where or how the system would end; all only knew that it was developing
apace: and meanwhile there was the sinister possibility of the alliance
of the Negro and the Indian. Sincere plans of gradual abolition were
advanced in the South as well as the North, but in the lower section
they seldom got more than a respectful hearing. In his "Dissertation on
Slavery, with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of
Virginia," St. George Tucker, a professor of law in the University
of William and Mary, and one of the judges of the General Court of
Virginia, in 1796 advanced a plan by which he figured that after sixty
years there would be only one-third as many slaves as at first. At
this distance his proposal seems extremely conservative; at the time,
however, it was laid on the table by the Virginia House of Delegates,
and from the Senate the author received merely "a civil acknowledgment."

Two men of the period--widely different in temper and tone, but
both earnest seekers after truth--looked forward to the future with
foreboding, one with the eye of the scientist, the other with the vision
of the seer. Hezekiah Niles had full sympathy with the groping and
striving of the South; but he insisted that slavery must ultimately be
abolished throughout the country, that the minds of the slaves should
be exalted, and that reasonable encouragement should be given free
Negroes.[1] Said he: "_We are ashamed of the thing we practice_;...
there is no attribute of heaven that takes part with us, and _we know
it_. And in the contest that must come and _will come_, there will be a
heap of sorrows such as the world has rarely seen."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Register_, XVI, 177 (May 8, 1819).]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).]