y
of its total, though gradual, abolition, it will be proper to consider
the nature of slavery, its properties, attendants, and consequences in
general; its rise, progress, and present state not only in this
commonwealth, but in such of our sister states as have either perfected,
or commenced the great work of its extirpation; with the means they have
adopted to effect it, and those which the circumstances and situation of
our country may render it most expedient for us to pursue, for the
attainment of the same noble and important end.[3]

[Footnote 1: The subject of a preceding Lecture, with which the present
was immediately connected, was, An Enquiry into the Rights of Persons,
as Citizens of the United States of America.]

[Footnote 2: The American standard, at the commencement of those
hostilities which terminated in the revolution, had these words upon
it----AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN!]

[Footnote 3: The Author here takes the liberty of making his
acknowledgments to the reverend Jeremiah Belknap, D. D. of Boston, and
to Zephaniah Swift, Esq. representative in congress from Connecticut,
for their obliging communications; he hath occasionally made use of them
in several parts of this Lecture, where he may have omitted referring to
them.]

According to Justinian [Lib. 1. Tit. 2.], the first general division of
persons, in respect to their rights, is into freemen and slaves. It is
equally the glory and the happiness of that country from which the
citizens of the United States derive their origin, that the traces of
slavery, such as at present exists in several of the United States, are
there utterly extinguished. It is not my design to enter into a minute
enquiry whether it ever had existence there, nor to compare the
situation of villeins, during the existence of pure villenage, with that
of modern domestic slaves. The records of those times, at least, such as
have reached this quarter of the globe, are too few to throw a
satisfactory light on the subject. Suffice it that our ancestors
migrating hither brought not with them any prototype of that slavery
which hath been established among us. The first introduction of it into
Virginia was by the arrival of a Dutch ship from the coast of Africa
having _twenty_ Negroes on board, who were sold here in the year 1620
[Stith 182.]. In the year 1638 we find them in Massachusetts.[4] They
were introduced into Connecticut soon after the settlement of that
colony; that is to say, a