Representatives from their States secured the introduction of a clause into the Constitution which delayed for twenty years the execution of the will of the country against the African slave-trade.

It is said that a slave imported from Africa paid for himself in a single year in the production of rice.
There were thus a few planters in Georgia and the Carolinas who had an obvious interest in the prolongation of the institution of slavery and who had influence enough, to secure constitutional recognition for both slavery and the slave-trade.
The principles involved were not seriously debated.

In theory all were abolitionists; in practice slavery extended to all the States.

In some, actual abolition was comparatively easy; in others, it was difficult.

By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, actual abolition had extended to the line separating Pennsylvania from Maryland.