, rather than political, belonging to the on the South quite as much as to the North; and it was considerate of the slaveholder's difficulties. On their part, the slaveholders during this period (outside Georgia and South Carolina) apologized for slavery as an evil they would be glad to get rid of safely. Slavery seemed dying. Vermont's constitution of 1777 abolished slavery, as did that of Massachusetts, indirectly, in 1780 (page 215) and that of New Hampshire in Gradual 1783. By law, Pennsylvania decreed freedom for emanciall children born to slave parents in her territory after 1780; and this sort of gradual emancipation was adopted in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, in New York in 1799, and in New Jersey in 1804. pation After 1804, no slave could be born north of Mason and Dixon's line; but nearly all the "free States" continued to contain slaves born before "gradual emancipation" began. 1 So, too, Revolutionary France abolished slavery in her West Indies in 1794, as did the Spanish-American States, without exception, as they won their independence after 1815. The census of 1830 showed some 2700 in the North; and as late as 1850 New Jersey counted 236. So, too, all the States of the Old Northwest, except Michigan, contained some slaves in 1840,- survivors of those owned by the original French settlers. The antislavery provision in the Northwest Ordinance was interpreted, in practice, not to free existing slaves, but merely to forbid the introduction of new ones. In the Southern States, too, many leaders urged gradual emancipation with provision for removing the Negroes. This sentiment created the American Colonization So Liberia ciety, which established the Negro Republic of Liberia on the African coast as a home for ex-slaves. The Society proved unable, however, to send Negroes to Africa as rapidly as they were born in America. If slavery was to die, two things were essential: new slaves must not be imported from abroad, and slavery must not spread into new territory. Between 1776 and 1781, the foreign slave trade was prohibited by every State except South Carolina and Georgia. Foreign In deference to the demand of these two States, slave trade the Constitution permitted the importation of slaves for a limited time (page 287); but as soon as the twenty-year period had expired, the trade was prohibited by Congress. Still the trade lived and grew. The From 1807, England had kept a naval patrol on the African coast to intercept "slavers," who were regarded as pirates by most European nations. Unhappily, England's invitations to the United States to join in this good work, in 1817 and 1824, were rejected by our Government. War of 1812 had made Americans exceedingly sensitive regarding the "right of search," and we now refused to permit an English ship to search a vessel flying the American flag, even to ascertain whether that flag covered an American ship. Consequently our flag was used by slavers of all nations (especially, it must be confessed, of our own), engaged in the horrible and lucrative business of stealing Negroes in Africa to sell in Brazil or Cuba, or, after running THE SLAVE TRADE 481 our ineffective patrol, in the cities of South Carolina, where little disguise was made of the defiance of the Federal law. In 1842, in the Ashburton Treaty, the United States joined England in an agreement to keep a joint squadron off the coast of Africa to suppress the trade; but we did not take our proper share in this work until after the opening of the Civil War. Between 1850 and 1860, the trade grew rapidly, and hundreds of thousands of Negroes fresh from the African jungle were auctioned off in Southern markets. Slavery Columbia Slavery had "followed the flag" as settlement expanded, except for the region protected, none too perfectly, by the Northwest Ordinance. Congress vacillated. It established slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the reenacted the slave code of Virginia and Maryland District of for that District. Accordingly, under the shadow of the Capitol, a strange Negro might be arrested and advertised on the suspicion of being an escaped slave; and if no owner appeared to prove that suspicion, he might still be sold into slavery to satisfy the jailer's fees. And for the Nation at large Congress passed the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1793; but it resisted many attempts by the people of Indiana and Illinois to secure the repeal of the antislavery provision of the Northwest And in the Ordinance. None the less the government winked Northwest at evasion of that provision. Thousands of slaves were brought into the two Territories under forms of indenture or of "labor contracts"; and Territorial "Black laws" were enacted to sanction this disguised slavery. "To all intents and purposes," says Professor McMaster, "slavery was as much a domestic institution of Illinois in 1820 as of Kentucky." The second The ten years from the Missouri Compromise to the election of Jackson (1820-1829) form a transition period. Slavery was still defended as an evil, but as an evil inevitable and permanent. Its defenders still stood on period, the defensive, but they were less apologetic in tone. This new attitude was due to a moneyed interest. Slavery 1820-1829 |