THE NORTHERN COLONIES Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been a blank.

But this was the case nowhere.

A certain number of Indians were enslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captives taken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colony as a mere incident of its prosperity.

Among the Quakers the extent of slaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples of conscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined by industrial conditions.

Here the plantation system flourished and slaves were many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor in farming, and slaves were few.
The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing the careers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated by some thirty degrees of north latitude.