might enjoy the blessings of freedom. Jefferson was almost radical on
the question. Though he did not heartily believe in an overruling
Providence, he felt the need of one when he considered the afflictive
system of slavery with which his State and country were encumbered. He
said that considering it he trembled when he remembered that God is
just.

Meanwhile the unprofitableness of slavery in the Northern colonies had
co-operated with the conscience of Puritanism to engender a sentiment
against slavery in that part of the Union. So, although the
institution was tolerated in the Constitution and even had guarantees
thrown around it, it was, nevertheless, disfavored in our fundamental
law. One may readily see how the patriots labored with this portentous
question. Already in Great Britain an anti-slavery sentiment had
appeared. There were anti-slavery leaders, statesmen, philosophers and
philanthropists. By the terms of the Constitution the slave _trade_
should cease in the year 1808. Sad to reflect that the inventive
genius of man and the prodigality of nature in her gifts of cotton,
sugar and rice to the old South should have produced a reaction in
favor of slavery so great as to fasten it more strongly than ever upon
our country.

The fact is, that to all human seeming at the middle of our century
American slavery seemed to be more firmly established than ever
before. Neither the outcry of the Northern abolitionists nor the
appeals of Southern patriots such as Henry Clay, availed to check the
pro-slavery disposition in fully one-half the Union, or to abate the
covert favor with which the institution was regarded in nearly all the
other half.