slaves; Louisiana, 18,647, as against 331,726 slaves; Florida, 932, as against 61,745 slaves, and Arkansas, 144, against 111,115 slaves. Coming northward, the free colored population was more numerous, as in Virginia, 58,042, as against 490,865 slaves; North Carolina, 30,463, as against 331,059 slaves; Maryland, 83,942, as against 87,189 slaves, and Delaware, 19,829, as against 1,798 slaves. Crossing the border into the free States, the free colored population numbered 56,849 in Pennsylvania; 36,673 in Ohio; 49,005 in New York; but continuing north one finds only 709 in Vermont, 494 in New Hampshire and but 128 in Oregon. All this signifies that free persons of color were practically eliminated from the lower South and increased in numbers in the upper South-North Carolina, Virginia, and especially in Maryland (where they quite equalled the slave population in number) and in Delaware where they exceeded it a thousand per cent. Persons of color, who in 1860 were neither slaves nor could possess the rights and privileges of white men (excepting in Vermont and some parts of Massachusetts), though free to migrate, were not found in large numbers above the latitude of Philadelphia-the seemingly large number in New York being found chiefly in the city of New York in domestic service and as unskilled laborers. It would seem, therefore, that the natural law which determined the place of the free negro's residence might also affect the extension of slavery itself.

If the New England States had the climate of the Carolinas, would the census tables made at intervals of ten years, beginning in 1790, have recorded the disappearance of these States, and of their neighbors to the west, and of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, the middle West, California and Oregon, from the column of slaveholding States? Or, to put the question in a very simple way, was it too cold at the North to make negro slavery profitable? Did the climate of the South affect the opinions of its people concerning slavery?

It is certain that in 1860, when rumors of civil war were flying thick and fast, few negroes in the United States were

found living farther north than the latitude of Philadelphia; slavery had at that time disappeared in every Northern State (save a vestige in New Jersey-a Northern State with a southern climate), and in the northern tier of Northern States, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, northern New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, a negro was seldom met with. The climatic limitation of the range of the negro to-day is the same as in 1860.

It would seem then that the South had the negro on its hands in 1860, as it has him to-day, chiefly because of the law of climate. And the North did not have the negro in 1860, as it does not have him to-day, because of the same law. If it be asked why in 1790 and earlier, negro slavery existed in New England and in the Middle States in spite of the climate, the answer is contained in the question: it existed in spite of the climate. But negro slavery at the North was not profitable, excepting as at Newport, and at other markets, where slaves were bought and sold as commodities. Gradually the conviction grew at the North that slavery was wrong, and gradually slavery at the North disappeared. Whether the northern conscience would have pronounced slavery a crime had slavery been profitable all the way up to the Canadian border is a question which Southern men can answer perhaps more accurately than Northern men: for the climate which is necessary to the existence of the negro is the climate of the South rather than of the North. If slavery was right at the South at any time, it would have been right at the North whatsoever the climate at the North might be. So the question comes back to the rightfulness of slavery under a climate favorable to slavery that is, to the rightfulness of slavery of itself. And herein lies one of the causes which led Southern men and Northern men to differ in opinion and by so much precipitated the Civil War. At present the important conclusion is that in tracing the history of slavery in the United States, we are early confronted by its disappearance gradually from the North and by its increasing strength at the

South: phenomena which seem partly explicable by the laws of climate.

Had the United States never exceeded the limits of its original area from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River, from Canada to the Floridas-what would have been the fate of slavery?

When the first census was taken, in 1790, the North was not distinctively free soil, but the South was distinctively slave soil. It does not appear that at the time of the formation and adoption of the Constitution, American statesmen anticipated the extension of the boundaries of the republic across the Mississippi. In the Federal Convention there was frequent utterance of opinions hostile to the formation of new States west of the original thirteen. No member of that Convention appears to have realized that within fifty years the last foot of soil between the original States and the Mississippi River would form part of the domain of an organized State-Michigan was admitted in 1837-or that within twenty-five years the Union would include Louisiana, a State west of the great river. We must not forget that the Constitution was made ostensibly for a small domain, the portion of the present United States east of the Mississippi and excluding Florida; that at the time of its formation and adoption, the National domain was about equally divided among slave States and free States and the regions west of them respectively. The Constitution was a compromise almost from Preamble to final clause, and several most important compromises were dictated by slavery: but so evenly divided were the land and the people between free and prospectively free soil, and slave and prospectively slave soil that slavery caused no alarm for the continuity of the Union. Had the original area of the United States never been passed, slavery would have been extended as it was extended directly west of the South to the Mississippi. The Ordinance of 1787, creating the Northwest Territory, also excluded slavery from it; the Ordinance creating the Southwest Territory permitted slavery within it and

practically forbade its exclusion, as it could not be excluded without the consent of the slaveholding States. Thus comparatively early in the history of the United States, had the original boundaries never been passed, slavery extension and slavery limitation would have met at the Ohio and it may well be doubted whether the climate of the States north of the Ohio would have so yielded to the will of man that negro slavery could be made profitable there, or that a negro population any greater than now exists there could have been assembled under a slave code.

Now no people can become a world power unless they possess, control and utilize a large domain: a large population implies much land. Early in the history of the United States, while yet the population, bond and free, fell short of five millions, in 1803, the Louisiana country was purchased from Napoleon. The importance of that acquisition to the development of the United States cannot be fully estimated, for until the end of time it must continue to affect the destiny of the American people and indirectly of the remainder of the civilized world. That acquisition added at a stroke 1,182,752 square miles of territory and carried the boundaries of the republic westward to the Rocky Mountains. Louisiana, admitted in 1812, was the first State carved from that territory; Missouri, in 1821, the second; Arkansas, in 1836, the third-all slave States. The sudden and unexpected controversy over the admission of Missouri, for the first time brought home to the American people the question whether a territorial limit should be set to slavery. The opinion of the people was divided but the restrictionists triumphed and all that portion of the Louisiana Purchase lying north of the line 36° 30', excepting the State of Missouri, was assigned and set off as free soil forever. Although there were slaves in the Northern States in 1820, at the time of the Missouri Compromise, slavery as an institution did not exist at the North and the great Compromise extended the zone of free soil to the Rocky Mountains. Thus it appeared to many, in 1820,