Up to this time, in the main, the attitude of the Southern statesmen had been free from sectionalism. On the other hand, New England had exhibited sectionalism, and it was New England’s deputies in the Constitutional Convention, who joining with those of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, had “formed a bargain,” abrogating the slave trade in such a way as practically to recognize slavery as a property interest secured by the Constitution. The time allowed the slave trade had been long enough, as Madison had said it would be. As great as had been the rate of increase of the white population, it had been exceeded by that of the colored in the proportions of 90 to 95 per cent. What Col. Mason had prophesied had also come to pass. He had declared in 1787: “The Western people are already calling out for slaves for their new lands and will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carolina and Georgia.” They had been got no doubt in large numbers through South Carolina and Georgia; but also, in all probabilities, through Louisiana, and if not through, to some extent from, Maryland and Virginia. The Negro population had in the West, in three decades sprung up from 16,322 to 385,825; while the seven States, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, held some 1,193,732 head of this species of property, representing an investment of something like $477,492,800, stamped as property by having been made dutiable under Federal law up to 1808. Such a property interest was almost certain to produce a sectional policy for its protection, and in the assertion of such a policy, South Carolina having the largest stake and the most forceful representatives, would naturally take the lead. The consequences were that the broad national policy of Lowndes, from this date gradually succumbed to the influences which forced Calhoun away from it, despite his efforts to mould into one form a national and sectional policy, based upon the declared recognition of slavery, in place of, or in addition to, the implied recognition furnished by the Constitutional compromise or “bargain” over the sanction of the slave trade up to 1808. As the South drew together in support of slavery, the overshadowing dimensions of its greatest exponent cast into oblivion Barnwell, Hamilton and Alston, who had so clearly perceived the dangers from its increase, and even reduced the proportions of men as preëminently great as Lowndes and his successor, Robert Y. Hayne. As long as the tariff held the center of the stage, the change was not so clearly apparent; but with the settling down, after the explosion of sentiment which nullification occasioned, the division between the sections was unmistakable. From that period the Lower South presented an unbroken front in defence of slavery, under the leadership of South Carolina.