d resolutions in December, 1804,
instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen
to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure
an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to
prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color
from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the
state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for
transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In
the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New
Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the
time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the
Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of
amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for
the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of
African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the
beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general
question three years afterward.

[Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of
Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in
the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.]

[Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in the
American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209.]

[Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _American
Historical Review_, XXII, 340-364.]

In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House
to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a
year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not
near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally
presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens,"
he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach of
the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to
withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation
in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued
on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the
reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to
proscribe. Although no law you can pass can take ef