to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts
alike. To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive
slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate,
and but seven dissenting votes in the House. It was, however, a wise
law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one. Twenty-five
years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and
thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of
Virginia, was passed by Northern votes. I am not, just now, complaining
of this law, but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the
proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive than the present one. In
1774 the Continental Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote,
to wholly discontinue the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor
import any slave: and less than three months before the passage of the
Declaration of Independence, the same Congress which adopted that
declaration unanimously resolved "that _no slave be imported into any of
the thirteen United Colonies_." [Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the
slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a
piratical warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a
cruel war against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except
South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from
the necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted. Indeed,
abolition societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a
well-known fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason,
and Pendleton were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on
that subject than we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be
to-day. On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its
lands lying northwest of the Ohio River. Jefferson, Chase of Maryland,
and Howell of Rhode Island, as a committee on that and territory
thereafter _to be ceded_, reported that no slavery should exist after
the year 1800. Had this report been adopted, not only the Northwest, but
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi also would have been free;
but it required the assent of nine States to ratify it. North Carolina
was divided, and thus its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New
Jersey refused to vote. In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to