r, from Connecticut; Hon. Zephaniah Swift, Chief Justice
of the same State; Hon. Cesar A. Rodney, Attorney General of the United
States; Hon. James A. Bayard, United States Senator, from Delaware;
Governor Bloomfield, of New Jersey; Hon. Wm. Rawle, the late venerable
head of the Philadelphia bar; Dr. Casper Wistar, of Philadelphia;
Messrs. Foster and Tillinghast, of Rhode Island; Messrs. Ridgeley,
Buchanan, and Wilkinson, of Maryland; and Messrs. Pleasants, McLean, and
Anthony, of Virginia.

In July, 1787, the old Congress passed the celebrated ordinance,
abolishing slavery in the northwestern territory, and declaring that it
should never thereafter exist there. This ordinance was passed while the
convention that formed the United States constitution was in session. At
the first session of Congress under the constitution, this ordinance was
ratified by a special act. Washington, fresh from the discussions of the
convention, in which _more than forty days had been spent in adjusting
the question of slavery, gave it his approval._ The act passed with only
one dissenting voice, (that of Mr. Yates, of New-York,) _the South
equally with the North avowing the fitness and expediency of the measure
of general considerations, and indicating thus early the line of
national policy, to be pursued by the United States Government on the
subject of slavery_.

In the debates in the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Iredell, afterward
a Judge of the United States' Supreme Court, said, "_When the entire
abolition of slavery takes place_, it will be an event which must be
pleasing to every generous mind and every friend of human nature." Mr.
Galloway said, "I wish to see this abominable trade put an end to. I
apprehend the clause (touching the slave trade) means to _bring forward
manumission."_ Luther Martin, of Md., a member of the convention that
formed the United States constitution, said, "We ought to authorize the
General Government to make such regulations as shall be thought most
advantageous for _the gradual abolition of slavery,_ and the
_emancipation of the slaves_ which are already in the States." Judge
Wilson, of Pennsylvania, one of the framers of the constitution, said,
in the Pennsylvania convention of '87, Deb. Pa. Con. p. 303, 156: "I
consider this (the clause relative to the slave trade) as laying the
foundation for _banishing slavery out of this country_. It will produce
the same kind of gradual change which was produced