FOUR years after the Declaration of American Independence, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had emancipated their slaves; and, eight years thereafter, Connecticut and Rhode Island followed their example.
Three years after the last named event, an _abolition society_ was organized by the citizens of the State of New York, with John Jay at its head. Two years subsequently, the Pennsylvanians did the same thing, electing Benjamin Franklin to the presidency of their association. The same year, too, slavery was forever excluded, by act of Congress, from the Northwest Territory. This year is also memorable as having witnessed the erection of the first cotton mill in the United States, at Beverley, Massachusetts.
During the year that the New York Abolition Society was formed, Watts, of England, had so far perfected the _steam engine_ as to use it in propelling machinery for spinning cotton; and the year the Pennsylvania Society was organized witnessed the invention of the _power loom_. The _carding machine_ and the _spinning jenny_ having been invented twenty years before, the power loom completed the machinery necessary to the indefinite extension of the manufacture of cotton.
The work of emancipation, begun by the four States named, continued to progress, so that in seventeen years from the adoption of the constitution, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey, had also enacted laws to free themselves from the burden of slavery.
As the work of manumission proceeded, the elements of slavery expansion were multiplied. When the four States first named liberated their slaves, no regular exports of cotton to Europe had yet commenced; and the year New Hampshire set hers free, only 138,328 lbs. of that article were shipped from the country. Simultaneously with the action of Vermont, in the year following, the _cotton gin_ was invented, and an unparalleled impulse given to the cultivation of cotton. At the same time, Louisiana, with her immense territory, was added to the Union, and room for the extension of slavery vastly increased. New York lagged behind Vermont for six years, before taking her first step to free her slaves, when she found the exports of cotton to England had reached 9,500,000 lbs.; and New Jersey, still more tardy, fell five years behind New York; at which time the exports of that staple--so rapidly had its cultivation progressed--were augmented to 38,900,000 lbs.