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 by six States. Three years later on a square vote
to exclude slavery from the Northwest, only one vote, and that from New
York, was against it. And yet, thirty-seven years later, five thousand
citizens of Illinois, out of a voting mass of less than twelve thousand,
deliberately, after a long and heated contest, voted to introduce slavery
in Illinois; and, to-day, a large party in the free State of Illinois are
willing to vote to fasten the shackles of slavery on the fair domain of
Kansas, notwithstanding it received the dowry of freedom long before its
birth as a political community. I repeat, therefore, the question: Is it
not plain in what direction we are tending? [Sensation.] In the colonial
time, Mason, Pendleton, and Jefferson were as hostile to slavery in
Virginia as Otis, Ames, and the Adamses were in Massachusetts; and
Virginia made as earnest an effort to get rid of it as old Massachusetts
did. But circumstances were against them and they failed; but not that the
good will of its leading men was lacking. Yet within less than fifty years
Virginia changed its tune, and made negro-breeding for the cotton and
sugar States one of its leading industries. [Laughter and applause.]

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a more
violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding would desire
to make here to-day--a speech which could not be safely repeated anywhere
on Southern soil in this enlightened year. But, while there were some
differences of opinion on this subject even then, discussion was