avery] into the new States to
be formed out of the western territory."

Gerry was still more emphatic in the assertion of the right of
interference. He boldly asserted that "flagrant acts of cruelty" were
committed in carrying on the African slave trade; and, while nobody
proposed to violate the Constitution, "that we have a right to regulate
this business is as clear as that we have any right whatever; nor has
the contrary been shown by anybody who has spoken on the occasion." Nor
did he stop there. He told the slaveholders that the value of their
slaves in money was only about ten million dollars, and that Congress
had the right to propose "to purchase the whole of them; and their
resources in the western territory might furnish them with the means."
The Southern members would, perhaps, have been startled by such a
proposition as this, had he not immediately added that "he did not
intend to suggest a measure of this kind; he only instanced these
particulars to show that Congress certainly had a right to intermeddle
in the business." It is quite likely, had he pushed such a measure with
his well-known zeal and determination, that it would have been at least
received with a good deal of favor; and, as the admirers of Jefferson
are tenacious of his fame as the author of the original Northwest
Ordinance, so Gerry, had he seriously and earnestly urged the policy of
using the proceeds of the sales of territorial lands to remunerate the
owners of slaves for their liberation, would have left behind him a more
fragrant memory than that which clings to him as a minister to France,
and as the "Gerrymandering" governor of Massachusetts. The debate,
however, came to an end at last with no other result than that which
would have been reached at the beginning without debate, except,
perhaps, that the vote in favor of the reports upon the memorials was
smaller than it might have been had there been no discussion.

Within less than two years, however, Warner Mifflin of Delaware, an
eminent member of the Society of Friends, who was one of the first, if
not the first, of that society to manumit his own slaves, petitioned
Congress to take some measure for general emancipation. The petition was
entered upon the journal; but on a subsequent day a North Carolina
member, Mr. Steele, said that, "after what had passed at New York on
this subject, he had hoped the House would have heard no more of it;"
and he moved that the petition be returne