The Americans moved in a more moderate and tentative manner towards the great achievement, but with them also a counter-revolution finally appeared in the rise of an influential class who, by openly defending slavery, repudiated the principles upon which the government was founded.
At first the impression was general, in the South as well as in the North, that slavery was a temporary institution.

The cause of emancipation was already advocated by the Society of Friends and some other sects.

A majority of the States adopted measures for the gradual abolition of slavery, but in other cases there proved to be industrial barriers to emancipation.

Slaves were found to be profitably employed in clearing away the forests; they were not profitably employed in general agriculture.

A marked exception was found in small districts in the Carolinas and Georgia where indigo and rice were produced; and though cotton later became a profitable crop for slave labor, it was the producers of rice and indigo who furnished the original barrier to the immediate extension of the policy of emancipation.