This, too, was the result of the spirit of compromise, and was the second step in the restriction of the growth of the negro race in the country. The abhorrent character of the slave-trade was recognized by all, but as a measure of compromise, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were able to exact the extension of this nefarious traffic for the ensuing twenty years.

THIRD:-Article IV., Section II.

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

The adoption of this clause was a necessity to the slaveholders of the Southern States to enable them to reclaim their unstable property in case of escape, and thus at the very outset of our national life the foundation of "The Fugitive Slave Law," later to become a source of bitter contention between North and South, was laid in our organic law. Now we can see from this brief recital in what fortuitous manner our forefathers effected what they doubtless considered to be a permanent adjustment of the Compromises with status of the negro under the Constitution. InSlavery. deed for a time their efforts appeared to have been successful, for with the other pregnant questions springing out of the organization of the new government, the trials and difficulties incident to the establishment of the machinery of administration, the second struggle for independence of 1812, in which negroes again displayed their ability at New Orleans and upon other battle-fields, it was upward of thirty years before this seemingly never-tobe-settled question suddenly again became acute, present

ing new elements of vexation and danger to our national existence.

The first manifestation of the coming strife occurred in 1820, when, it having become manifest that the preponderance of wealth and population was gradually establishing itself in the North and Northwest, it was clear that unless some arbitrary measures could be adopted, the states in which negro slavery existed would soon find themselves overbalanced in numbers and in political power by the free states of the North. The spirit of restriction of the area of slavery was abroad, and when in the last-mentioned year the state of Missouri sought admission as a member of the Union, her Constitution, which provided for the enslavement of the negro race, grated harshly upon the awakening sympathy of the North, and the struggle to circumscribe the area of slavery, which began with the adoption of the Northwestern Ordinance, may be said to have been resumed with renewed vigor. State after state had been admitted in balanced order, one of the North accompanying one of the South, but as a measure of compromise upon the admission of Missouri the line of latitude thirty-six-thirty was established, running from the western boundary of that state to the Pacific, north of which no state permitting slavery was to be admitted, by which exclusion it was confidently expected that in the great territory of the Northwest the negro was to enjoy the fullest measure of constitutional freedom.

And again, by this measure it was hoped that the negro problem was on its way to final solution. This famous Missouri Compromise did, indeed, for the time appear to have effected a permanent adjustment of the negro question in all the territory acquired from France by the Louisiana Purchase lying north of the above-mentioned parallel of latitude, but as year after year rolled around the necessity for new slave territory for the South grew more urgent, and

in commensurate degree, stronger and stronger mounted the aroused sentiment of the North demanding enactments forbidding the extension of negro slavery.

We, therefore, find late in the fifth decade of the century, Southern statesmen, then discovering that the issue was ultimately to be decided against them, vainly seeking to remove all restrictions so that the negro might be introduced as a slave in all the Western and Pacific territories.

Finally, with the futile compromise measure of 1850, followed by the repeal of the wise and patriotic Missouri Compromise (May 25, 1854), we mark the close of the struggle against the extension of negro slavery and the beginning of the graver agitation of the question as to the abolition of the institution itself. We say the beginning because though for more than thirty years prior to this time there had been in existence an earnest, conscientious movement directed to that end, the advocates of the abolishment of slavery were considered rather as impracticable fanatics, disturbers of the public peace, irresponsible and seditious individuals than as practical workers in national politics. They had brought about, however, a growing appreciation of the fact that the existence of slavery was inconsistent with the continuance of our national life; that in the words of Lincoln, the nation could not endure half slave and half free. They had compelled the nation to understand that the negro was indeed a man and not a mere chattel, and as this more accurate perception of the situation little by little gained coherent form, it led by natural processes through political strife to the gigantic conflict of arms by which slavery was extinguished and another phase of the negro problem revealed.

The printing-press of Garrison, the verse of Whittier, the pulpit of Beecher, the oratory of Phillips, Sumner, and Seward had so aroused the national conscience that the doom of slavery was assured. More potent, perhaps, than any of

these was the effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin, that marvellous work of fiction which by its exaggerated descriptions of Southern plantation life brought home to the sympathies of the men and women of the North the hideous possibilities of wrong existing under the miserable system of human slavery.

The Civil War came on; in form, a struggle springing from conflicting constructions of the Constitution, in substance, a fratricidal war brought about by the presence of the negro

race.

The records of our military operations show that nearly two hundred thousand negroes were enlisted in the Federal army, that under white leadership they fought valiantly and accomplished important results, and that in so far as their meagre opportunities allowed they fairly may be said to have rendered valuable assistance in winning their freedom. This freedom came to them by degrees. In 1862, by the great war measure of emancipation, the work was begun.

After the Federal arms had triumphed and the Results of South was in helpless ruin, in 1865, the thirteenth

Freedom.

amendment of the Constitution imbedded into the foundation law of our country the never-to-be-challenged fact that slavery was forever abolished, and the negro stood as in this land he had never stood before, free from his shackles, free to go or come, his opportunities before him, his responsibility all his own.

At bottom, slavery was but a passing phase of the negro problem, a mere modus vivendi affording a possibility of harmonious relations between two races of radically dissimilar characteristics in occupancy of the same territory. With its extinction, while the moral atmosphere appeared for a time clearer, the momentous character of the race question as such was more plainly revealed. The Civil War abolished slavery and disclosed the magnitude of the negro problem.

With the close of the conflict the real difficulty began. At the termination of the war the situation admitted of no adequate solution. Different opinions were entertained as to the capacity of the negro to participate in government. On the one hand, it was thought that by entrusting him with the ballot he would rapidly advance and display his capacity for participation in political affairs. Those who cherished this hope were able to place the ballot in his untutored hands, but they reckoned without proper consideration. There were others who thought that he would immediately fall back into a more abject and hopeless condition than even that of slavery; that, lacking the first elements of progress, as soon as he was freed from the supervision of the governing race and left to his own responsibility he would retrograde to barbarism. This view, likewise, is now seen to have been too extreme. Between the two points of view the truth now appears to have lain; the negro has advanced in the path of progress, but far less rapidly and spontaneously than was hoped and expected by his well-wishers.

Upheld by the armed force of the Federal government, the negroes of the Southern States exercised for some years the suffrage, participated in legislative work, and in some states, generally with lamentable results, were able to control the legislative and executive departments. In national affairs, likewise, the negro began to entertain hopes of advancement. Two Senators and thirteen Representatives in the lower House represented within a few years the aspiration of the race for membership in the Halls of Congress. But the attempt at government by the negro race was a wretched failure, and the history of this failure of reconstruction is familiar to the student of our modern political history. We know what calamitous results were brought about by the effort to entrust to ignorant negroes, fresh from the slavery of the plantation, the delicate and im