Though so early established, negro slavery was of very little importance on the continent during the 17th century. The total number of negroes in all the colonies in 1700 was prob ably not more than a teeth of the whole popu lation. The 18th century saw, however, a lively slave trade, and widely distributed slaves. England forced from Spain the privileges of the Assiento — that is, the monopoly of carry ing slaves from Africa to the Spanish colonies. For supplying these laborers to the North American colonies, a direct traffic grew up from Africa in colonial vessels, chiefly owned in New England and in New York. .Newport and Bris tol, R. I., were noted centres of the trade.
The result was that negroes were distributed more or less throughout all the colonies, al though their condition, employment and treat ment was very different from community to community. Excepting on Narragansett Bay and the Hudson River, where there were plan tations with large numbers of slaves, the negro in the Northern colonies was chiefly a house servant, and the institution was here at the best; the old North Church in Boston still con tains a gallery for such people. Negroes prob ably were no worse treated than indentured servants or apprentices of the time, and often much valued and respected by their masters.
Proceeding southward, in Pennsylvania the number of negroes was large, and in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia slavery was an established part of the social and eco nomic system. The cruelties of the institution were most manifest in the scattered planta• tions of the Carolinas, in which the slaves con siderably outnumbered the white people. There about 1780 Saint-John Crevecceur found a ne gro servant exposed in a cage, left there to devoured alive by insects and by birds, which had already destroyed his eyes; his unpardon able offense was killing a white man.
The steady growth of slavery is remarkable because it was actually prohibited by two of the New England colonies. Massachusetts in the Body of Liberties in 1641, drawn up by Rev. John Cotton, declared that, °There shall never be any bond slaverie, villianage or captivi tie amongst us unles it be lawful] captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.' And Rhode Island in 1652 °ordered that no black man kind, or white . . . serve any man or his assigns longer than ten years.° These acts were a dead letter; slaves were born, grew up, died and left the taint to their posterity in every Northern community, as well as in the South.
Indeed, there was in every community a body of positive legislation relating to terms of transfer of slave property, and to special offenses of slaves, and of white people toward slaves, so that the institution of slave property was as firmly rooted and as widely disseminated as that of private prop erty in land. This is the more striking, be cause in England the enslaving of blackamoors was thought inconsistent with human rights.
In the celebrated case of James Somersett, in 1772, Lord Mansfield held that slavery was aso odious that nothing could be suffered to support it but positive law°; there being no such law in England, he therefore refused to compel James Somersett, whom his master had brought from Virginia to England, to remain in the custody of that master.
Long before slavery acquired such a firm and important status, it was attacked by phil anthropic men. In 1624 John Usselinx ob jected to slavery in the proposed Swedish colonies. Georgia was founded in 1732, as an antislavery colony, but the restriction was given up in 1749. The first Englishman to protest against colonial slavery was Roger Wil liams in 1637, and John Eliot in 1675 de clared that °to sell soules for mony seemeth to me a dangerous merchandize.' Richard Bax ter, favorite English Puritan author of devo tional books said in 1673, °To go as Pirates and catch up poor Negros or people of another Land, that never forfeited Life or Liberty, and to make them slaves, and sell them, is one of the worst kinds of Thievery in the World.° Samuel Sewall, in his tract