The absence of ardent or prolonged debate upon this issue in the
early history of the United States is easily accounted for. No
principle of importance was drawn into the controversy; few
presumed to defend slavery as a just or righteous institution. As
to conduct, each individual, each neighborhood enjoyed the
freedom of a large, roomy country. Even within state lines there
was liberty enough. No keen sense of responsibility for a uniform
state policy existed. It was therefore not difficult for those
who were growing wealthy by the use of imported negroes to
maintain their privileges in the State.

If the sense of active responsibility was wanting within the
separate States, much more was this true of the citizens of
different States. Slavery was regarded as strictly a domestic
institution. Families bought and owned slaves as a matter of
individual preference. None of the original colonies or States
adopted slavery by law. The citizens of the various colonies
became slaveholders simply because there was no law against it.*
The abolition of slavery was at first an individual matter or a
church or a state policy. When the Constitution was formulated,
the separate States had been accustomed to regard themselves as
possessed of sovereign powers; hence there was no occasion for
the citizens of one State to have a sense of responsibility on
account of the domestic institutions of other States. The
consciousness of national responsibility was of slow growth, and
the conditions did not then exist which favored a general crusade
against slavery or a prolonged acrimonious debate on the subject,
such as arose forty years later.

* In the case of Georgia there was a prohibitory law, which was