WIGFALL.
CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY RETROSPECT.
To properly understand the condition of things preceding the great war
of the Rebellion, and the causes underlying that condition and the war
itself, we must glance backward through the history of the Country to,
and even beyond, that memorable 30th of November, 1782, when the
Independence of the United States of America was at last conceded by
Great Britain. At that time the population of the United States was
about 2,500,000 free whites and some 500,000 black slaves. We had
gained our Independence of the Mother Country, but she had left fastened
upon us the curse of Slavery. Indeed African Slavery had already in
1620 been implanted on the soil of Virginia before Plymouth Rock was
pressed by the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers, and had spread, prior to the
Revolution, with greater or less rapidity, according to the surrounding
adaptations of soil, production and climate, to every one of the
thirteen Colonies.
But while it had thus spread more or less throughout all the original
Colonies, and was, as it were, recognized and acquiesced in by all, as
an existing and established institution, yet there were many, both in
the South and North, who looked upon it as an evil--an inherited evil
--and were anxious to prevent the increase of that evil.
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