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Negro slavery in all
the colonies had thus passed from custom to law before the American
Revolution broke out; and the course of the Revolution itself had little
or no effect on the system.
From the beginning, it was evident that the course of slavery in the two
sections, North and South, was to be altogether divergent. In the colder
North, the dominant race found it easier to work than to compel negroes
to work: in the warmer South, the case was exactly reversed. At the
close of the Revolution, Massachusetts led the way in an abolition
of slavery, which was followed gradually by the other States north of
Virginia; and in 1787 the ordinance of Congress organizing the Northwest
Territory made all the future States north of the Ohio free States.
"Mason and Dixon's line" and the Ohio River thus seemed, in 1790, to be
the natural boundary between the free and the slave States.
Up to this point the white race in the two sections had dealt with
slavery by methods which were simply divergent, not antagonistic.


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