Negro
slavery had been firmly established in the Southern States from an early
period of their history. In 1619, the year before the Mayflower landed
our Pilgrim Fathers upon Plymouth Rock, a Dutch ship had discharged a
cargo of African slaves at Jamestown in Virginia: All through the
colonial period their importation had continued. A few had found their
way into the Northern States, but none of them in sufficient numbers to
constitute danger or to afford a basis for political power. At the time
of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there is no doubt that the
principal members of the convention not only condemned slavery as a
moral, social, and political evil, but believed that by the suppression
of the slave trade it was in the course of gradual extinction in the
South, as it certainly was in the North. Washington, in his will,
provided for the emancipation of his own slaves, and said to Jefferson
that it "was among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by which
slavery in his country might be abolished." Jefferson said, referring to
the institution: "I tremble for my country when I think that God is just;
that His justice cannot sleep forever,"--and Franklin, Adams, Hamilton,
and Patrick Henry were all utterly opposed to it.
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