Thomas Jefferson says in his autobiography that though the Northern people owned very few slaves themselves, at the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of slaves to others. In 1761 Virginia and South Carolina, alarmed at the rapid increase of slaves, passed an act restricting their importation, but as many persons in England were growing rich from the trade the act was negatived, or vetoed. While providing in the Constitution of the United States for the Southern planters to hold slaves, the North thought that the laws that were in the course of events to be passed for prohibiting their foreign importation, would so work out so that the institution would die a natural death. They little dreamed that economical and political conditions were destined to fasten it upon the South. At the framing of the Constitution slaves were held in all the States except Massachusetts, and she had only very lately abolished the institution. The South owned twice as many, by reason of her special agricultural products, and even at this early day the slavery question became sectional. Mason's and Dixon's line, which was an imaginary boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, was recognized as the division line between the free and slave states. * * * * * (Here are omitted several pages illustrating the utter absence of affinity between the two sections of the country, introduced in the manuscript as social, not historical, matter.) During the Revolutionary war it was deemed expedient to enlist the colored race as soldiers. In Rhode Island they were made free by law, on condition that they enlisted in the army, and this measure met with Gen'l Washington's approval. After the Declaration of Independence, in 1777, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts freed their slaves and permitted them to vote, "provided they had the requisite age, property and residence." The 15th Amendment of a later day was an outrageous document, framed regardless of any such qualifications, but giving the ignorant black man rights even above the white citizens.