Negro slavery in the United States began in 1619, when a cargo of Africans was sold in Virginia. It gradually spread to all the states, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century it had been abolished in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey. The ordinance of 1787 forbade slavery in the Northwest; but the purchase of Louisiana in 1803 added greatly to slave territory. The fight over the admission of Missouri (1817-21), resulting in the "Missouri Compromise," did much to intensify bitterness of feeling. Finally, in December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized at Philadelphia, with a platform of principles formulated by William Lloyd Garrison.

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

[Read at the Convention which formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, in Philadelphia, December, 1833.]

CHAMPION of those who groan beneath
Oppression's iron hand:

In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.

Still bearing up thy lofty brow,

In the steadfast strength of truth, In manhood sealing well the vow And promise of thy youth.

Go on, for thou hast chosen well;
On in the strength of God!
Long as one human heart shall swell
Beneath the tyrant's rod.
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear,
The fetter's link be broken!

I love thee with a brother's love,
I feel my pulses thrill,

To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.

My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior's at the shine
And flash of kindred swords!

They tell me thou art rash and vain, A searcher after fame;

On March 7, 1850, Daniel Webster delivered in the Senate his famous speech on slavery, in which he declared for the exclusion of slavery from new territory, but called attention to the pledge which had been given to permit slavery south of the line of 36° 30', and gave his support to the fugitive slave bill introduced by a Virginia senator. The speech created a sensation; Webster was overwhelmed with abuse, and made the target for one of the greatest poems of denunciation in the language.

ICHABOD

[March 7, 1850]

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,

When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age,

Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven!

Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;

A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled;

When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

The feeling at the North against slavery was soon intensified in bitterness by the execution of the fugitive slave law, which, in a way, made Northern states participants in the detested traffic. On April 3, 1851, a fugitive slave named Thomas Sims was arrested at Boston, adjudged to his owner, and put on board a vessel bound for Savannah. Other efforts to enforce the law proved abortive, and it was soon evident that it was, to all intents and purposes, a dead letter.

THE KIDNAPPING OF SIMS
[April 3, 1851]

SOULS of the patriot dead

On Bunker's height who bled!
The pile, that stands

On your long-buried bones
Those monumental stones
Should not suppress the groans
This day demands.

For Freedom there ye stood;
There gave the earth your blood;
There found your graves;
That men of every clime,
Faith, color, tongue, and time,
Might, through your death sublime,
Never be slaves.

Over your bed, so low,
Heard ye not, long ago,

A voice of power
Proclaim to earth and sea,
That where ye sleep should be
A home for Liberty

Till Time's last hour?

Hear ye the chains of slaves,
Now clanking round your graves?
Hear ye the sound

Of that same voice that calls
From out our Senate halls,
"Hunt down those fleeing thralls,
With horse and hound!"

That voice your sons hath swayed! "T is heard, and is obeyed!

This gloomy day
Tells you of ermine stained,
Of Justice's name profaned,
Of a poor bondman chained
And borne away!