We say to
slaveholders, "Repent now, to-day, immediately;" just as we say to the
intemperate, "Break off from your vice at once; touch not, taste not,
handle not, from henceforth forever."
Besides, the plan of gradual abolition has been tried in this country and
the West Indies, and found wanting. It has been in operation in our
slave states ever since the Declaration of Independence, and its results
are before the nation. Let us see.
THE ABOLITIONISTS 79
In 1790 there were in the slave states south of the Potomac and the Ohio
20,415 free blacks. Their increase for the ten years following was at
the rate of sixty per cent., their number in 1800 being 32,604. In 1810
there were 58,046, an increase of seventy-five per cent. This
comparatively large increase was, in a great measure, owing to the free
discussions going on in England and in this country on the subject of the
slave-trade and the rights of man. The benevolent impulse extended to
the slave-masters, and manumissions were frequent. But the salutary
impression died away; the hand of oppression closed again upon its
victims; and the increase for the period of twenty years, 1810 to 1830,
was only seventy-seven per cent.
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