John Logan

The Great Conspiracy: Its Origin and History John Logan

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. Hence it was that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question?a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the Declaration of Independence itself.