George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[352] that, if the resolution should be adopted, they would

Chap. XVII.} 1779.

withdraw from the confederation.¹

In the assertion of the sovereignty of each separate state, there was no distinction between north and south. Massachusetts expressed itself as absolutely as South Carolina. As a consequence, the confederation could contain no interdict of the slave-trade, and the importation of slaves would therefore remain open to any state according to its choice. When on the seventeenth of June, 1779, a renunciation of the power to engage in the slave-trade was proposed as an article to be inserted in the treaty of peace, all the states, Georgia alone being absent, refused the concession by the votes of every member except Jay and Gerry.

The rigid assertion of the sovereignty of each state

1780.

fostered mutual jealousy. Luzerne, the French envoy who succeeded Gerard, soon came to the conclusion that the confederacy would run the risk of an early dissolution if it should give itself up to the hatred which began to show itself between the north and south.

Vermont, whose laws from the first never bore with slavery, knocked steadily at the door of congress to be taken in as a state. In August, 1781, its envoys

1781.

were present in Philadelphia, entreating admission. Their papers were in order; the statesmen of New York gave up their opposition; and congress seemed well disposed to admit the applicant: but resistance developed itself in the states of the south; for it was held by them that the admission of Vermont would destroy ‘the balance of power’ between the two