candidates, sought to throw the election into the House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania Whigs supported William Henry Harrison of Ohio, also the nominee of the Anti-Masons; Ohio supported Judge John McLean; Massachusetts nominated Webster. But the Democrats, superior alike in organization and in popular strength, carried the day. The popular majority for Van Buren was small, but the electoral vote stood 170 for Van Buren and 73 for Harrison, the nearest competitor. There was no choice for Vice-President by the electors, and the Senate, exercising its constitutional function in such a case for the only time thus far in our history, chose Johnson.

Jackson issued a farewell address, and at the close of his term retired, a triumphant popular hero, to his home at the "Hermitage," near Nashville, where he died in 1845. He had saved the presidential office from threatened eclipse by Congress, upheld the authority of the Union, waged successful war against privilege and monopoly, vitalized a national party, and brought "the people" into their own. Twentyfour years were to pass before the presidential chair was filled by a man at all comparable to him in native ability, political wisdom, or sure popular hold.

CHAPTER IV

SLAVERY AND ABOLITION

1815-1840

WHILE the new democracy, under the leadership of Jackson, was destroying the Bank of the United States, shaking the hold of the old political aristocracy, and forcing a reorganization of parties and a restatement of party creeds, there was arising in the North a new and formidable demand for the abolition of slavery.

The institution of negro slavery had undergone in the United States a long and somewhat varied development. Beginning in 1619 with the landing of a few negroes in Virginia, it grew but slowly during the colonial period, save in South Carolina. Throughout most of the seventeenth century it was closely rivaled by the system of indentured white servitude. In the first half of the eighteenth century it was sustained less by settled conviction of its inherent goodness or economic profitableness than by a steady stream of fresh importations directly encouraged by the English

crown. In 1774 the first Continental Congress declared against further importations, not so much because of moral opposition to the trade as because prohibition would be a serious blow at the mother country.

In the meantime natural conditions of soil and climate had operated to confine slavery mainly to the South, where the production of tobacco,. cotton, and rice as staples constituted almost the sole interest of agriculture, and where malaria and summer heat made it difficult for whites to labor in the field. By the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in 1787, negr› slavery had long since ceased to be of much importance in the North, and had either been abolished by State constitutions or laws, or was in process of complete extinction by various methods of gradual emancipation. On the other hand, the growing profitableness of slave labor in the South, with the consequent increase in the number of slaves, strengthened the demand for the preservation of the system; and the Federal Convention of 1787, in framing the Constitution, was forced to accept compromises by which three-fifths of the slaves were to be counted, in addition to whites, for the purpose of determining the membership of the House of Representatives; while the slave trade was shielded from national interference for twenty years.

From time to time organized moral opposition to slavery, coupled with demands for abolition, appeared in the North, and awakened sympathetic interest in the South, especially in Virginia. A vigorous agitation of the question in Massachusetts was checked by the coming on of the Revolutionary struggle. In New York and Pennsylvania abolition was persistently urged by numerous societies, in whose work the Quakers were particularly active. In 1790 there came before Congress memorials from abolition societies in New York and Philadelphia, of the latter of which Benjamin Franklin was president, praying for the abolition of the slave trade. In replying to the petitions Congress laid down the principles by which it was to be governed for the next seventy years: declaring by resolution that the slave trade could not be interfered with until 1808, although humane conditions during the ocean passage could be enforced; and that the treatment of slaves in this country, together with their emancipation, were matters solely for State control.

With the invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793, it became for the first time possible to put American cotton on the market in large quantities. A slave could now "gin," or clean of seed and chaff, some hundreds of pounds of cotton in a day; and the production of cotton grew apace. Before the

War of 1812 population from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia had overflowed into the rich "cotton belt" of Alabama and Mississippi; while the wasteful methods of slave labor, and the unprogressive state of Southern agriculture as a whole, increased the demand for fresh cultivable land. Not all the slaveholding States, indeed, were adapted to cotton culture. Virginia and Maryland still relied mainly upon tobacco, and Kentucky was growing hemp. The increased demand for labor in the lower South, however, opened a market for the surplus slaves of the Border States, and that section accordingly joined with the North in prohibiting the foreign slave trade after January 1, 1808. The act was not genuinely enforced, nor did importations cease when, in 1820, the slave trade was declared piracy.

Even in the South, however, opposition to slavery did not die. In 1816 there was formed the American Colonization Society, having for its object the deportation to Africa of such emancipated negroes as were willing to go. For a number of years the society enjoyed much favor. Madison and Clay were numbered among its presidents, slaveholders subscribed to its funds, and a few States made grants in aid. The existence of the society testified to an uneasy feeling that slavery was indefensible,