the North, that slavery was a temporary institution. The cause of
emancipation was already advocated by the Society of Friends and
some other sects. A majority of the States adopted measures for
the gradual abolition of slavery, but in other cases there proved
to be industrial barriers to emancipation. Slaves were found to
be profitably employed in clearing away the forests; they were
not profitably employed in general agriculture. A marked
exception was found in small districts in the Carolinas and
Georgia where indigo and rice were produced; and though cotton
later became a profitable crop for slave labor, it was the
producers of rice and indigo who furnished the original barrier
to the immediate extension of the policy of emancipation.
Representatives from their States secured the introduction of a
clause into the Constitution which delayed for twenty years the
execution of the will of the country against the African
slave-trade. It is said that a slave imported from Africa paid
for himself in a single year in the production of rice. There
were thus a few planters in Georgia and the Carolinas who had an
obvious interest in the prolongation of the institution of
slavery and who had influence enough, to secure constitutional
recognition for both slavery and the slave-trade.

The principles involved were not seriously debated. In theory all
were abolitionists; in practice slavery extended to all the
States. In some, actual abolition was comparatively easy; in
others, it was difficult. By the end of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, actual abolition had extended to the line
separating Pennsylvania from Maryland. Of the original thirteen
States seven became free and six remained slave.