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the virtue and morals of the rest, and as laying the basis of that liberty we contend for (and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest posterity) upon a very wrong foundation.
We, therefore, resolve to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this colony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves.’
Would that such a voice could be heard once more from Georgia!
The spirit of
Virginia is spoken of, as it found expression through
Jefferson, who by his precocious and immortal words against slavery, enrolled himself among the earliest Abolitionists of the country.
In the Declaration of Independence he embodied sentiments, which, when practically applied, will give Freedom to every Slave throughout the land.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ says our country speaking by his voice, ‘that all men are created equal—that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights—that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
And again, in the Congress of the Confederation, he brought forward, as early as 1784, a resolution to exclude Slavery from all the territory ‘ceded or to be ceded’ by the States of the Federal Government, and including the territory now covered by Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
Lost at first by a single vote only, this measure was substantially renewed at a subsequent day by a son of Massachusetts, and in 1787 was finally confirmed, in the Ordinance of the North-Western Territory, by a unanimous vote of the States and their respective delegates.
The same spirit is discerned in the
Federal Constitution which was adopted in 1788, where express provision was made for the abolition of the slave-trade, the discreditable words
slave and
slavery being allowed no place in that sacred instrument; while a clause subsequently added, specifically declared that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.’
It is evident, from a perusal of the debates on the Federal Constitution, that Slavery, like the slave trade, was regarded as temporary; and
