ective state
societies, at the annual meetings of the American convention for
promoting the abolition of slavery, were Hon. Uriah Tracy, United
States' Senator, 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. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia;
Messrs. Foster and Tillinghast, of Rhode Island; Messrs. Ridgely,
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 on 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 Maryland, 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 claus