Favored as long as profitable.
I fail to find the evidence that property in man was an obnoxious doctrine at the
North until property in man wholly ceased there to be lucrative.
Small as the number of slaves necessarily was to the north of
Maryland, in several of them slavery existed for more than fifty years after the adoption of the
Constitution.
Where the interest was so limited and the emancipation so gradual, no great shock to society could well occur, especially as in the bulk of cases the emancipator, with no qualms of conscious whatever, received the full value of his slaves from those who bought them.
The historian
Bancroft is authority for the statement that more slaves were emancipated by last will and testament in
Virginia than were ever set free in
Pennsylvania or
Massachusetts.
Moreover, emancipation in the
North, when it came, was accompanied by no recognition of equality.
Prior to 1861 no negro in
Massachusetts had ever been a member of its Legislature, or served upon the jury, or in the militia, or been appointed to any office beyond one of menial grade.
This was freedom, with the recognition and opportunity of freedom severely omitted—‘the name of freedom graven on a heavier chain’—heavier because it was the expression of a more invincible barrier than that of law, and breathed a more superlative scorn.
In the second volume of his
Commentaries,
Chancellor Kent thus describes the relation of the races: ‘The
African race are essentially a degraded caste of inferior rank and condition in society.
Marriages are forbidden
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between them and the whites in some of the States, and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting and regarded as an offence against public decorum.
By the
Revised Statutes of
Illinois, published in 1829, marriages between whites and negroes or mulattoes are declared void, and the persons so married are liable to be whipped, fined, and imprisoned.
By an old statute of
Massachusetts, of 1705, such marriages were declared void, and are so still.’
[This summary was cited and corroborated by the
Chief-Justice of
Connecticut as late as 1834.] The Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania decided in 1837 that a negro or mulatto was not entitled to exercise the right of suffrage.
It was not until July 4, 1827, that New York was ranked among the free States, and when the
Constitution of 1846 was adopted negro suffrage was negatived by a vote of four to one.
As late, certainly, as the date of the
Dred Scott decision the
Constitution of
New Jersey restricted the right of suffrage to all white persons.
This course of legislation in the
North illustrated the recognized discrepancy of the races.
Statute did not confer it, and statute could not take it away.
Slavery in the
South rested upon the natural supremacy of the white race over the black, and the total and inevitable disqualification of the latter for an equal struggle with the former.
