the free negroes were so restricted in settling as to be virtually
prohibited; in others they were disfranchised; in others they were
denied the right of jury duty or of testifying in court. But in spite
of this discrimination on the part of the law, a great sympathy for
the runaway slave spread among the people, and the fugitive carried
into the heart of the North the venom of the institution of which he
was the unhappy victim.

Meanwhile the slave trade responded promptly to the lure of gain which
the increased demand for cotton held out. The law of 1807 prohibiting
the importation of slaves had, from the date of its enactment, been
virtually a dead letter. Messages of Presidents, complaints of
government attorneys, of collectors and agents called attention to the
continuous violation of the law; and its nullity was a matter of
common knowledge. When the market price of a slave rose to $325 in
1840 and to $500 after 1850, the increase in profits made slave piracy
a rather respectable business carried on by American citizens in
American built ships flying the American flag and paying high returns
on New York and New England capital. Owing to this steady importation
there was a constant intermingling of raw stock from the jungles with
the negroes who had been slaves in America for several generations.

In 1860 there were 4,441,830 negroes in the United States, of whom
only 488,070 were free. About thirteen per cent of the total number
were mulattoes. Among the four million slaves were men and women of
every gradation of experience with civilization, from those who had
just disembarked from slave ships to those whose ancestry could be
traced to the earliest days of the colonies. It was not, therefore, a
strictly homogeneous people upon whom were suddenly and dramatically
laid the burdens and responsibilities of the freedman. Among the