It was therefore not difficult for those who were growing wealthy by the use of imported negroes to maintain their privileges in the State.
If the sense of active responsibility was wanting within the separate States, much more was this true of the citizens of different States.
Slavery was regarded as strictly a domestic institution.

Families bought and owned slaves as a matter of individual preference.

None of the original colonies or States adopted slavery by law.

The citizens of the various colonies became slaveholders simply because there was no law against it.

* The abolition of slavery was at first an individual matter or a church or a state policy.