worthy of the name, he refused to sign it, and walked out of the Convention. He prophesied then that God would finally punish a national sin like slavery by a national calamity. And so He did. The Negro had been a brave soldier in the hour of his country’s peril; the Constitutional Convention virtually declared that he was only a chattel in time of his Country’s peace.

In the shadows of the expiring days of the eighteenth century an influence for the perpetuation of slavery came from a source least expected. Among other inventions of the period was the cotton gin. It rooted the institution into the very marrow of the political and industrial life of the young Republic. The north began to develop cotton manufactories. It grew lukewarm on the subject of the freedom of the Negro. In the south the slaves increased in value, and slavery took on a new life. From this time on it became darker in its shades of inhumanity and moral degradation. It finally reached a point in its cruelty not far removed from the horrors and terrors of the “Middle Passage.” It approached, indeed, that monstrous maxim which is said to have come from the nation’s Supreme Court—“A Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.”

But the star of hope had not completely vanished. Massachusetts had declared back in 1780 that no man could stand upon her soil and look upon the towering monuments erected to the memory of her illustrious sons who fell in defense of liberty, and be a slave. Her example was followed by other states, until in 1830 the last northern state freed its slaves.

And now a new crusade against slavery began. Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry and John Adams had passed away, but their mantles fell on worthy shoulders. There appeared upon the scene men whom God had raised up to create for the country a conscience that would eventually demand the overthrow of slavery. They appealed to the people and invoked their sovereignty as the greatest and most affective force in a democracy.

First came Benjamin Lundy, preaching with vigor and power a gradual emancipation. Contemporaneous with him was William Lloyd Garrison, the radical, demanding nothing less than the immediate and unconditional manumission of slaves. His heroic and undaunted spirit, his earnestness and his uncompromising attitude on the subject of slavery easily made him the leading force among abolitionists. Around and about him were gathered other men imbued with the same sublime and holy sentiments. There were the eloquent Phillips, John Brown, burning with zeal, the learned Sumner, the 

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