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31 ChAPter 3 Roots of the Conflict over slavery The abolition of slavery was neither an accident nor a miracle; it was a result of evolution. —WilliAM BiRNey James G. Birney’s progress from slaveholder to abolitionist would proceed much like the nation would address slavery—excruciatingly slowly and with many missteps. At the root of his personal conflict lay the inexorable facts: slaves were property according to the laws of most states, and slavery apparently was sanctioned by the Bible. the wording of the Declaration of independence, the united states Constitution, and the Bill of Rights did not clearly state that slaves were individual citizens who were to be free. Jefferson’s pertinent phrase in the Declaration of independence was “all men are created equal.” the loophole parsed out of the seemingly inviolable statement was that some men remained free, and others were slaves owned by others as a condition of their life after being born, or “created .” the effect was much the same as the statement in the Kentucky constitution granting freedom to “all men, when they enter into a state of society.” Jefferson had used the same phrase in the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted on 12 June 1776. slaves, of course, did not enter into a state of society. this differed from the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, drafted by John Adams, which declared without qualification, “all men are born free and equal.” thus, the unparalleled idealism of some of the founders was not truly fulfilled in the compromise crucial to the formation of the union. Without that compromise there would have been no union to preserve. 32| Chapter 3 only the Apostles of equality, Birney and his fellow abolitionists, the Republican party, and Abraham lincoln and the union Army ultimately assumed the power of preservation of the union and were successful only after the Civil War. By the time young Birney graduated from princeton in 1810, the slave population of the North had fallen by a third, from 40,000 to about 27,000, but had increased by more than 40 percent, from 717,000 to almost 1,200,000 in the south. Kentucky’s slave population had multiplied by nearly seven times, to 80,000, from 1790 to 1810. the increase was a direct consequence of the need for more slaves sparked by the invention of the cotton gin by New england mechanical wizard eli Whitney about the time young Birney was born. the gin, a saw-toothed contraption of birdcage wire and slotted metal, enabled a slave to clean fifty pounds of cotton a day instead of one pound with the hand method. Just before Birney’s birth and Whitney’s invention, in 1791 cotton production was a mere 140,000 pounds in the united states. By the time Birney was eight years old, in 1800, about the time he was given his personal slave, Michael, by his grandfather Reed, the cotton output of slaves in the south using the new machinery had multiplied 250 times, to about 35 million pounds a year. that change led to the growth of the plantation system and, as author ira Berlin has postulated , to the development of the slave society from the previous situation of societies with slaves.1 the perpetuation of slavery required violence, enforced by local militia as well as civilian slave patrols and by slave owners and their whip-wielding overseers. Violence to control slavery correlated with an equally violent southern code of honor imported from ireland and europe. the Code Duello enveloped gentlemen in its grip and involved an elaborate series of challenges and personal combat—dueling with pistols, or rifles or shotguns at greater distances. None of the Birneys was known to be involved in a duel, or even to be challenged to a duel, although the younger Birney’s life was threatened many times for his abolitionist views. He was a harsh critic of the barbaric practice, as were such prominent Americans as George Washington and Benjamin franklin. it seems clear in retrospect that attitudes of southern leaders like Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and others, such as Alabama “fire eater” William lowndes yancey, created personal hatred toward political rivals and even helped convert a sectional dispute to war. future president Andrew Jackson in 1806, then a major general in the u.s. Army, shot and killed Nashville attorney Charles Dickinson after Dickinson’s father-in-law had lost ten thousand dollars on a horse race to Jackson and...

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