C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[123] in order to show that slaves, everywhere under the Constitution, were always to be regarded as persons, and not as property, and thus to exclude from the Constitution all idea that there can be property in man. Remember well, that Mr. Sherman was opposed to the clause in its original form, ‘as acknowledging men to be property;’ that Mr. Madison was also opposed to it, because he ‘thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man;’ and that, after these objections, the clause was so amended as to exclude the idea. But Slavery cannot be national, unless this idea is distinctly and unequivocally admitted into the Constitution.

But the evidence still accumulates. At a still later day in the proceedings of the Convention, as if to set the seal upon the solemn determination to have no sanction of Slavery in the Constitution, the word ‘servitude,’ which appeared in the clause on the apportionment of representation, was struck out, and the word ‘service’ inserted. This was done on the motion of Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, and the reason assigned for this substitution, according to Mr. Madison, in his authentic report of the debate, was that ‘the former was thought to express the condition of slaves, and the latter the obligations of free persons.’ With such care was Slavery excluded from the Constitution.

Nor is this all. In the Massachusetts Convention, to which the Constitution, when completed, was submitted for ratification, a veteran of the Revolution, General Heath, openly declared that, according to his view, Slavery was sectional, and not national. His language was pointed. ‘I apprehend,’ he says, ‘that it is not in our power to do anything for or against those who are in Slavery in the Southern States. No gentleman within these walls detests every idea of Slavery more than I do; it is generally detested by people of this Commonwealth; and I ardently hope the time will soon come, when our brethren in the Southern States will view it as we do, and put a stop to it; but to this we have no right to compel them. Two questions naturally arise: If we ratify the Constitution, shall we do anything by our acts to hold the blacks in slavery—or shall we become partakers in other men's sins? I think neither of them.’

Afterwards, in the first Congress under the Constitution, on a motion which was much debated, to introduce into the Impost Bill a duty on the importation of Slaves, the same Roger Sherman, who in the National Convention had opposed the idea of property in man, authoritatively exposed the true relations of the Constitution to Slavery. His language