f this constitution.

(2) "The legislature shall have full power to make such just and
humane provisions as may be needful for the better regulation and
security of the marriage and family relations between slaves, for
their proper instruction, and for the gradual and equitable
removal of slaves from the State.

(3) "On and after the fourth day of July 18--, slavery or
involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall cease within the
limits of this State."

On the twenty-seventh day of January, Mr. Battelle offered the
following:[66]

(1) "No slave shall be brought into the state for permanent
residence after the adoption of this constitution.

(2) "All children born of slave parents in this state on and
after the fourth day of July 1865 shall be free; and the
Legislature may provide by general law for the apprenticeship of
such children during their minority and for their subsequent
colonization."

It is obvious that the first set of propositions provided for the
total abolition of slavery, the date undetermined; whereas the second,
while providing for the freedom of the children, born of slave parents
on and after a specified date, condemned to perpetual slavery all
other persons who prior to that date were slaves.

In line with the proposals of Mr. Battelle was the pertinent and
clear-sighted editorial of _The Wheeling Intelligencer_ under date of
December ninth, 1861. It said: "We have endeavored to show how
entirely adverse to the best interests of Western Virginia it would be
for the present convention to adjourn without first engrafting a free
State provision on our constitution in shape of a three, five or ten
years emancipation clause. We should esteem it far better that the
Convention had never assembled than that it should omit to take action
of this character.... Congress would hesitate long before it will
consent to the subdivision of a slave State simply that two slave
States may be made out of it. The evil which has so nearly destroyed
not only Western Virginia, but the whole country, will find that its
tug-of-war is yet to come, when it has run the gauntlet of our
Convention and our Legislature. We believe that when it reaches
Congress, it will reach its hitherto and that it will never pass. It
will avail very little for this convention to remain in debate on this
subject for a month at a heavy expense and consummate a work