Anti-Slavery Opinions 
 
 BEFORE THE YEAR 1800 
 
 READ BEFORE THE CINCINNATI LITERARY CLUB, NOVEMBER 16, 1872 
 
 Bv WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE 
 
 \i 
 
 Librarian of the Public Library of Cincinnati 
 
 TO WHICH IS APPENDED A FAC SIMILE REPRINT OF DR. GEORGE BUCHANAN S ORATION 
 
 ON THE MORAL AND POLITICAL EVIL OF SLAVERY, DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC 
 
 MEETING OF THE MARYLAND SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE 
 
 ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, BALTIMORE, JULY 4, 1791 
 
 CINCINNATI 
 
 ROBERT CLARKE & CO 
 1873 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY OPINIONS 
 
 Before 1800. 
 
 I purpose this evening to call the attention of the 
 Club to the state of anti-slavery opinions in this country 
 just prior to the year 1800. In this examination I shall 
 make use of a very rare pamphlet in the library of Gen 
 eral Washington, which seems to have escaped the notice 
 of writers on this subject ; and shall preface my remarks 
 on the main topic of discussion with a brief description 
 of the Washington collection. 
 
 In the library of the Boston Athenaeum, the visitor 
 sees, as he enters, a somewhat elaborately-constructed 
 book-case, with glass front, filled with old books. This 
 is the library of George Washington, which came into 
 possession of the Athenaeum in 1849. It was purchased 
 that year from the heirs of Judge Bushrod Washington 
 the favorite nephew to whom the General left all his 
 books and manuscripts by Mr. Henry Stevens, of 
 London, with the intention of placing it in the British 
 Museum. Before the books were shipped, they were 
 bought by Mr. George Livermore and a few other lit 
 erary and public-spirited gentlemen of Boston, and pre 
 sented to the Athenaeum. Mr. Livermore, as discre- 
 
 268738 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 tionary executor of the estate of Thomas Dowse, the 
 literary leather-dresser" of Cambridge, added to the 
 gift one thousand dollars, for the purpose of printing a 
 description and catalogue of the collection, which has 
 not yet been done. 
 
 The collection numbers about twelve hundred 
 titles, of which four hundred and fifty are bound 
 volumes, and seven hundred and fifty are pamphlets and 
 unbound serials. Some books of the original library of 
 General Washington still remain at Mt. Vernon, and 
 are, or were a few years since, shown to visitors, with 
 other curiosities. 
 
 Separated from association with their former illustri 
 ous owner, the bound volumes, which are mostly Eng 
 lish books, present but few attractions. Among them are 
 a few treatises on the art of war and military tactics, 
 which evidently were never much read. These were im 
 ported after his unfortunate expedition with Braddock s 
 army, and before the revolutionary war. There are 
 books on horse and cattle diseases ; on domestic medi 
 cine ; on farming, and on religious topics -such works 
 as we might expect to find on the shelves of an intelli 
 gent Virginia planter. It is evident that their owner 
 was no student or specialist. Many of the books were 
 sent to him as presents, with complimentary inscrip 
 tions by the donors. The bindings are all in their origi 
 nal condition, and generally of the most common de 
 scription. The few exceptions were presentation copies. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Col. David Humphreys, Washington s aid-de-camp 
 during the revolutionary war, presents his " Miscel 
 laneous Works," printed in 1790, bound, regardless of 
 expense, by some Philadelphia binder, in full red mo 
 rocco, gilt and goffered edges, and with covers and fly 
 leaves lined with figured satin. As the book was for a 
 very distinguished man, the patriotic binder has stamped 
 on the covers and back every device he had in his shop. 
 Nearly all the volumes have the bold autograph of 
 "G? Washington," upon their title pages, and the 
 well-known book-plate, with his name, armorial bearings, 
 and motto, Exitus acta probat* on the inside of the 
 covers. 
 
 There are persons at the present day who have 
 very positive opinions on the subject of prose fiction, 
 believing that great characters like Jonathan Edwards 
 and George Washington never read such naughty books 
 when they were young. Let us see. Here is the "Ad 
 ventures of Peregrine Pickle ; in which are included the 
 Memoirs of a Lady of Quality," by Tobias Smollett, 
 in three volumes. On the title page of the first volume 
 is the autograph of George Washington, written in the 
 
 *The questionable morality of Gen. Washington s motto might 
 suggest that it was not originally adopted by him. The sentiment, 
 that * the end justifies the means," has been charged, as a reproach, 
 upon the Jesuits. It was the motto of the Northamptonshire family 
 from which Gen. Washington descended, and was used by him, prob 
 ably without a thought of its Jesuitical association, oj its meaning. 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 cramped hand of a boy of fourteen. The work shows 
 more evidence of having been attentively read, event to 
 the end of the third volume, than any in the library. 
 Here is the cc Life and Opinions of John Buncle," a 
 book which it is better that boarding-school misses 
 should not read. Yet Washington read it, and enjoyed 
 the fun ; for it is one of the few books he speaks of in 
 his correspondence as having read and enjoyed. The 
 present generation of readers are not familiar with John 
 Buncle. Of the book and its author, Hazlitt says : 
 "John Buncle is the English Rabelais, The soul of 
 Francis Rabelais passed into Thomas Amory, the 
 author of John Buncle. Both were physicians, and en 
 emies of much gravity. Their great business was to 
 enjoy life. Rabelais indulges his spirit of sensuality in 
 wine, in dried neats tongues, in Bologna sausages, in 
 Botorgas. John Buncle shows the same symptoms of 
 inordinate satisfaction in bread and butter. While 
 Rabelais roared with Friar John and the monks, John 
 Buncle gossiped with the ladies." 
 
 It is the good fortune of the youth of our age that 
 they are served with fun in more refined and discreet 
 methods ; yet there is a melancholy satisfaction in find 
 ing in the life of a great historical character like Wash 
 ington, who was the embodiment of dignity and pro 
 priety, that he could, at some period of his existence, 
 unbend and enjoy a book like John Buncle. He be- 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 comes, thereby, more human ; and the distance between 
 him and ordinary mortals seems to diminish. 
 
 Thomas Comber s C Discourses on the Common 
 Prayer," has three autographs of his father, Augustine 
 Washington, one of his mother, Mary Washington, and 
 one of his own, written when nine years of age. The 
 fly-leaves he had used as a practice book for writing his 
 father s and mother s names and his own, and for con 
 structing monograms of the family names.* 
 
 The pamphlets in the collection have intrinsically 
 more value than the larger works. They were nearly 
 all contemporaneous, and were sent to Washington by 
 
 ^ On one of the fly-leaves, written in a boy s hand, is " Mary Wash 
 ington and George Washington." Beneath is this memorandum : 
 " The above is in General Washington s handwriting when nine years 
 of age. [Signed,] G. W. Parke Custis," who was the grandson of Mrs. 
 Washington, and the last surviver of the family. He was born in 
 1781, and died at the Arlington House in 1857. 
 
 In the appraisement of General Washington s estate, after his death ? 
 this book was valued at twenty-five cents, and the Miscellaneous Works 
 of Col. Humphreys, at three dollars. The boy s scribbling, in the one 
 case, and the gorgeous binding in the other, probably determined these 
 values. In the appendix of Mr. Everett s Life of Washington, is 
 printed the appraisers inventory of Washington s library. Tracts on 
 Slavery was valued at Si.oo; Life of John Buncle, 2 vols., $3.00; 
 Peregrine Pickle, 3 vols., $1.50; Humphrey Clinker, 2$c. ; Jeffer 
 son s Notes on Virginia, $1.50; Tom Jones, or the History of a 
 Foundling, 3 vols., (third vol. wanting) 81.50; Gulliver s Travels, 2 
 vols., 1.50; Pike s Arithmetic, $2.00, 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 their authors, with inscriptions upon the title pages in 
 their authors handwriting, of the most profound respect 
 and esteem. Some of these pamphlets are now exceed 
 ingly rare. In a bound volume lettered "Tracts on 
 Slavery," and containing several papers, all of radical 
 anti-slavery tendencies, * is the one to which I wish 
 especially to call your attention. It is so rare that, 
 having shown this copy for fifteen years to persons 
 especially interested in this subject, and having made 
 the most diligent inquiry, I have never heard of another, 
 till within a few days since, when I learn from my friend, 
 Mr. George H. Moore, the librarian of the New York 
 Historical Society, that there is a copy in that society s 
 
 *The first of these tracts is "A Serious Address to the Rulers of 
 America, on the Inconsistency of their Conduct respecting Slavery ; 
 forming a contrast between the encroachments of England on American 
 liberty, and American injustice in tolerating slavery. By a Farmer, 
 Jjondon," 1783. 24 pages. 8vo. The author compared, in opposite 
 columns, the speeches and resolutions of the members of Congress in 
 behalf of their own liberty, with their conduct in continuing the slavery 
 of others. I have never seen the name of the author of this tract. It 
 was extensively circulated at the time, and had much influence in form 
 ing the anti-slavery sentiment which later existed. Another is "An 
 Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade. In two Parts. 
 By the Rev. T. Clarkson, M. A. To which is added an Oration upon 
 the Necessity of Establishing at Paris a Society for Promoting the Ab 
 olition of the Trade and Slavery of the Negroes. By J. P. Brissot de 
 Warville. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Bailey, for the Pennsyl 
 vania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of 
 Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage. 1789." 155 pp. 8vo. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 library. Its title is : "An Oration upon the Moral and 
 Political Evil of Slavery. Delivered at a Public Meet 
 ing of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Aboli 
 tion of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and 
 others unlawfully held in Bondage, Baltimore, July 4, 
 1791. By George Buchanan, M. D., Member of the 
 American Philosophical Society. Baltimore : Printed 
 by Philip Edwards, M,DCC,XCIII." Twenty pages, 
 octavo. 
 
 A Fourth-of-July oration in Baltimore, on the 
 moral and political evils of slavery, only four years after 
 the adoption of the Constitution, is an incident worthy 
 of historical recognition, and a place in anti-slavery lit 
 erature. The following extracts will give an idea of its 
 style and range of thought : 
 
 " God hath created mankind after His own image, 
 and granted them liberty and independence; and if 
 varieties may be found in .their structure and color, these 
 are only to be attributed to the nature of their diet and 
 habits, as also to the soil and the climate they may in 
 habit, and serve as flimsy pretexts for enslaving them. 
 
 " What, will you not consider that the Africans 
 are men ? That they have human souls to be saved ? 
 That they are born free and independent ? A violation 
 of these prerogatives is an infringement upon the laws of 
 God. 
 
 " Possessed of Christian sentiments, they fail not 
 to exercise them when opportunity offers. Things 
 
io Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 pleasing rejoice them, and melancholy circumstances 
 pall their appetites for amusements. They brook no 
 insults, and are equally prone to forgiveness, as to re 
 sentments. They have gratitude also, and will even 
 expose their lives to wipe off the obligation of past 
 favors ; nor do they want any of the refinements of 
 taste, so much the boast of those who call themselves 
 Christians. 
 
 c The talent for music, both vocal and instru 
 mental, appears natural to them ; neither is their genius 
 for literature to be despised. Many instances are re 
 corded of men of eminence among them. Witness 
 Ignatius Sancho, whose letters are admired by all men 
 of taste. Phillis Wheatley, who distinguished herself 
 as a poetess ; the Physician of New Orleans ; the Vir 
 ginia Calculator; Banneker, the Maryland Astronomer, 
 and many others, whom it would be needless to men 
 tion. These are sufficient to show, that the Africans 
 whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as 
 brutes, and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery, 
 are equally capable of improvement with yourselves. 
 
 "This you may think a bold assertion; but it is 
 not made without reflection, nor independent of the 
 testimony of many who have taken pains in their edu 
 cation. Because you see few, in comparison to their 
 number, who make any exertion of ability at all, you 
 are ready to enjoy the common opinion that they are 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1 800. 1 1 
 
 an inferior set of beings, and destined to the cruelties 
 and hardships you impose upon them. 
 
 cc But be cautious how long you hold such sentiments ; 
 the time may come when you will be obliged to abandon 
 them. Consider the pitiable situation of these most 
 distressed beings, deprived of their liberty and reduced 
 to slavery. Consider also that they toil not for them 
 selves from the rising of the sun to its going down, and 
 you will readily conceive the cause of their inaction. 
 What time or what incitement has a slave to become 
 wise? There is no great art in hilling corn, or in run 
 ning a furrow; and to do this they know they are 
 doomed, whether they seek into the mysteries of science 
 or remain ignorant as they are. 
 
 ct To deprive a man of his liberty has a tendency to 
 rob his soul of every spring to virtuous actions ; and 
 were slaves to become fiends, the wonder could not be 
 great. Nothing more assimulates a man to a beast/ 
 says the learned Montesquieu, than being among free 
 men, himself a slave; for slavery clogs the mind, per 
 verts the moral faculty, and reduces the conduct of man 
 to the standard of brutes. What right have you to 
 expect greater things of these poor mortals ? You 
 would not blame a brute for committing ravages upon 
 his prey ; nor ought you to censure a slave for making 
 attempts to regain his liberty, even at the risk of life 
 itself. 
 
 " Such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, 
 
12 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 that it destroys every human principle, vitiates the 
 mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and subverts 
 the springs of government. 
 
 cc What a distressing scene is here before us? 
 America, I start at your situation ! These direful 
 effects of slavery demand your most serious attention. 
 What ! shall a people who flew to arms with the valor 
 of Roman citizens when encroachments were made 
 upon their liberties by the invasion of foreign powers, 
 now basely descend to cherish the seed and propagate 
 the growth of the evil which they boldly sought to erad 
 icate? To the eternal infamy of our country this will 
 be handed down to posterity ^ written in the blood of 
 African innocence. If your forefathers have been de 
 generate enough to introduce slavery into your country 
 to contaminate the minds of her citizens, you ought to 
 have the virtue of extirpating it. 
 
 " In the first struggles for American freedom, in the 
 enthusiastic ardor of attaining liberty and independence, 
 one of the most noble sentiments that ever adorned the 
 human breast was loudly proclaimed in all her councils. 
 Deeply penetrated with the sense of equality, they held 
 it as a fixed principle, that all men are by nature, and 
 of right ought to be, free; that they were created equal, 
 and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness. Nevertheless, when the blessings of peace 
 were showered upon them ; when they had obtained these 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 13 
 
 rights which they had so boldly contended for, then they 
 became apostates to their principles, and riveted the 
 fetters of slavery upon the unfortunate Africans. 
 
 " Deceitful men ! Who could have suggested that 
 American patriotism would at this day countenance a 
 conduct so inconsistent; that while America boasts of 
 being a land of freedom, and an asylum for the op 
 pressed of Europe, she should at the same time foster 
 an abominable nursery of slaves to check the shoots of 
 her growing liberty ? Deaf to the clamors of criticism, 
 she feels no remorse, and blindly pursues the object of 
 her destruction ; she encourages the propagation of vice, 
 and suffers her youth to be reared in the habits of 
 cruelty. Not even the sobs and groans of injured in 
 nocence which reek from every state can excite her pity, 
 nor human misery bend her heart to sympathy. Cruel 
 and oppressive she wantonly abuses the rights of man, 
 and willingly sacrifices her liberty upon the altar of 
 slavery. 
 
 "What an opportunity is here given for triumph 
 among her enemies ! Will they not exclaim that, upon 
 this very day, while the Americans celebrate the anniver 
 sary of freedom and independence, abject slavery exist s 
 in all her states but one? [Note Massachusetts.] How 
 degenerately base to merit the rebuke ! Fellow country 
 men, let the heart of humanity awake and direct your 
 councils. Combine to drive the fiend monster from 
 your territories. 
 
14 Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 "Your laborers are slaves, and they have no incen 
 tive to be industrious; they are clothed and victualed, 
 whether lazy or hard-working; and, from the calcula 
 tions that have been made, one freeman is worth two 
 slaves in the field, which make it in many instances 
 cheaper to have hirelings; for they are incited to indus 
 try by hopes of reputation and future employment, 
 and are careful of their apparel and their implements of 
 husbandry, where they must provide them for them 
 selves ; whereas the others have little or no temptation 
 to attend to any of these circumstances. 
 
 " Fellow countrymen, let the hand of persecution be 
 no longer raised against you ; act virtuously; c do unto 
 all men as you would that they should do unto you/ 
 and exterminate the pest of slavery from the land." 
 
 The orator then goes on to hold up the horrors of 
 an insurrection. He reminds his hearers that in many 
 parts of the South the number of slaves exceeds that of 
 the whites. He reminds them that these slaves are 
 naturally born free and have a right to freedom ; that 
 they will not forever sweat under the yoke of slavery. 
 C Heaven," he says, "will not overlook such enormi 
 ties. She is bound to punish impenitent sinners, and 
 her wrath is to be dreaded by all. What, then, if the 
 fire of liberty shall be kindled among them ? What if 
 some enthusiast in their cause shall beat to arms and 
 call them to the standard of freedom ? Led on by the 
 hopes of freedom and animated by the inspiring voice 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 15 
 
 of their leaders, they would soon find that { a day, an 
 hour of virtuous liberty was worth a whole eternity of 
 bondage/ 
 
 " Hark ! methinks I hear the work begun; the blacks 
 have sought for allies and have found them in the wilder 
 ness, and have called the rusty savages to their assistance, 
 and are preparing to take revenge upon their haughty 
 masters." 
 
 To this threatening passage the orator has appended a 
 note, in which he says : cc This was thrown out as a con 
 jecture of what possibly might happen ; and the insurrec 
 tions of San Domingo tendto prove this danger to be 
 more considerable than has generally been supposed, and 
 sufficient to alarm the inhabitants of these states." 
 
 The contingency, which he thought might possibly 
 happen, did actually occur thirty-nine years later, when 
 an insurrection broke out, August, 1830, in Southamp 
 ton county, Virginia, under the lead of Nat Turner, a 
 fanatical negro preacher, in which sixty-one white men, 
 women, and children were murdered before it was sup 
 pressed. 
 
 He recommends immediate emancipation ; and if this 
 can not be done, " then," he says, "let the children be 
 liberated at a certain age, and in less than half a century 
 the plague will be totally rooted out from among you ; 
 thousands of good citizens will be added to your num 
 ber, and gratitude will induce them to become your 
 friends." 
 
1 6 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 This remarkable oration suggests some interesting 
 questions of historical inquiry. How far do these opin 
 ions represent the current sentiments of that time on the 
 subject of slavery ? It will be seen that they are of the 
 most radical type. I am not aware that Wendell Phillips 
 or-Wm. Lloyd Garrison ever claimed that the negro race 
 was equal in its capacity for improvement to the white 
 race. While their rhetoric was more chaste, they cer 
 tainly never denounced the system in more vigorous and 
 condemnatory terms. 
 
 Forty-four years later (October 21, 1835), Mr. Garri 
 son was waited upon, in open day, by a mob of most re 
 spectable citizens, while attending a meeting of the 
 Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, dragged through 
 the streets of Boston with a rope around his body, and 
 locked up in jail by the Mayor of that sedate city to pro 
 tect him from his assailants. On the 4th of July, 1834, 
 a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was 
 broken up in New York, and the house of Lewis Tappan 
 was sacked by mob violence. A month later, in the city 
 of Philadelphia, a mob against anti-slavery and colored 
 men raged for three days and nights. On the 28th of 
 July, 1836, a committee of thirteen citizens of Cincin 
 nati, appointed by a public meeting, of whom Jacob 
 Burnet, late United States Senator and Judge of the 
 Supreme Court of Ohio, was chairman, waited upon Mr. 
 James G. Birney and other members of the executive 
 committee of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, under 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 17 
 
 whose direction the cc Philanthropist," an anti-slavery 
 newspaper, was printed here, and informed them that un 
 less they desisted from its publication the meeting would 
 not be responsible for the consequences. Judge Burnet 
 stated that the mob would consist of five thousand per 
 sons, and that two-thirds of the property holders of the 
 city would join it. The committee gave Mr. Birney and 
 his friends till the next day to consider the question, when 
 they decided to make no terms with the rioters, and 
 to abide the consequences. That night the office 
 was sacked, and the press of the cc Philanthropist" was 
 thrown into the Ohio river. 
 
 But here was an oration delivered in the city of Bal 
 timore in the year 1791, advancing the most extreme 
 opinions, and it created not a ripple on the surface of 
 Southern society. 
 
 That the opinions of the oration did not offend those 
 to whom it was addressed, the official action of the 
 Society, which is printed on the third page, attests. It 
 is as follows : 
 
 "At a special meeting of the c Maryland Society for 
 Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of 
 Free Negroes and others Unlawfully held in Bondage/ 
 held at Baltimore, July 4, 1791, unanimously 
 
 "Resolved, That the president present the thanks of 
 the Society to Dr. George Buchanan, for the excellent 
 oration by him delivered this day, and,, at the same 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 time, request a copy thereof in the name and for the 
 use of the Society. 
 
 " Signed Samuel Sterett, President ; Alex. McKim, 
 Vice-President ; Joseph Townsend, Secretary." 
 
 The oration has this dedication : 
 
 " To the Honorable Thomas Jefferson, Esq., Secre 
 tary of State, whose partiotism since the American 
 Revolution has been uniformly marked by a sincere, 
 steady, and active attachment to the interest of his 
 country, and whose literary abilities have distinguished 
 him amongst the first of statesmen and philosophers 
 this oration is respectfully inscribed, as an humble testi 
 mony of the highest regard and esteem, by the Au 
 thor." 
 
 The author was evidently a straight Democrat. 
 
 Seven years ago I copied this oration with the inten 
 tion of reprinting it, with a brief historical introduction, 
 supposing I could readily find the few facts I needed. 
 But in this I was disappointed. Who was Dr. George 
 Buchanan ? That he was a member of the American 
 Philosophical Society at Philadelphia was apparent on 
 the title page; but that was all I could learn of him 
 from books or inquiry. I then wrote to a historical 
 friend in Baltimore to make inquiry for me there, and 
 I received letters from the author s son, McKean 
 Buchanan, senior paymaster in the United States navy, 
 since deceased, and from two grandsons, Mr. George B. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Coale and Dr. Wm. Edw. Coale, giving full partic 
 ulars, which I will condense : 
 
 Dr. George Buchanan was born on an estate, five 
 miles from Baltimore, September 19, 1763, and for 
 many years was a practicing physician in Baltimore. 
 He was a son of Andrew Buchanan, who was also born 
 in Maryland, and was General in the Continental troops 
 of Maryland during the Revolution, and was one of 
 the Commissioners who located the city of Baltimore. 
 Dr. George Buchanan studied medicine and took a 
 degree at Philadelphia. He then went to Europe and 
 studied medicine at Edinburgh, and later at Paris, taking 
 degrees at both places. Returning to Baltimore, he 
 married Letitia, daughter of the Hon. Thomas Mc- 
 Kean, an eminent jurist, who was a member of the 
 Continental Congress, one of the Signers of the Decla 
 ration of Independence, and was Governor of Pennsyl 
 vania from 1799 to 1806. In 1806, Dr. Buchanan re 
 moved to Philadelphia, and died the next year of yellow 
 fever, in the discharge of his official duties as Lazaretto 
 physician. His eldest son was Paymaster McKean 
 Buchanan, before mentioned. His youngest son was 
 Franklin Buchanan, captain in the United States navy 
 till he resigned, April 19, 1861, and went into the so- 
 called Confederate navy. He was, with the rank of 
 Admiral, in command of the iron-clad C Merrimac," and 
 was wounded in the conflict of that vessel with the 
 monitor cc Ericsson," at Hampton Roads, March 9, 
 
2O Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 1862, and was later captured by Admiral Farragut in 
 Mobile harbor. 
 
 " My brother," writes one of the grandsons, " told 
 me that the last time he saw Henry Clay, Mr. Clay 
 took his hand in both of his, and said, with great em 
 phasis : c It is to your grandfather that I owe my pres 
 ent position with regard to slavery. It was he who first 
 pointed out to me the curse it entailed on the white 
 man, and the manifold evils it brings with it." 
 
 In determining how far the sentiments contained in 
 this oration were the current opinions of the time, it 
 became necessary for me to know something definite of 
 the Cf Maryland Society for the Abolition of Slavery," 
 of the Virginia, the Pennsylvania, and other societies, 
 which existed at that time. This information I could 
 not obtain from anti-slavery books, or from the most 
 prominent abolitionists whom I consulted. The mat 
 ter seemed to have been forgotten, and it was the com 
 mon idea that there was nothing worth remembering of 
 the anti-slavery movement before 1830, when Mr. Gar 
 rison and his radical friends came upon the stage in 
 Boston. For the want of the facts I needed, I laid 
 aside the idea of reproducing the tract. The subject 
 was brought again to mind by hearing the excellent 
 paper, by Mr. S. E. Wright, our secretary, on the anti- 
 slavery labors of Benjamin Lundy, which he read to this 
 Club, a few months ago. The labors of Mr. Lundy be 
 gan in 1816, and ended with his death in 1839. Quite 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 21 
 
 recently I have obtained much of the information I 
 needed. 
 
 Among the unknown facts to which I could get no 
 clue at the time I have mentioned, were the names of 
 the "Virginia Calculator" and the cc Physician of New 
 Orleans," whom Dr. Buchanan mentions with Phillis 
 Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, and Banneker, the Mary 
 land astronomer, as being negroes who were distin 
 guished for their literary and mathematical acquirements. 
 Mr. Phillips had never heard of them, and he took the 
 trouble to make inquiries among his anti-slavery friends, 
 but without success. 
 
 A year or more after I had abandoned my little pro 
 ject, in looking over the files of the Columbian Cen- 
 tinal, printed in Boston, for 1790, I found under the 
 date of December 29th, in the column of deaths, the 
 following : 
 
 ct DIED Negro Tom, the famous African calculator, 
 aged 80 years. He was the property of Mrs. Eliza 
 beth Cox, of Alexandria. Tom was a very black man. 
 He was brought to this country at the age of fourteen, 
 and was sold as a slave with many of his unfortunate 
 countrymen. This man was a prodigy. Though he 
 could neither read nor write, he had perfectly acquired 
 the use of enumeration. He could give the number 
 of months, days, weeks, hours, minutes, and seconds, 
 for any period of time that a person chose to mention, 
 allowing in his calculations for all the leap years that 
 
22 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 happened in the time. He would give the number of 
 poles, yards, feet, inches, and barley-corns in a given 
 distance say, the diameter of the earth s orbit and in 
 every calculation he would produce the true answer in 
 less time than ninety-nine out of a hundred men would 
 take with their pens. And what was, perhaps, more 
 extraordinary, though interrupted in the progress of his 
 calculations, and engaged in discourse upon any other 
 subject, his operations were not thereby in the least de 
 ranged; he would go on where he left off, and could 
 give any and all of the stages through which the calcu 
 lation had passed. 
 
 " Thus died Negro Tom, this untaught arithme 
 tician, this untutored scholar. Had his opportunities of 
 improvement been equal to those of thousands of his 
 fellow-men, neither the Royal Society of London, the 
 Academy of Science at Paris, nor even a Newton him 
 self need have been ashamed to acknowledge him a 
 brother in science." 
 
 This obituary was doubtless extracted from a South 
 ern newspaper, A fact once found is easily found again. 
 I have come across the name of this unlettered negro 
 prodigy many times since, with the substance of the 
 facts already stated. In a letter which Dr. Benj. Rush, 
 of Philadelphia, addressed to a gentleman in Manches 
 ter, England, he says that, hearing of the astonishing 
 powers of Negro Tom, he, in company with other 
 gentlemen passing through Virginia, sent for him. A 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before i 800. 23 
 
 gentleman of the company asked Tom how many sec 
 onds a man of seventy years, some odd months, weeks, 
 and days had lived. He told the exact number in a 
 minute and a half. The gentleman took a pen, and 
 having made the calculation by figures, told the negro 
 that he must be mistaken, as the number was too great. 
 " Top, massa," said the negro, "you hab left out de 
 leap years/ On including the leap years in the calcu 
 lation, the number given by the negro was found to be 
 correct.* 
 
 That Dr. Buchanan did not mention his name is ex 
 plained by the fact that he died only six months before; 
 and the audience, who had doubtless read the obituary 
 notice just recited, or a similar one, knew who was 
 meant. Besides, he was a native African, and had no 
 name worth having. He was only Negro Tom. In 
 Bishop Gregoire s work, however, he is ennobled by the 
 name of Thomas Fuller, and in Mr. Needles Memoir 
 by the name of Thomas Tuller.f 
 
 * These facts may also be found in Steadman s Narrative of an Ex 
 pedition to Surinam, vol. 2. p. 160; in Bishop Gregoire s "Enquiry 
 into the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes," 
 p. 153; in Edw. Needles "Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania 
 Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery," p. 32 ; and in Bris- 
 sot de Warville s New Travels in the United States, p. 287, ed. 1792. 
 
 fMr. Needles says: " He was visited by William Hartshorn and 
 Samuel Coates of this city (Philadelphia), and gave correct answers to 
 all their questions such as, how many seconds there are in a year and 
 
24 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1 800. 
 
 Why Dr. Buchanan should have omitted to mention 
 the name of C the New Orleans physician " does not 
 appear, unless it be that he was equally well known. 
 His name, I have found recently, was James Derham. 
 Dr. Rush, in the American Museum for January, 1789, 
 gave an account of Dr. Derham, who was then a prac 
 titioner of medicine at New Orleans, and, at the time 
 the notice was written, was visiting in Philadelphia. 
 He was twenty-six years of age, married, member of the 
 Episcopal Church, and having a professional income of 
 three thousand dollars a year. He was born in Phila 
 delphia a slave, and was taught to read and write, and 
 occasionally to compound medicines for his master, who 
 was a physician. On the death of his master he was sold 
 to the surgeon of the Sixteenth British regiment, and. at 
 the close of the war was sold to Dr. Robert Dove, of 
 New Orleans, who employed him as an assistant in his 
 business. He manifested such capacity, and so won the 
 confidence and friendship of his master, that he was 
 liberated on easy terms after two or three years service, 
 and entered into practice for himself. " I have con 
 versed with him," says Dr. Rush, ct upon most of the 
 acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he 
 lives. I expected to have suggested some new medi- 
 
 a half. In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. How many sec 
 onds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours. In one 
 minute and a half, 2,110,500,800. He multiplied nine figures by 
 
 nine, etc., etc. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 25 
 
 cines to him, but he suggested many more to me. He 
 is very modest and engaging in his manners. He 
 speaks French fluently, and has some knowledge of the 
 Spanish/ * 
 
 It was unfortunate that these incidents had not 
 occurred early enough to have come to the knowledge 
 of Mr. Jefferson before he wrote his C Notes on Vir 
 ginia." These were precisely the kind of facts he was 
 in quest of. He probably would have used them, and 
 have strengthened the opinions he there expressed as to 
 the intellectual capacity of the negro race. 
 
 His "Notes on Virginia * were written in 1781-2. 
 His condemnation of slavery in that work is most em 
 phatic. " The whole commerce between master and 
 slave," he says, "is a perpetual exercise of the most 
 boisterous passions ; the most unremitting despotism 
 on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. 
 Our children see this and learn to imitate it. ... 
 The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the linea 
 ments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of 
 smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst of passions; and 
 thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, 
 can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. 
 The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners 
 and morals undepraved by such circumstances. With 
 
 ^Accounts of these two black men were prepared by Dr. Rush, for 
 the information of the London Society. 
 
26 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, 
 permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the 
 rights of the other, transforms those into despots and 
 these into enemies destroys the morals of the one part, 
 and the amor patri<e of the other ? . . Can the lib 
 erties of a nation be thought secure when we have re 
 moved their only firm basis a conviction in the minds 
 of men that these liberties are the gift of God; that 
 they are not to be violated but with His wrath? In 
 deed, I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God 
 is just that His justice can not sleep forever." Pp. 
 270-272, ed. Lond., 1787. 
 
 On the practical question, "What shall be done 
 about it?" Mr Jefferson s mind wavered; he was in 
 doubt. How can slavery be abolished? He pro 
 posed, in Virginia, a law, which was rejected, making 
 all free who were born after the passage of the act. 
 And here again he hesitated. What will become of 
 these people after they are free ? What are their capac 
 ities ? He had never seen an educated negro. He 
 had heard of Phillis Wheatley and Ignatius Sancho. He 
 did not highly estimate the poetry of the one, or the 
 sentimental letters of the other. He was willing to ad 
 mit, however, that a negro could write poetry and sen 
 timental letters. Beyond this all was in doubt. He 
 regarded it as highly probable that they could do noth 
 ing more. He says: "Comparing them by their fac 
 ulties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 27 
 
 to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in 
 reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be 
 found capable of tracing and comprehending the inves 
 tigations of Euclid " p. 232. He doubtingly adds : 
 cc The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of 
 reason and imagination must be hazarded with great 
 diffidence. To justify a general conclusion requires 
 many observations" p. 238. The opportunity for 
 making these observations he had never had. 
 
 It so happened that soon after writing this, Banne- 
 ker, the Maryland negro astronomer, who had distin 
 guished himself in the very faculty of mathematical rea 
 soning which Mr. Jefferson had supposed no negro 
 possessed, sent him his Almanac, with a letter. To the 
 letter Mr. Jefferson replied as follows : 
 
 tc I thank you sincerely for your letter of the I9th 
 instant, and for the Almanac it contained. Nobody 
 wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you ex 
 hibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents 
 equal to those of other colors of men, and that the ap 
 pearance of a want of them is owing merely to the de 
 graded condition of their existence, both in Africa and 
 America. I can add with truth, that nobody wishes 
 more ardently to see a good system commenced for 
 raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to 
 what it ought to be, as fast as the -imbecility of their 
 present existence, and other circumstances which can 
 not be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty 
 
28 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, 
 Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and mem 
 ber of the Philanthropic Society, because I consider it 
 a document to which your color had a right for their 
 justification against the doubts which have been enter 
 tained of them. I am, with great esteem, sir, your 
 most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 " THOS. JEFFERSON." * 
 
 The next instances of precocious black men which 
 must have come to his knowledge were, doubtless, 
 Negro Tom, in whom the mathematical faculty was 
 strangely developed, and James Derham, the New 
 Orleans physician. If Mr. Jefferson had rewritten his 
 "Notes," he would, probably, have included mathe 
 matics and medicine among the special subjects which 
 were peculiarly adapted to the capacities of the negro 
 mind. 
 
 It was not the question of the natural rights of the 
 negro, the prejudice of color, nor of the ruinous im 
 providence of the system of slavery, that controlled the 
 decision in Mr. Jefferson s mind, as to the methods by 
 which the system should be terminated. On these 
 points, he was as radical as the extremest abolitionist; 
 but he could not satisfy himself as to the mental capac 
 ity of the negro whether he had the full complement 
 of human capabilities, and the qualifications for equality 
 
 * Works, iii, p. 291. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 29 
 
 of citizenship with the white man ; for he saw that 
 emancipation, without expatriation, meant nothing else i \ 
 than giving the black man all the rights of citizenship. 
 The theory that the negro is a decaudalized ape, a pro 
 gressing chimpanzee, is an invention of the last forty 
 years, and contemporaneous with the discovery that the 
 Bible sanctions slavery. He was, on the whole, in 
 clined to the opinion that they were an inferior race of 
 beings, and that their residence, in a state of freedom, 
 among white men was incompatible with the happiness 
 of both. He thought they had better be emancipated, 
 and sent out of the country. He therefore took up 
 with the colonization scheme long before the Coloniza 
 tion Society was founded. He did not feel sure on this 
 point. With his practical mind, he could not see how 
 a half million of slaves could be sent out of the country, 
 even if they were voluntarily liberated;* where they 
 
 *In a letter to M. de Meusnier, dated January 24, 1786, Mr. 
 Jefferson says : u I conjecture there are six hundred and fifty thousand 
 negroes in the five southermost states, and not fifty thousand in the rest. 
 In most of the latter, effectual measures have been taken for their future 
 emancipation. In the former nothing is done toward that. The dis 
 position to emancipate them is strongest in Virginia. Those who de 
 sire it, form, as yet, the minority of the whole state, but it bears a re 
 spectable proportion to the whole, in numbers and weight of character ; 
 and it is constantly recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of 
 the young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself 
 that it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. 
 In Maryland and North Carolina, a very few are disposed to emanci- 
 
30 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 should be sent to, or how unwilling masters could be 
 compelled to liberate their slaves. While, therefore, he 
 did not favor immediate emancipation, he was zealous 
 for no other scheme. 
 
 Bishop Gregoire, of Paris, felt deeply hurt at Mr. 
 Jefferson s low estimate of the negro s mental capacity, 
 and wrote to him a sharp letter on the subject. Later, 
 the Bishop sent a copy of his own book on the Litera 
 ture of Negroes.* Acknowledging the receipt of the 
 Bishop s book, Mr. Jefferson says : 
 
 " Be assured that no person living wishes more sin 
 cerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the 
 doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the 
 grade and understanding allotted to them by nature, 
 and to find that, in this respect, they are on a par with 
 ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal ob 
 servation on the limited sphere of my own State, where 
 the opportunities for the development of their genius 
 were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less 
 
 pate. In South Carolina and Georgia, not the smallest symptom of 
 it ; but, on the contrary, these two states and North Carolina continue 
 importations of slaves. These have long been prohibited in all the 
 other states." Works, ix, p. 290. 
 
 *"De la Litterature des Negres; ou Recherches sur leurs Facultes 
 Intellectuelles, leurs Qualites Morales et leur Litterature, Paris, 1808." 
 8vo. The work was translated by D. B. Warden, Secretary of the 
 American Legation at Paris, and printed at Brooklyn, New York, in 
 1810. 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 31 
 
 so. I expressed them, therefore, with great hesitation ; 
 but whatever be their degree of talent, it is no measure 
 of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior 
 to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of 
 the person and property of others. On this subject 
 they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and 
 hopeful advances are making toward their re-establish 
 ment on an equal footing with other colors of the human 
 family. I pray you, therefore, to accept my thanks for 
 the many instances you have enabled me to observe of 
 respectable intelligence in that race of men, which can 
 not fail to have effect in hastening the day of their re 
 lief." Works, v, p. 429. 
 
 Writing to another person a few months later, he 
 alludes to this letter and says : "As to Bishop Gregoire, 
 I wrote him a very soft answer. It was impossible for 
 a doubt to be more tenderly or hesitatingly expressed 
 than it was in the Notes on Virginia; and nothing was, 
 or is, further from my intentions than to enlist myself 
 as a champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only ex 
 pressed a doubt." Works, v, p. 476. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson never got beyond his doubt ; and 
 Bishop Gregoire resented his passive position by omit 
 ting Mr. Jefferson s name from a list of fourteen Amer 
 icans, which included Mr. Madison, William Pinkney, 
 Dr. Benj. Rush, Timothy Dwight, Col. Humphreys, 
 and Joel Barlow, to whom, with other philanthropists, 
 he dedicated his book. 
 
32 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Washington, Madison, Patrick Henry, George 
 Mason, and nearly all the public men of Virginia and 
 Maryland of that period were in much the same state of 
 mind as Jefferson.* So was Henry Clay at a later 
 period. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, in August, 1785, wrote a letter to Dr. 
 Richard Price, of London, author of a treatise on Lib 
 erty, in which very advanced opinions were taken on 
 
 *Gen. Washington, although a slaveholder, put on record through 
 out his voluminous correspondence his detestation of the system of 
 slavery, as practiced at the South. 
 
 M. Brissot de Warville, in connection with Gen. Lafayette and other 
 French philanthropists, early in the year 1788, formed at Paris the 
 Philanthropic Society of the Friends of Negroes, to co-operate with 
 those in America and London, in procuring the abolition of the traffic in, 
 and the slavery of, the blacks. In furtherance of this object, M. Brissot 
 de Warville delivered an oration in Paris, February 17, 1788, which 
 was translated and printed by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, in 
 Philadelphia, the next year. In May of the same year, he arrived in 
 the United States, and wrote the most impartial and instructive book of 
 travels in America (with the exception of M. de Tocqueville s), that 
 has ever been made by a foreigner, of which several editions in English 
 were printed in London. His principles brought him into intimate 
 relations with persons who held anti-slavery sentiments, and his work 
 gives a very interesting epitome of the prevalence of those sentiments 
 at that period. 
 
 He visited General Washington at Mount Vernon, and conversed 
 with him freely on the subject of slavery. He states that the General 
 had three hundred slaves distributed in log houses in different parts of 
 his plantation of ten thousand acres. "They were treated," he said, 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 33 
 
 the slavery question. Concerning the prevalence of 
 anti-siavery opinions at that period, he says: " South 
 ward of the Chesapeake your book will find but few 
 readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject 
 of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesa 
 peake, the bulk of the people will approve its theory, 
 and it will find a respectable minority, a minority ready 
 to adopt it in practice; which, for weight and worth 
 of character, preponderates against the greater num- 
 
 " with the greatest humanity; well fed, well clothed, and kept to mod 
 erate labor. They bless God without ceasing for having given them 
 so good a master. It is a task worthy of a soul so elevated, so pure 
 and so disinterested, to begin the revolution in Virginia to prepare the 
 way for the emancipation of the negroes. This great man declared to 
 me that he rejoiced at what was doing in other States on the subject 
 [of emancipation alluding to the recent formation of several state 
 societies] ; that he sincerely desired the extension of it in his own State ; 
 but he did not dissemble that there were still many obstacles to be 
 overcome ; that it was dangerous to strike too vigorously at a prejudice 
 which had begun to diminish; that time, patience, and information 
 would not fail to vanquish it. Almost all the Virginians, he added, 
 believe that the liberty of the blacks can not soon become general. 
 This is the reason why they do not wish to form a society which may 
 give dangerous ideas to their slaves. There is another obstacle the 
 great plantations of which the state is composed, render it necessary 
 for men to live so dispersed that frequent meetings of a society would 
 be difficult. 
 
 "I replied, that the Virginians were in an error; that evidently, 
 sooner or later, the negroes would obtain^ their liberty everywhere. 
 It is then for the interest of your countrymen to prepare the way 
 to such a revolution, by endeavoring to reconcile the restitution of 
 

 34 Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 ber who have not the courage to divest their fami 
 lies of a property which, however, keeps their con 
 sciences unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake you 
 may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, 
 as you find, here and there, a robber and murderer, but 
 in no greater number. In that part of America there 
 are but few slaves, and they can easily disincumber them 
 selves of them ; and emancipation is put in such a train 
 
 the rights of the blacks, with the interest of the whites. The means 
 necessary to be taken to this effect can only be the work of a society ; 
 and it is worthy the saviour of America to put himself at the head, and 
 to open the door of liberty to 300,000 unhappy beings of his own 
 State. He told me that he desired the formation of a society, and that 
 he would second it; but that he did not think the moment favorable. 
 Doubtless more elevated views filled his soul. The destiny of America 
 was just ready to be placed a second time in his hands." Ed. of 1792, 
 pp. 290, 291. 
 
 " The strongest objection to freeing the negroes lies in the character, 
 the manners, and habits of the Virginians. They seem to enjoy the 
 sweat of slaves. They are fond of hunting ; they love the display of 
 luxury, and disdain the idea of labor. This order of things will 
 change when slavery shall be no more." Id., p. 281. 
 
 Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, oppos 
 ing the adoption of the Federal Constitution, said : " In this State there 
 are 236,000 blacks. May Congress not say that every black man must 
 fight? Did we not see a little of this in the last war? We were not 
 so hard pushed as to make emancipation general ; but acts of Assembly 
 passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free. 
 Another thing will contribute to bring this event [emancipation] about. 
 Slavery is detested. We feel its fatal effects; we deplore it with all 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 35 
 
 that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of 
 Maryland. In Maryland I do not find such a disposi 
 tion to begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. 
 These [the inhabitants of Virginia] have sucked in the 
 principles of liberty, as it were, with their mothers 
 milk, and it is to these I look with anxiety to turn the 
 fate of this question. Be not, therefore, discouraged. 
 The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, 
 
 the pity of humanity. Have they [Congress] not power to provide 
 for the general defense and welfare? May they not think that these 
 call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves 
 free, and will they not be warranted by that power ? 
 
 " I repeat it again, that it would rejoice my very soul, that every one of 
 my fellow-beings were emancipated. As we ought, with gratitude, to 
 admire that decree of Heaven which has numbered us among the 
 free, we ought to lament and deplore the necessity of holding our 
 fellow-men in bondage. But is it practicable, , by any human means, 
 to liberate them without producing the most dreadful and ruinous con 
 sequences ?" Elliott s Debates, Va., pp. 590, 591. 
 
 George Mason, in the same convention, speaking against article I, 
 section 9, of the Constitution, which forbids Congress from prohibit 
 ing the importation of slaves before the year 1808, said: " It [the im 
 portation of slaves] was one of the great causes of our separation from 
 Great Britain. Its exclusion has been a principal object of this State, 
 and most of the States of the Union. The augmentation of slaves 
 weakens the States; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgrace 
 ful to mankind : yet, by this Constitution, it is continued for twenty 
 years. As much as I value a union of all the States, I would not ad 
 mit the Southern States into the Union, unless they agree to the discon 
 tinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it brings weakness, and not 
 strength, to the Union." Elliott s Debates, Va., p. 45 z. 
 
 J 
 
36 Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 since the remodeling of its plan, is the place where are 
 collected together all the young men of Virginia under 
 preparation for public life. There they are under the 
 direction (most of them) of a Mr. George Wythe [Pro 
 fessor of Law from 1779 to 1789], one of the most vir 
 tuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the sub 
 ject of slavery are unequivocal. I am satisfied if you 
 could resolve to address an exhortation to these young 
 men, with all the eloquence of which you are master, 
 that its influence on the future decision of this impor 
 tant question would be great, perhaps decisive." 
 Works, i, p. 377. 
 
 *Mr. Jefferson s doubts, and his timidity, as a person of political as 
 pirations, in treating the subject of slavery in a practical manner, re 
 duced his conduct to the verge of cowardice, if not of duplicity. While 
 writing to Dr. Price in this assured tone, and urging him to exhort the 
 young men of the College of W illiam and Mary, on the evils of slavery, 
 he was afraid to have these same students see what he had himself 
 written on the same subject, in his " Notes on Virginia." M. de 
 Chastelleux had written to him desiring to print some extracts from the 
 " Notes on Virginia/ in the Journal de Physique. Mr. Jefferson re 
 plied, June 7, 1785, only two months before he wrote the above letter 
 to Dr. Price, saying : " I am not afraid that you should make any ex 
 tracts you please for the Journal de Physique, which come within their 
 plan of publication. The strictures on slavery, and on the constitu 
 tion of Virginia, are not of that kind, and they are the parts which I 
 do not wish to have made public; at least, till I know whether their 
 publication would do most harm or good. It is possible that, in my 
 own country, these strictures might produce an irritation which would 
 indispose the people toward the two great objects I have in view; that 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 37 
 
 There was great progress in anti-slavery sentiment 
 between 1785 and 1791, when Maryland was fully 
 awake, as we see from Dr. Buchanan s Oration. In 
 proof of this progress, it may be stated that, in 1784, 
 Mr. Jefferson drew up an ordinance for the government 
 of the Western territories, in which he inserted an arti 
 cle prohibiting slavery in the territories after the year 
 1800. On reporting the ordinance to the Continental 
 Congress, the article prohibiting slavery was forthwith 
 stricken out, and the report, as amended, was accepted ; 
 but the ordinance itself was a dead letter. Three years 
 later, the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the organ- 
 is, the emancipation of their slaves, and the settlement of their consti 
 tution on a firmer and more permanent basis. If I learn from thence 
 that they will not produce that effect, I have printed and reserved just 
 copies enough to be able to give one to every young man at the Col 
 lege." Works, i, p. 339. 
 
 Writing from Paris, August 13, 1786, to George Wythe, Mr. Jef 
 ferson says: "Madison, no doubt, informed you why I sent only a 
 single copy of my Notes to Virginia. Being assured by him that 
 they will not do the harm I had apprehended; but, on the contray, may 
 do some good, I propose to send thither the copies remaining on hand, 
 which are fewer than I intended." Works, ii, p. 6. Mr. Madison s 
 communications to Mr. Jefferson on the subject are in his "Letters 
 and other Writings," i, pp. 202, 211. M. Brissot de Warville pro 
 posed to Mr. Jefferson to become a member of the Philanthropic 
 Society of Paris. Mr. Jefferson replied, February 12, 1788,33 fol 
 lows: "I am very sensible of the honor you propose to me, of be 
 coming a member of the society for the abolition of the slave trade. 
 You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not 
 

 3 8 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 ization of the Northwest Territory, embracing what is 
 now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, 
 and Wisconsin, was reported by a committee consisting 
 of Edward Carrington of Virginia, Nathan Dane of 
 Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, John 
 Kean of South Carolina, and Melancthon Smith of New 
 York, acting under the advice of Dr. Mannasseh Cut- 
 
 3 O 
 
 ler, citizen of Massachusetts, who was then in New York, 
 attending the sessions of Congress, for the purpose of 
 buying land for the Ohio Company, which made, the 
 next year, the first English settlement in that Territory, 
 at Marietta. The Ordinance provided that "there 
 shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the 
 
 only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery ; and certainly no 
 body will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object. 
 But the influence and information of the friends to this proposition in 
 France, will be far above the need of "my association. I am here as a 
 public servant; and those whom I serve, having never yet been able to 
 give their voice against the practice, it is decent for me to avoid too 
 public demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serv 
 ing the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond the 
 water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those motives, 
 therefore, which govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured 
 of my wishes for the success of your undertaking." Works, ii, p. 357. 
 Compare this record with Mr. Garrison s, which he put forth in 
 the "Liberator," in 1831. He had been accused of using plain and 
 harsh language. He says: " My country is the world, and my country 
 men are all mankind. I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromis 
 ing as justice. lam in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not ex 
 cuse ; I will not retreat a single inch ; and / will be beard" 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 39 
 
 said Territory." It was passed without debate, or the 
 offer (except by the committee) of an amendment, by 
 the vote of every state. A few years earlier or later, 
 such a vote would have been impossible.* Just before 
 this date, commenced the great Southern awakening on 
 the subject of slavery, of which so little is now known, 
 and of which Dr. Buchanan s Oration is an illustration. 
 There never has been a time since 1619, when the 
 first slave ship, a Dutch man-of-war, entered James 
 river, in Virginia, when in our country there were not 
 persons protesting against the wickedness and impolicy 
 of the African slave trade and of the domestic slave sys 
 tem. Slavery was introduced into the American colo 
 nies, aeainst the wishes of the settlers, by the avarice 
 
 o 
 
 of British traders and with the connivance of the British 
 government. Just previous to the Revolution, the 
 
 *Mr. Jeffersons indecision in dealing with an institution he so much 
 abhorred, is seen in the anti-slavery provision of his ordinance. He 
 would allow slavery to get a foot-hold in the western territories, and 
 at the end of sixteen years would prohibit it. ] By southern votes, this 
 clause was fortunately stricken out. Every northern state voted to re 
 tain Mr. Jefferson s fifth article of compact, and its rejection, which 
 was regarded at the time, as a public calamity, was soon seen to be a 
 piece of good fortune. Timothy Pickering, wriiing to Rufus King, 
 nearly a year later (March 8, 1785), says : I should indeed have ob 
 jected to the period proposed (1800) for the exclusion of slavery; for 
 the admission of it for a day, or an hour, ought to have been forbidden. 
 It will be infinitely easier to prevent the evil at first, than to eradicate 
 it, or check it, at any future time. To suffer the continuance of slaves 
 
4O Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Colony of Massachusetts made several attempts to re 
 lieve itself of the incubus, and the acts of the General 
 Court were smothered or vetoed by three successive 
 Governors, under the plea that they had such instruc 
 tions from England. In 1772, the Assembly of Virginia 
 petitioned the throne of England to stop the importa 
 tion of slaves, using language as follows: " We are en 
 couraged to look up to the throne and implore your 
 Majesty s paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a 
 most alarming nature. The importation of slaves into 
 the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been 
 considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its 
 present encouragement, we have much reason to fear will 
 endanger the very existence of your Majesty s domin 
 ions. Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we 
 most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all re 
 straints on your Majesty s Governors of this colony, 
 
 till they can be gradually emancipated, in states already overrun with 
 them, may be pardonable ; but to introduce them into a territory where 
 none now exist, can never be forgiven. For God s sake, let one more 
 effort be made to prevent so terrible a calamity." 
 
 Mr. King, eight days later, moved, in Congress, to attach an article 
 of compact to Mr. Jefferson s ordinance, in the place of the one stricken 
 out, in substantially the words that stand in the Ordinance of 1787: 
 " That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any 
 of the States described in the resolve of Congress of April 23, 1784." 
 The matter was referred to a committee ; but was never taken up and 
 acted on. If Mr. King s resolution had passed, it would have excluded 
 slavery from Kentucky, Tennessee, and all the Western territories. 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 41 
 
 which inhibit to their assisting to such laws as might 
 check so very pernicious a commerce." No notice was 
 taken of the petition by the crown. This was the prin 
 cipal grievance complained of by Virginia at the com 
 mencement of the revolutionary war. 
 
 The limits allowed me forbid my giving even a sketch 
 of legislative action, of the opinions of great men, of 
 the labors of Samuel Sewall, George Keith, Samuel 
 Hopkins, William Burling, Ralph Sandiford, Anthony 
 Benezet, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and others, and 
 of the literature of the subject, from the beginning of the 
 irrepressible conflict in 1619 down to the period we are 
 considering.* 
 
 *George Keith, a Quaker, about the year 1693, printed a pamphlet 
 in which he charged his own religious denomination, that they should 
 set their negroes at liberty, after some reasonable time of service." 
 Samuel Sewall, Judge of the Superior Court pf Massachusetts, in 1700, 
 printed a tract against slavery, entitled, "The Selling of Joseph, a 
 Memorial," which he gave to each member of the Qeneral Court, to cler^ 
 gymen, and to literary gentlemen with whom fye was acquainted. This 
 tract is reprinted in Moore s " Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts," p, 
 83. These were the earliest publications on slavery in this country. 
 Dr. Franklin having mentioned Keith s pamphlet, says : "About the 
 year 1728 or 1729, I myself printed a book for Ralph Sandyford, 
 another of your friends in this city, against keeping negroes in 
 slavery; two editions of which he distributed gratis. And about the 
 year 1736, I printed another book on the same subject for Benjamin Lay, 
 who also professed being one of your friends, and he distributed the 
 books chiefly among them." Works, x, 403. 
 
 The earliest statute for the suppression of slavery in the colonies 
 
42 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 T~ 
 
 The revolutionary war, and the questions which then 
 
 arose, turned the thoughts of men, as never before, to 
 the injustice and impolicy of slavery. At the first gen 
 eral Congress of the colonies, held at Philadelphia in 
 1774, Mr. Jefferson presented an exposition of rights, in 
 which he says : " The abolition of slavery is the greatest 
 object of desire in these colonies, when it was unhappily 
 introduced in their infant state." Among the "articles 
 of association" adopted by that Congress, October 20, 
 1774, was this : cc That we will neither import, nor pur 
 chase any slave imported, after the first day of December 
 next, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commod 
 ities or manufactures to those who are concerned in the 
 slave trade," 
 
 The first anti-slavery society, in this or any other 
 
 may be seen in Rhode Island Records, i, 248, under the date of May 
 19, 1652, which, however, was never enforced. 
 
 The earliest legislative protest against man-stealing, is the following: 
 " The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first oppor 
 tunity, to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-steal 
 ing, and also to prescribe such timely redress for what is past, and such 
 a law for the future, as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us 
 to have to do in such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of 
 all good and just men do order that the negro interpreter, with others 
 unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, (at the charge of the 
 country for present) sent to his native country of Guinea, and a letter 
 with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice 
 hereof desiring our honored Governor would please to put this order 
 in execution." November 4, 1646, Massachusetts Records, ii, p. 168. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1 800. 43 
 
 country, was formed April 14, 1775, at tne Sun Tavern, 
 on Second street, in Philadelphia. The original mem 
 bers of this society were mostly, and perhaps all of them, 
 Friends or Quakers. This religious society had, for 
 many years, earnestly protested against slavery. As 
 early as 1696 the yearly meeting had cautioned its mem 
 bers against encouraging the bringing in of any more 
 negroes. In 1743, and, again in 1755, the annual query 
 was made, whether their members were clear of importing 
 or buying slaves. In 1758, those who disobeyed the 
 advice of the yearly meeting were placed under discipline; 
 and in 1776, those who continued to hold slaves over the 
 lawful age, were disowned.* 
 
 The first anti-slavery society took the name of cc The 
 Society for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in 
 Bondage."f The society met four times in 1775, and on 
 
 *Patrick Henry, in a letter dated January I 8, 1773, to Robert Pleas- 
 ants, afterwards President of the Virginia Abolition Society, said: 
 " Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to 
 abolish slavery. It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to 
 show that it is at variance with that law that warrants slavery. I ex 
 hort you to persevere in so worthy a resolution. I believe a time will 
 come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable 
 evil." Wm. Goodell s Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 70. 
 
 -j-The preamble of the Constitution then adopted was as follows: 
 " Whereas, there are in this and the neighboring states a number of 
 negroes and others kept in a state of slavery, who, we apprehend, from 
 different causes and circumstances, are justly entitled to their freedom 
 by the laws and Constitution under which we live, could their particular 
 
44 Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 account of the war no meeting occurred again till Febru 
 ary, 1784, I was so fortunate to find among some 
 pamphlets, presented to our Public Library a short time 
 since, an original copy of the cc Rules and Regulations " of 
 this society, printed in 1784, which I have here.* Regu- 
 
 cases be candidly and openly debated, and evidence to the best advan 
 tage for them procured; but as in their situation, they, being tied by 
 the strong cords of oppression, are rendered incapable of asserting their 
 freedom, and many through this inability remain unjustly in bondage 
 through life ; it therefore has appeared necessary that some aid should 
 be extended towards such poor unhappy sufferers, wherever they may 
 be discovered, either in this city or its neighborhood; and, as loosing 
 the bonds of wickedness, and setting the oppressed free, is evidently 
 a duty incumbent on all professors of Christianity, but more especially 
 at a time when justice, liberty, and the laws of the l tand are the general 
 topics among most ranks and stations of men. Therefore, being desirous, 
 as much as in us lies, to contribute towards obtaining relief for all such 
 as are kept thus unjustly in thralldom, we have agreed to inspect and 
 take charge of all the particular cases which may hereafter come to our 
 knowledge ; and that our good intentions may operate the more suc 
 cessfully, and be of general utility to such as stand in need of our as 
 sistance, we judge it expedient to form ourselves into a regular society, 
 by the name of " The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes unlaw 
 fully held in Bondage." The officers elected were John Baldwin, 
 President; Samuel Davis, Treasurer; Thomas Harrison, Secretary. 
 Six members were also appointed a Committee of Inspection, and a 
 number of cases were forthwith committed to their care. Edw. 
 Needles s Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania Society, p. 15. 
 
 *Appended to the Rules and Regulations, is the act of 1780, provid 
 ing for the gradual abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania. The mem 
 bers of the Philadelphia Society were especially active in procuring 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1 800. 45 
 
 lar meetings were held till April, 1787, when the constitu 
 tion was revised and made to include the "Abolition of 
 Slavery" as well as the "Relief of Free Negroes" and 
 Dr. Benjamin Franklin was chosen president, and Benja 
 min Rush, secretary, both signers of the Declaration of 
 Independence.* 
 
 the passage of this act. Anthony Benezet held private interviews with 
 every member of the government on the subject. The act passed the 
 assembly by a vote of 34 to 21. The minority entered a protest 
 against it on several grounds : First, because it would be offensive to 
 other states, and would weaken the bonds of union with them ; Sec 
 ond, while they approved of the justice and humanity of manumitting 
 slaves in time of peace, this was not the proper time ; Third, they did 
 not approve of slaves becoming citizens, of their voting and being 
 voted for, of intermarrying with white persons, etc. ; Fourth, because 
 the motion to postpone to the next session of the Assembly had been 
 overruled. 
 
 *James Pemberton and Jonathan Penrose were chosen Vice-Presi- 
 dents; James Starr, Treasurer; and Wm. Lewis, John D. Cox, Miers 
 Fisher, and Wrn. Rawle, Counselors. Thirty-six new members were 
 elected at this meeting. The preamble of the new organization was 
 as follows: "It having pleased the Creator of the world to make of 
 one flesh all the children of men, it becomes them to consult and pro 
 mote each other s happiness, as members of the same family, however 
 diversified they may be by color, situation, religion, or different states 
 of society. It is more especially the duty of those persons who pro 
 fess to maintain for themselves the rights of human nature^and who 
 acknowledge the obligations of Christianity, to use such means as are 
 in their power to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the 
 human race ; and in a more particular manner to such of their fellow- 
 creatures as are entitled to freedom by the laws and constitutions of 
 
46 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 The society entered with zeal upon its mission, circu 
 lating its documents, and opening a correspondence with 
 eminent men in the United States and in Europe.* 
 
 any of the United States, and who, notwithstanding, are detained in 
 bondage by fraud or violence. JFrom a full conviction of the truth and 
 obligation of these principles; from a desire to diffuse them wherever 
 the miseries and vices of slavery exist, and in humble confidence of the 
 favor and support of the Father of mankind, the subscribers have as 
 sociated themselves, under the title of The Pennsylvania Society for 
 promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes 
 unlawfully held in Bondage, and for improving the condition of the 
 African race." 5 Needles s Memoir, p. 30. 
 
 *The secretaries were directed to have one thousand copies of the 
 Constitution printed, together with the names of the officers of the 
 society, and the acts of the Legislature of Pennsylvania for the gradual 
 abolition of slavery. They were also to prepare letters to be sent to 
 each of the Governors of the United States, with a copy of the Consti 
 tution and laws, and a copy of Clarkson s essay on "The Commerce 
 and Slavery of the Africans." They were also directed to write letters 
 to the Society in New York, to Thomas Clarkson and Dr. Price of 
 London, and to the Abbe Raynall, in France. Needles s Memoir, 
 p. 30. 
 
 Dr. Franklin drew up a " Plan for Improving the Condition of the 
 Free Blacks." It embraced : First, a Committee of Inspection, who 
 shall superintend the morals, general conduct, and ordinary situation of 
 the free negroes, and afford them advice and instruction, protection 
 from wrongs, and other friendly offices. Second, a Committee of 
 Guardians, who shall place out children and young people with suitable 
 persons, that they may, during a moderate time of apprenticeship or 
 servitude, learn some trade, or other business of subsistence. Third, 
 a Committee of Education, who shall superintend the school instruction, 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1 800. 47 
 
 The New York " Society for Promoting the Manu 
 mission of Slaves " was organized January 25, 1785, 
 and John Jay was the first president. On being ap- 
 
 of the children and youth of the free blacks. Fourth, a Committee 
 of Employ, who shall endeavor to procure constant employment for 
 those free negroes who are able to work, as the want of this would 
 occasion poverty, idleness, and many vicious habits. The entire plan 
 may be seen in Dr. Franklin s Works, ii, pp. 513, 514. Immediately 
 following, in the same volume, is "An Address to the Public." from 
 the Pennsylvania Society, also written by Dr. Franklin, in aid of rais 
 ing funds for carrying out the purposes of the society. 
 
 M. Brissot de Warville, who visited the New York and Philadelphia 
 Societies in 1788, says : " It is certainly a misfortune that such societies 
 do not exist in Virginia and Maryland, for it is to the persevering zeal 
 of those of Philadelphia and New York, that we owe the progress of 
 this [anti-slavery] revolution in America, and the formation of the So 
 ciety in London." He speaks of the impressions he received in attend 
 ing the meetings of these societies. " What serenity in the counte 
 nances of the members! What simplicity in their discourses; candor 
 in their discussions; beneficence and energy in their decisions! With 
 what joy they learned that a like Society was formed in Paris ! They 
 hastened to publish it in their gazettes, and likewise a translation of the 
 first discourse [his own] pronounced in that society. These beneficent 
 societies are at present contemplating new projects for the completion 
 of their work of justice and humanity. They are endeavoring to form 
 similar institutions in other states, and have succeeded in the state of 
 Delaware. The business of these societies is not only to extend light 
 and information to legislatures and to the people at large, and to form 
 the blacks by early instruction in the duties of citizens; but they ex 
 tend gratuitous protection to them in all cases of individual oppression, 
 and make it their duty to watch over the execution of the laws, which 
 
48 A nti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 pointed Chief Justice of the United States, he resigned, 
 and Alexander Hamilton was appointed to his place. 
 This society circulated gratuitously Dr. Samuel Hop 
 kins^ Dialogue on Slavery, and Address to Slaveholders, 
 and other documents. In 1787, the Society offered a 
 
 have been obtained in their favor. Mr. Myers Fisher, one of the first 
 lawyers of Philadelphia, is always ready to lend them his assistance, 
 which he generally does with success, and always without reward. 
 These societies have committees in different parts of the country to 
 take notice of any infractions of these laws of liberty, and to propose 
 to the legislature such amendments as experience may require" pp. 
 291-294, 
 
 In an appendix, written in 1791, he says: " My wishes have not 
 been disappointed. The progress of these societies is rapid in the 
 United States; there is one already formed even in Virginia." His 
 English translator adds, that there has also one been formed in the 
 state of Connecticut. 
 
 In Needles Memoir are the names of the following persons who 
 were officers, and served on committees, of the Pennsylvania Society 
 before the year 1800: John Baldwin, Samuel Davis, Thomas Harrison, 
 Anthony Benezet, Thomas Meredith, John Todd, James Starr, Samuel 
 Richards, James Whiteall, Wm. Lippencott, John Thomas, Benjamin 
 Horner, John Evans, Lambert Wilmore, Edward Brooks, Thomas 
 Armit, John Warner, Daniel Sidrick, Thomas Barton, Robert Evans 
 Benj. Miers, Robert Wood, John Eldridge, Jonathan Penrose, Wm., 
 Lewis, Francis Baily, Norris Jones, Tench Cox, Wm. Jackson, Benj. 
 Rush, Benj. Franklin, James Pemberton, John D. Cox, Wm. Rawle, 
 Miers Fisher, Temple Franklin, John Andrews, Richard Peters, 
 Thomas Paine, Caleb Lownes, S. P. Griffiths, John Olden, John 
 Todd, Jr., John Kaighn, Wm. Rogers, Benj. Say, Thomas Parker, 
 Robert Wain, Samuel Pancoast, Thomas Savery, Robert Taggert, 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 49 
 
 gold medal for the best discourse, at the public com 
 mencement of Columbia College, on the injustice and 
 cruelty of the slave-trade, and the fatal effects of 
 slavery. The London Society was organized July 17, 
 1787; the Paris Society in February, 1788;* and the 
 Delaware Society the same year.f The Maryland 
 
 John Poultney, Wm. Zane, Joseph Moore, Joseph Budd, Wm. Mclll- 
 henny, Samuel Baker, Jonathan Willis, Richard Jones, Ellis Yarnall, 
 Thomas Arnott, Philip Benezet, Samuel Emlen, Jr., Jacob Shoemaker, 
 Jr., Richard Wells, Bart. Wistar, R. Wells, J. McCrea, Nathan Boys, 
 J. Proctor, Robert Patterson, Walter Franklin, Edward Farris, John 
 Ely, Samuel M. Fox, Sallows Shewell. John Woodside, Wm. Garrum, 
 Thomas Ross, Joseph Sharpless, Joseph Cruikshanks, G. Williams, 
 Wm. Webb, Geo. Williams, David Thomas, Samuel Bettle, Edward 
 Garrigues. 
 
 *At the end of M. Brissot de Warville s oration at Paris, February 19, 
 1788, on the necessity of establishing such a society, is a note, which 
 states that, after the Paris Society had been formed, " in the space of 
 six weeks, ninety others, distinguished for their nobility, for their 
 offices, and as men of letters, have made application to be admitted 
 into the Society. The Marquis de la Fayette is one of the founders of 
 this Society, and he gives it a support, so much the more laudable, as 
 the Society of Paris has many great difficulties to encounter, which are 
 unknown to the societies in London and America." 
 
 fM. Brissot, writing in September, 1788, speaks of the Delaware 
 Society as then existing. Warner Mifflin was its most enterprising 
 member. M. Brissot says of him : " One of the most ardent petition 
 ers to Congress in this cause was the respectable Warner Mifflin. His 
 zeal was rewarded with atrocious calumnies, which he always answered 
 with mildness, forgiveness, and argument " p. 300. A pertion which 
 
50 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Society was formed September 8, 1789,* and the same 
 year the Rhode Island Society was organized in the 
 house of Dr. Hopkins, at Newport. In 1790, the 
 Connecticut Society was formed, of which Dr. Ezra 
 Stiles, President of Yale College, and Judge Simeon 
 
 Mr. Mifflin made to Congress in November, 1792, for the abolition of 
 slavery, was, by vote of the House, returned to him by the clerk. 
 Annals of Congress, iii, p. 71. On March 23, 1790, the following 
 resolution on the subject of emancipation, after discussion in committee 
 of the whole House, was adopted : " That Congress have no authority 
 to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them 
 in any of the States, it remaining with the several States alone to pro 
 vide any regulations therein which humanity and true policy may 
 require." Annals, i, p. 1523. 
 
 * Constitution of the Maryland Society for promoting the Abolition of 
 Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes and others unlawfully held in 
 Bondage. 
 
 The present attention of Europe and America to slavery, seems 
 to constitute that crisis in the minds of men, when the united en 
 deavors of a few may greatly influence the public opinion, and pro 
 duce, from the transient sentiment of the times, effects, extensive, 
 lasting, and useful. 
 
 The common Father of mankind created all men free and equal; 
 and his great command is, that we love our neighbor as ourselves 
 doing unto all men as we would they should do unto us. The human 
 race, however varied in color or intellects, are all justly entitled to lib 
 erty ; and it is the duty and the interest of nations and individuals, 
 enjoying every blessing of freedom, to remove this dishonor of the 
 Christian character from amongst them. From the fullest impression of 
 the truth of these principles; from an earnest wish to bear our testi 
 mony against slavery in all its forms, to spread it abroad as far as the 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Baldwin, were the president and secretary. The Vir 
 ginia Society was formed in 1791; and the New Jersey 
 Society in 1792. 
 
 sphere of our influence may extend, and to afford our friendly assist 
 ance to those who may be engaged in the same undertaking; and in the 
 humblest hope of support from that Being, who takes, as an offering to 
 himself, what we do for each other 
 
 We, the subscribers, have formed ourselves into the " MARYLAND 
 SOCIETY for promoting the ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, and the RELIEF OF 
 FREE NEGROES and OTHERS unlawfully held in bondage." 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 I. The officers of the Society are a president, vice-president, sec 
 retary, treasurer, four counselors, an electing-committee of 
 twelve, an acting-committee of six members. All these, except 
 the acting-committee, shall be chosen annually by ballot, on the 
 first seventh-day, called Saturday, in the month called January. 
 II. The president, and in his absence the vice-president, shall sub 
 scribe all the public acts of the Society. 
 
 III. The president, and in his absence, the vice-president, shall more 
 over have the power of calling a special meeting of the Society 
 whenever he shall judge proper, or six members require it. 
 
 IV. The secretary shall keep fair records of the proceedings of the 
 Society ; he shall also conduct the correspondence of the Soci 
 ety, with a committee of three appointed by the president; and 
 all letters on the business of the Society are to be addressed to 
 him. 
 
 V. Corresponding members shall be appointed by the electing-com 
 mittee. Their duty shall be to communicate to the secretary 
 and his assistants any information, that may promote the pur 
 poses of this institution, which shall be transferred by him to 
 the acting-committee. 
 
52 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 The principal officers of these societies were not 
 fanatics ; they were most eminent men in the land 
 judges of the courts, members of the Constitutional 
 
 VI. The treasurer shall pay all orders drawn by the president, or 
 vice-president ; which orders shall be his vouchers for his ex 
 penditures. He shall, before he enters on his office, give a bond 
 of not less than zoo/, for the faithful discharge of his duty. 
 VII. The duty of the councilors shall be to explain the laws and 
 constitutions of the States, which relate to the emancipation of 
 slaves ; and to urge their claims to freedom, when legal, before 
 such persons or courts as are authorized to decide upon them. 
 VIII. The electing-committee shall have sole power of admitting new 
 members. Two-thirds of them shall be a quorum for this pur 
 pose ; and the concurrence of a majority of them by ballot, 
 when met, shall be necessary for the admission of a member. 
 No member shall be admitted who has not been proposed at a 
 general meeting of the Society ; nor shall an election of a mem 
 ber take place in less than a month after the time of his being 
 proposed. Foreigners, or other persons, who do not reside in 
 this State, may be elected corresponding members of the So 
 ciety without being subject to an annual payment, and shall be 
 admitted to the meetings of the Society during their residence 
 in the State. 
 
 IX. The acting-committee shall transact the business of the Society 
 in its recess, and report the same at each quarterly meeting. 
 They shall have a right, with the concurrence of the president 
 or vice-president, to draw upon the treasurer for such sums ot 
 money as may be necessary to carry on the business of their ap 
 pointment. Four of them shall be a quorum. After their first 
 election, at each succeeding quarterly meeting, there shall be an 
 election for two of their number. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 53 
 
 Convention and of the Continental and United States 
 Congress. 
 
 It is to be observed that there was no anti-slavery 
 
 X. Every member, upon his admission, shall subscribe the Consti 
 tution of the Society, and contribute ten shillings annually, in 
 quarterly payments, towards defraying its contingent expenses. 
 If he neglect to pay the same for more than six months, he 
 shall, upon due notice being given him, cease to be a member. 
 XI. The Society shall meet on the first seventh-day, called Saturday, 
 in the months called January, April, July, and October, at such 
 time and place as shall be agreed to by a majority of the So 
 ciety. 
 
 XII. No person, holding a slave as his property, shall be admitted a 
 member of this Society; nevertheless, the Society may appoint 
 persons of legal knowledge, owners of slaves, as honorary- 
 counselors. 
 
 XIII. When an alteration in the Constitution is thought necessary, it 
 shall be proposed at a previous meeting, before it shall take 
 place. All questions shall be decided, where there is a division, 
 by a majority of votes. In those cases where the Society is 
 equally divided, the presiding officer shall have a casting vote. 
 
 OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 President PHILIP ROGERS. 
 f^ice- President JAMES CAREY. 
 Secretary JOSEPH TOWNSEND. 
 Treasurer DAVID BROWN. 
 
 Counselors ZEBULON HOLLINGSWORTH, ARCHIBALD ROBINSON. 
 Honorary- Counselors SAMUEL CHASE, LUTHER MARTIN. 
 Electing- Committee JAMES OGLEBY, ISAAC GREIST, GEO. MATTHEWS, 
 GEORGE PRESSTMAN, HENRY WILSON, JOHN BANKSON, ADAM FONER- 
 
54 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 society in Massachusetts, which enjoys the reputation 
 of originating all the radicalism of the land.* Slavery 
 had come to an end there, about the year 1780; but 
 when, or how, nobody is able to say definitely. Some 
 even say that it was abolished there in 1776, by the 
 Declaration of Independence declaring that " all men 
 are created equal." Others claim that, substantially 
 the same clause, " all men are born free and equal," 
 incorporated into the declaration of rights in the State 
 Constitution of 1780, abolished slavery. There was 
 no action of the State Legislature on the subject, and 
 no proclamation by the governor ; yet it was as well 
 settled in 1783, that there was no slavery in Massachu 
 setts, as it is to-day. This came about by a decision 
 of the Supreme Court that there was no slavery in the 
 State, it being incompatible with the declaration of rights. 
 " How, or by what act particularly," says Chief Justice 
 Shaw, " slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, whether 
 by the adoption of the opinion in Somerset s case as a 
 
 DEN, JAMES EICHELBERGER, WILLIAM HAWKINS, WILLIAM WILSON, 
 THOMAS DICKSON, GER. HOPKINS. 
 
 Acting- Committee JOHN BROWN, ELISHA TYSON, JAMES M CANNON, 
 ELIAS ELLICOTT, WILLIAM TRIMBLE, GEORGE DENT. 
 
 September 8, 1789. 
 
 *Of the one hundred and eighty-nine incorporators of the Rhode 
 Island Society, one hundred and seventeen were from Rhode Island, 
 sixty-eight from Massachusetts, three from Connecticut, and one from 
 Vermont. The Nation, Nov. 28, 1872. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 declaration and modification of the common law, or by 
 the Declaration of Independence, or by the constitu 
 tion of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine ; it 
 is rather a matter of curiosity than utility, it being 
 agreed on all hands that, if not abolished before, it 
 was by the declaration of rights." 18 Pickering, 209.* 
 
 *St. George Tucker, an eminent jurist, and Professor of Law at the 
 College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, January 24, 
 1795, addressed a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, of Boston, inquiring 
 into the condition of the negroes in Massachusetts, and the circum 
 stances under which slavery had come to an end in that state. His 
 object was to obtain facts which he could use in removing prejudice 
 against general emancipation in Virginia. "The introduction of 
 slavery into this country," he says, "is at this day considered among its 
 greatest misfortunes. I have cherished a hope that we may, from the 
 example of our sister State, learn what methods are most likely to suc 
 ceed in removing the same evils from among ourselves. With this 
 view, I have taken the liberty to enclose a few queries, which, if your 
 leisure will permit you to answer, you will confer on me a favor which 
 I shall always consider as an obligation." He propounded eleven 
 queries, to which Dr. Belknap replied at length. The correspond 
 ence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society s selections, iv, 
 pp. 191-211. The next year Judge Tucker printed, at Philadelphia, 
 his " Dissertation on Slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition 
 of it in Virginia," Dr. Belknap s replies to Judge Tucker s inquiries 
 have much historical interest. To the fifth query, " The mode by 
 which slavery hath been abolished ? " he says : " The general answer 
 is, that slavery hath been abolished here by public opinion, which began 
 to be established about thirty years ago. At the beginning of our con 
 troversy with Great Britain, several persons, who before had enter 
 tained sentiments opposed to the slavery of the blacks, did then take 
 
56 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Mr. Sumner asserted, in a speech in the Senate, 
 June 28, 1854, that "in all her annals, no person was 
 ever born a slave on the soil of Massachusetts." Mr. 
 Palfrey, in his History of New England,* says: " In 
 fact, no person was ever born into legal slavery in 
 Massachusetts ; " and Prof. Emory Washburn, in his 
 Lecture, January 22, 1869, on cc Slavery as it once pre 
 vailed in Massachusetts,"-)- says : cc Nor does the fact 
 that they were held as slaves, where the question as to 
 their being such was never raised, militate with the 
 
 occasion publicly to remonstrate against the inconsistency of contend 
 ing for their own liberty, and, at the same time, depriving other people 
 of theirs. Pamphlets and newspaper essays appeared on the subject ; 
 it often entered into the conversation of reflecting people ; and many 
 who had, without remorse, been the purchasers of slaves, condemned 
 themselves, and retracted their former opinion. The Quakers were 
 zealous against slavery and the slave-trade ; and by their means the 
 writings of Anthony Benezet of Philadelphia, John Woolman of New 
 Jersey, and others were spread through the country. Nathaniel Apple- 
 ton and James Swan, merchants of Boston, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, of 
 Philadelphia, distinguished themselves as writers on the side of liberty. 
 Those on the other side generally concealed their names ; but their 
 arguments were not suffered to rest long without an answer. The 
 controversy began about the year 1766, and was renewed at various 
 times till 1773, when it was warmly agitated, and became a subject of 
 forensic disputation at the public commencement at Harvard College." 
 p. 201. 
 
 , p. 30. 
 
 f Lectures by Members of the Mass. Historical Society on the 
 Early History of Massachusetts, p. 216. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 57 
 
 position already stated that no child was ever born 
 into lawful bondage in Massachusetts, from the year 
 1641 to the present hour." 
 
 These statements, in substance the same, seem like 
 a technical evasion. Thousands were born into actual 
 slavery whether it were legal or not was poor consola 
 tion to the slave lived as slaves, were sold as slaves, 
 and died as slaves in Massachusetts. They never knew 
 they were freemen. The number of slaves in Massa 
 chusetts in 1776 was 5,249, about half of whom were 
 owned in Boston, which had then a population of 
 17,500. The proportion of slaves to the whole popu 
 lation of Boston in 1776, was six times as great as the 
 number of colored persons in Cincinnati to-day is to 
 the whole population, and ten times as great as the pres 
 ent proportion of colored persons in Boston.* 
 
 The same declaration, that < all men are created 
 equally free and independent/ is found in the consti 
 tutions of New Hampshire and Virginia; but it did 
 
 *Mr. George H. Moore, in his elaborate work, " Notes on the His 
 tory of Slavery in Massachusetts," expresses a doubt whether slavery 
 legally came to an end in Massachusetts at the period stated above; 
 and perhaps not before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to 
 the Constitution. He says : " It would not be the least remarkable of 
 the circumstances connected with this strange and eventful history, that 
 though virtually abolished before, the actual prohibition of slavery in 
 Massachusetts, as well as Kentucky, should be accomplished by the 
 votes of South Carolina and Georgia." p. 242. 
 
58 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 not in these states receive the same construction as in 
 Massachusetts. In New Hampshire it was construed 
 to mean that all persons born after 1784 the date of 
 the adoption of the Constitution were equally free 
 and independent. In other words, it brought about 
 gradual emancipation. In Virginia, it was simply a 
 glittering generality it had no legal meaning.* 
 
 In addition to the State Societies already named, 
 there were several local societies in Virginia, Maryland, 
 and Pennsylvania. All the abolition societies in the 
 country were in correspondence and acted together. At 
 the suggestion of the New York Society, a convention 
 of delegates was called for the purpose of deliberating 
 on the means of attaining their common object, and of 
 uniting in a memorial to Congress. Delegates from 
 ten of these societies, including the Virginia, Maryland, 
 
 *Dr. Belknap says the clause " all men are born free and equal " was 
 inserted in the Declaration of Rights of Massachusetts not merely as 
 a moral and political truth, but wich a particular view to establish the 
 liberation of the negroes on a general principle, and so it was under 
 stood by the people at large ; but some doubted whether it was suf 
 ficient " p. 203. That some persons had this result in view is 
 probable ; but contemporaneous records and acts of the citizens do not 
 justify the statement that " so it was understood by the people at 
 large." Dr. Belknap was living in New Hampshire at the time, and 
 did not come to Boston till 1786. The construction put upon the 
 clause, by the Supreme Court, was evidently a happy afterthought; and 
 was inspired by that public opinion to which Dr. Belknap himself, in 
 his reply to Judge Tucker, ascribes the extinction of slavery. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 50 
 
 Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Con 
 necticut, and Rhode Island State Societies, and two 
 local societies on the eastern shore of Maryland, met 
 on the first day of January, 1794, at the Select Council 
 Chamber in Philadelphia,* and drew up a joint memo 
 rial to Congress, asking for a law making the use of 
 vessels and men in the slave trade a penal offense. 
 Such a law was passed by Congress without debate.f 
 These societies held annual conventions for many years. 
 The convention recommended that such meetings of 
 
 o 
 
 *The Pennsylvania:! Society assumed all the expenses of the Con 
 vention, of entertaining the delegates, and of printing the proceedings. 
 The delegates of the Pennsylvanian Society were William Rogers, 
 Samuel P. Griffiths, Samuel Coats, William Rawle, Robert Patterson, 
 and Benjamin Rush. The printed proceedings of this convention, 
 which is in the New York Historical Society s library, I have not had 
 access to. Joseph Bloomfield, of New Jersey, an officer of the Revo 
 lution, attorney-general, governor of the state from 1801-12, and 
 member of Congress from 1817-21, was president of the Conven 
 tion. 
 
 -j-The memorial was presented in both branches of Congress, January 
 28, 1794. The record in the House was as follows: "A memorial 
 from the several societies formed in different parts of the United States, 
 for promoting the abolition of slavery, in convention assembled at 
 Philadelphia, on the first instant, was presented to the House and read, 
 praying that Congress may adopt such measures as may be the most 
 effectual and expedient for the abolition of the slave-trade. Also, a 
 memorial of the Providence Society, for abolishing the slave-trade, to 
 the same effect. Ordered, That the said memorials be referred to Mr. 
 Trumbull [of Connecticut], Mr. Ward [of Massachusetts], Mr. Giles 
 
60 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 delegates be annually convened ; that annual or periodi 
 cal discourses or orations be delivered in public on 
 slavery and the means of its abolition, in order that, 
 cc by the frequent application of the force of reason and 
 the persuasive power of eloquence, slaveholders and 
 their abettors may be awakened to a sense of their in 
 justice, and be startled with horror at the enormity of 
 their conduct." 
 
 The convention also adopted an address cc To the 
 citizens of the United States," which was drawn up by 
 Dr. Benjamin Rush.* 
 
 [of Virginia], Mr. Talbot [of New York], and Mr. Grove [of North 
 Carolina] ; that they do examine the matter thereof, and report the 
 same, with their opinion thereupon, to the House." Annals of Con 
 gress, iv, p. 349. 
 
 A bill was reported in conformity to the wishes of the memorialists, 
 passed its several stages without debate, and was approved March 22, 
 1794. For the bill, see Id., p. 1426. 
 
 *The address is as follows : 
 " To the Citizens of the United States : 
 
 " The Address of the Delegates from the several Societies formed in 
 different parts of the United States, for promoting the Abolition of 
 Slavery, in convention assembled at Philadelphia, on the first day of 
 January, 1794. 
 
 "FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: United to you by the ties of citi 
 zenship, and partakers with you in the blessings of a free government, 
 we take the liberty of addressing you upon a subject highly interesting 
 to the credit and prosperity of the United States. 
 
 " It is the glory of our country to have originated a system of opposi 
 tion to the commerce in that part of our fellow-creatures who compose 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 61 
 
 Similar societies were formed in London and Paris, 
 with whom these societies were in constant correspond 
 ence. Pennsylvania passed an act of gradual emanci 
 pation in 1780, and Rhode Island and Connecticut in 
 1784. A similar act, making all children born there 
 after free, did not pass the Legislature of New York till 
 1799. In the meantime these societies were pouring in 
 their memorials to State Legislatures and Congress, 
 holding meetings, distributing documents, and rousing 
 public sentiment to the enormities of the slave system. 
 
 The Connecticut petitioners say : " From a sober 
 
 the nations of Africa. Much has been done by the citizens of some 
 of the States to abolish this disgraceful traffic, and to improve the con 
 dition of those unhappy people whom the ignorance, or the avarice of 
 our ancestors had bequeathed to us as slaves. But the evil still con 
 tinues, and our country is yet disgraced by laws and practices which 
 level the creature man with a part of the brute creation. Many 
 reasons concur in persuading us to abolish domestic slavery in our 
 country. It is inconsistent with the safety of the liberties of the 
 United States. Freedom and slavery can not long exist together. An 
 unlimited power over the time, labor, and posterity of our fellow- 
 creatures, necessarily unfits man for discharging the public and private 
 duties of citizens of a republic. It is inconsistent with sound policy, 
 in exposing the States which permit it, to all those evils which insur 
 rections and the most resentful war have introduced into one of the 
 richest islands in the West Indies. It is unfriendly to the present ex 
 ertions of the inhabitants of Europe in favor of liberty. What people 
 will advocate freedom, with a zeal proportioned to its blessings, while 
 they view the purest republic in the world tolerating in its bosom a 
 body of slaves ? In vain has the tyranny of kings been rejected, while 
 
62 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 conviction of the unrighteousness of slavery, your peti 
 tioners have long beheld with grief our fellow-men 
 doomed to perpetual bondage in a country which boasts 
 of her freedom. Your petitioners are fully of opinion 
 that calm reflection will at last convince the world that 
 the whole system of American slavery is unjust in its 
 nature, impolitic in its principles, and in its consequen 
 ces ruinous to the industry and enterprise of the citizens 
 of these states." 
 
 we permit in our country a domestic despotism which involves in its 
 nature most of the vices and miseries that we have endeavored to avoid. 
 It is degrading to our rank as men in the scale of being. Let us use 
 our reason and social affections for the purposes for which they were 
 given, or cease to boast a pre-eminence over animals that are unpolluted 
 by our crimes. 
 
 " But higher motives to justice and humanity towards our fellow- 
 creatures, remain yet to be mentioned. Domestic slavery is repugnant 
 to the principles of Christianity. It prostrates every benevolent and 
 just principle of action in the human heart. It is rebellion against the 
 authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent 
 and efficacy of the death of a common Saviour. It is an usurpation of 
 the prerogative of the Great Sovereign of the universe, who has solemnly 
 claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men. But if this view 
 of the enormity of the evil of domestic slavery should not affect us, 
 there is one consideration more, which ought to alarm and impress us, 
 especially at the present juncture. It is a violation of a Divine precept 
 of universal justice, which has in no instance escaped with impunity. 
 The crimes of nations, as well as individuals, are often designated in 
 their punishments ; and we conceive it to be no forced construction of 
 some of the calamities which now distress or impend over our country, 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 63 
 
 The Virginia Society, petitioning Congress, says:~Wc 
 "Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness ex- 
 alteth a nation, and that slavery is not only an odious 
 degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the 
 most essential rights of human nature, and utterly re 
 pugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes 
 peace on earth and good will to men/ lament that a 
 practice so inconsistent with true policy and the 
 inalienable rights of men should subsist in so en 
 lightened an age, and among a people professing 
 
 to believe that they are the measure of the evils which we have meted 
 to others. The ravages committed upon many of our fellow-citizens 
 by the Indians, and the depredations upon the liberty and commerce of 
 others, of the citizens of the United States by the Algerines, both 
 unite in proclaiming to us in the most forcible language, to loose the 
 bands of wickedness, to break every yoke, to undo the heavy burthens, 
 and to let the oppressed go free. 
 
 " We shall conclude this address by recommending to you: 
 
 " First. To refrain immediately from that species of rapine and mur 
 der which has improperly been softened by the name of the African 
 trade. It is Indian cruelty and Algerine piracy in another form. 
 
 "Second. To form Societies in every State, for the purpose of promot 
 ing the abolition of the slave trade, of domestic slavery, for the relief 
 of persons unlawfully held in bondage, and for the improvement of the 
 condition of Africans and their desendants amongst us. 
 
 " The Societies which we represent, have beheld with triumph the 
 success of their exertions in many instances, in favor of their African 
 brethren; and, in full reliance upon the continuance of Divine sup 
 port and direction, they humbly hope their labors will never cease while 
 there exists a single slave in the United States." 
 
64 A nti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to 
 freedom." 
 
 The Pennsylvania Society memorialized Congress 
 thus : cc The memorial respectfully showeth : That 
 from a regard for the happiness of mankind, an associa 
 tion was formed several years since in this state, by a 
 number of her citizens of various religious denomina 
 tions, for promoting the abolition of slavery, and for 
 the relief of those unlawfully held in bondage. A just 
 and acute conception of the true principles of liberty, 
 as it spread through the land, produced accessories to 
 their numbers, many friends to their cause, and a legis 
 lative co-operation with their views, which, by the bless 
 ing of Divine Providence, have been successfully 
 directed to the relieving from bondage a large number 
 of their fellow-creatures of the African race. They 
 have also the satisfaction to observe that in consequence 
 of that spirit of philanthropy and genuine liberty, 
 which is generally diffusing its beneficial influence, 
 similar institutions are forming at home and abroad. 
 
 <c That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty 
 Being, alike objects of his care and equally designed 
 for the enjoyment of happiness, the Christian re 
 ligion teaches us to believe, and the political creed of 
 Americans fully coincides with the position. 
 
 "Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attend 
 ing to the distresses arising from slavery, believe it their 
 indispensable duty to present the subject to your notice. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 65 
 
 They have observed with real satisfaction, that many 
 important and salutary powers are vested in you for 
 promoting the welfare and securing the blessings of 
 liberty to the people of the United States; and as 
 they conceive that these blessings ought rightfully to 
 be administered without distinction of color to all de 
 scriptions of people, so they indulge themselves in the 
 pleasing expectation that nothing which can be done 
 for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care will 
 be either omitted or delayed." 
 
 " From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally 
 the portion, and is still the birthright of all men, and 
 influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the prin 
 ciples of their institution, your memorialists conceive 
 themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors to 
 loosen the bands of slavery, and promote a general en 
 joyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these im 
 pressions they earnestly entreat your serious attention to 
 the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to coun 
 tenance the restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, 
 who, alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into 
 perpetual bondage ; and who, amidst the general joy of 
 surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection ; 
 that you will devise means for removing this inconsist 
 ency from the character of the American people ; and 
 that you will step to the very verge of the power 
 vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in 
 
66 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 the persons of our fellow-men." Annals of Congress, 
 i, p. 1239. 
 
 This memorial was drawn up and signed by <c BEN 
 JAMIN FRANKLIN, President , Feb. 3, 1790." It was 
 the last public act of that eminent man. He died on 
 the lyth day of the April following. It will be ob 
 served that the memorial strikes at slavery itself, on 
 the ground that the institution is unjust, and a national 
 disgrace. It was so understood in Congress, and ruffled 
 the equanimity of the representatives of South Carolina 
 and Georgia. Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, distinguished 
 himself in the debate by an elaborate defense of the in 
 stitution. He was especially annoyed that Dr. Frank 
 lin s name should be attached to the memorial, "a 
 man/ he said, " who ought to have known the consti 
 tution better."" 
 
 * Mr. Jackson opposed the reference of the memorial to a commit 
 tee, and wished it to be thrown aside. Mr. Burke, of South Caro 
 lina, said he saw the disposition of the House, and feared the memorial 
 would be referred. He " was certain the commitment would sound 
 an alarm, and blow the trumpet of sedition in the Southern States." 
 
 Mr. Seney, of Maryland, denied that there was anything unconsti 
 tutional in the memorial ; its only object was that Congress should 
 exercise their constitutional authority to abate the horrors of slavery 
 as far as they could. 
 
 Mr. Parker, of Virginia, said : " I hope the petition of these respect 
 able people will be attended to with all the readiness the importance 
 of its object demands ; and I can not help expressing the pleasure I 
 feel in rinding so considerable a part of the community attending to 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 67 
 
 Dr. Franklin, though confined to his chamber, and 
 suffering under a most painful disease, could not allow 
 the occasion to pass without indulging his humor at the 
 expense of Mr. Jackson. He wrote to the editor of 
 the Federal Gazette, March 23, 1790, as follows : " Read- 
 matters of such momentous concern to the future prosperity and hap 
 piness of the people of America. I think it my duty as a citizen of 
 the Union to espouse their cause." 
 
 Mr. Page, of Virginia (governor from 1802-1805), said he was 
 in favor of the commitment. He hoped that the designs of the 
 respectable memorialists would not be stopped at the threshold, in 
 order to preclude a fair discussion of the prayer of the memorial. 
 With respect to the alarm that was apprehended, he conjectured there 
 was none; but there might be just cause, if the memorial was not 
 taken into consideration. He placed himself in the case of a slave, 
 and said that, on hearing that Congress had refused to listen to the 
 decent suggestions of a respectable part of the community, he should 
 infer that the general government (from which was expected great 
 good would result to every class of citizens) had shut their ears against 
 the voice of humanity ; and he should despair of any alleviation of 
 the miseries he and his posterity had in prospect. If anything could, 
 induce him to rebel, it must be a stroke like this. But if he was told 
 that application was made in his behalf, and that Congress was willing 
 to hear what could be urged in favor of discouraging the practice of 
 importing his fellow-wretches, he would trust in tkair justice ahd 
 humanity, and wait for the decision patiently. He presumed that these 
 unfortunate people would reason in the same way. 
 
 Mr. Madison, of Virginia, said, if there were the slighest tendency 
 by the commitment to break in upon the constitution, he would object 
 to it ; but he did not see upon what ground such an event could be ap 
 prehended. He admitted that Congress was restricted by the consti- 
 
68 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 ing, last night, in your excellent paper, the speech of 
 Mr. Jackson, in Congress, against their meddling with 
 the affair of slavery, or attempting to mend the condi 
 tion of the slaves, it put me in mind of a similar one 
 made about one hundred years since by Sidi Mehemet 
 Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, which may 
 be seen in Martin s Account of his Consulship, anno 
 1687. It was against granting the petition of a sect 
 called Erika> or Purists, who prayed for the abolition of 
 piracy and slavery as being unjust. Mr. Jackson does 
 not quote it ; perhaps he has not seen it. If, therefore, 
 some of its reasonings are to be found in his eloquent 
 speech, it may only show that men s interests and intel- 
 
 tution from taking measures to abolish the slave-trade ; yet there was a 
 variety of ways by which it could countenance the abolition of slavery; 
 and regulations might be made in relation to the introduction of slaves 
 into the new States, to be formed out of the Western Territory. 
 
 The memorial was committed by a vote of 43 yeas to 14 nays. Of 
 the Virginia delegation, 8 voted yea and 2 nay ; Maryland, 3 yea, I 
 nay; Delaware and North Carolina, both delegations absent. Mr. 
 Vining, the member for Delaware, however, spoke and voted later with 
 the friends of the memorialists. 
 
 The committee reported on the 8th of March. The report was 
 discussed in committee of the whole, and amended to read as follows : 
 
 "First. That the migration or importation of such persons as any 
 of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, can not be pro 
 hibited by Congress prior to the year 1808. 
 
 "Second. That Congress have no authority to interfere in the eman 
 cipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them, in any of the States 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 69 
 
 lects operate, and are operated on, with surprising simi 
 larity, in all countries and climates, whenever they are 
 under similar circumstances. The African s speech, as 
 translated, is as follows." He then goes on to make 
 an ingenious parody of Mr. Jackson s speech, making 
 this African Mussulman give the same religious, and 
 other reasons, for not releasing the white Christian slaves, 
 whom they had captured by piracy, that Mr. Jackson 
 had made for not releasing African slaves.* There were 
 inquiries in the libraries for cc Martin s Account of his 
 Consulship," but it was never found. The paper may 
 be read in the second volume of Franklin s Works, 
 
 it remaining with the several States alone, to provide any regulations 
 therein which humanity and true policy may require. 
 
 "Third. That Congress have authority to restrain the citizens of the 
 United States from carrying on the African trade, for the purpose of 
 supplying foreigners with slaves, and of providing, by proper regula 
 tions, for the humane treatment during their passage of slaves imported 
 by the said citizens into the States admitting such importation." 
 
 This was the first legislation on the subject of slavery in the new 
 Congress, and was carried by 29 votes to 25 North Carolina, South 
 Carolina, and Georgia voting unanimously in the negative. All the 
 other States (except Rhode Island, from which no member was present) 
 voted in the affirmative or divided. New Hampshire voted I yea, 
 I nay; Massachusetts, 6 yeas, 3 nays; Connecticut, 2 yeas, 2 nays; 
 New York, 5 yeas, 2 nays ; New Jersey, 3 yeas; Pennsylvania, 5 yeas; 
 Virginia, 5 yeas, 6 nays ; Maryland, I yea, 4 nays ; Delaware, I yea. 
 
 *At this period, one hundred and fifteen American citizens, captured 
 by piracy, were held as slaves in Algiers, for whom large ransoms were 
 demanded by the pirates. 
 
jo Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Sparks edition, p. 518. None of Dr. Franklin s writ 
 ings are more felicitous than this jeu d esprit ; and it 
 was written only twenty-four days before his death. 
 
 In the midst of this period, when anti-slavery opin 
 ions were so generally held by leading statesmen, the 
 Constitution of the United States was formed. It is 
 due to the framers of that instrument to state that the 
 entire delegations from the Northern and Middle States, 
 and a majority of those from Virginia, Maryland, and 
 Delaware were inspired to a greater or less extent with 
 these sentiments, and would have supported any prac 
 tical measures that would, in a reasonable time, have put 
 an end to slavery. South Carolina and Georgia posi 
 tively refused to come into the Union unless the clause, 
 denying to Congress the power to prohibit the importa 
 tion of slaves prior to 1808, was inserted. The North 
 ern States were not so strenuous in opposition to this 
 clause as Virginia and Maryland.* State after state was 
 
 *The convention, after discussing principles, appointed a "committee 
 of detail," consisting of Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, Mr. Randolph 
 of Virginia, Mr. Wilson of Pennsylvania, Mr. Ellsworth of Connecti 
 cut, and Mr. Gorham of Massachusetts, to reduce to the form of a 
 constitution the resolutions agreed upon. This committee without 
 instructions, or authority from the resolutions adopted, introduced a 
 clause forever prohibiting the abolition of the African slave-trade. 
 Mr. Randolph earnestly protested against this clause. He was opposed 
 to any restriction on the power of Congress to abolish it. He "could 
 never agree to the clause as it stands. He would sooner risk the Con 
 stitution." Madison Papers, p. 1396. Mr. Ellsworth "was for leav- 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 71 
 
 abolishing the institution ; anti-slavery opinions were 
 becoming universal ; and it was generally supposed at 
 the North that slavery would soon die out. The finan 
 cial and business interests of the country were prostrated. 
 Union at any cost must be had. The words slave 
 and slavery were carefully avoided in the draft, and the 
 best terms possible were made for South Carolina and 
 Georgia. The Constitution, as finally adopted, suited 
 nobody ; and by the narrowest margins it escaped being 
 rejected in all the States. The vote in the Massachu 
 setts Convention was 187 yeas to 168 nays; and in the 
 Virginia Convention, 89 yeas to 78 nays. 
 
 From this examination of the subject, we see that the 
 popular idea, that the political anti-slavery agitation 
 was forced upon the South by the North, and especially 
 by Massachusetts, is not a correct one. In the second 
 period of excited controversy, from 1820 to 1830, the 
 
 ing the clause as it now stands. Let every State import what it pleases. 
 The morality, the wisdom of slavery, are considerations belonging to 
 the States themselves. What enriches apart, enriches the whole; and 
 the States are the best judges of their particular interest." Id., p. 1389. 
 It was moved, as a compromise, to guarantee the slave-trade for twenty 
 years, by postponing the restriction to 1808. This motion was sec 
 onded by Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, and it passed. Mr. Madison, 
 of Virginia, opposed it. " Twenty years," he said, " will produce all 
 the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. 
 So long a term will be more dishonorable to the American character, 
 than to say nothing about it in the Constitution." Id., p. 1427. Mr. 
 Mason, of Virginia, pronounced the traffic as " infernal." Id., p. 1390. 
 
72 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 South again took the lead. In 1827, there were one 
 hundred and thirty abolition societies in the United 
 States. Of these one hundred and six were in the slave- 
 holding States, and only four in New England and New 
 York. Of these societies eight were in Virginia, eleven 
 in Maryland, two in Delaware, two in the District of 
 Columbia, eight in Kentucky, twenty-five in Tennessee, 
 with a membership of one thousand, and fifty in North 
 Carolina, with a membership of three thousand per 
 sons.* Many of these societies were the result of the 
 personal labors of Benjamin Lundy. 
 
 The Southampton insurrection of 1830, and indica 
 tions of insurrection in North Carolina the same year, 
 swept away these societies and their visible results. The 
 fifteen years from 1830 to 1845 were the darkest period 
 the American slave ever saw. It was the reign of vio 
 lence and mob law at the North. This was the second 
 great reaction. The first commenced with the invention 
 of the cotton-gin, by Eli Whitney, in 1793, and con 
 tinued till the question of the admission of Missouri 
 came up in 1820. The third reaction was a failure; it 
 commenced in 1861, and resulted in the overthrow of 
 the institution, 
 
 *Life of Benjamin Lundy, Phil. 1847, p. 218. The total member 
 ship of the 130 societies was 6625, exclusive of twelve societies in 
 Illinois from which no returns had been received. These statistics 
 were gathered by the American Anti-Slavery Convention, which was 
 held at Philadelphia, in 1827. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 70 
 
 In the year 1791, the date that Dr. Buchanan deliv 
 ered his oration at Baltimore, the College of William 
 and Mary, in Virginia, conferred upon Granville Sharp, 
 the great abolition agitator of England, the degree of 
 LL. D. Granville Sharp had no other reputation than 
 his anti-slavery record. This slender straw shows signifi 
 cantly the current of public opinion in Virginia at that 
 time. If Granville Sharp had come over some years 
 later to visit the President and Fellows of the College 
 which had conferred upon him so distinguished an 
 honor, it might have been at the risk of personal lib 
 erty, if not of life. 
 
 Colleges are naturally conservative, both from prin 
 ciple and from policy. Harvard College has never con 
 ferred upon Wm. Lloyd Garrison the least of its aca 
 demic honors. Wendell Phillips, its own alumnus, the 
 most eloquent of its living orators, and having in his 
 veins a strain of the best blood of Boston, has always 
 been snubbed at the literary and festive gatherings of 
 the College. Southern gentlemen, however, agitators of 
 the divine and biblical origin of slavery, have ever 
 found a welcome on those occasions, for which latter 
 courtesy the College should be honored. 
 
 If the visitor who records his name in the register of 
 the Massachusetts Historical Society, will turn to the 
 first leaf, he will find standing at the head the autograph 
 of Jefferson Davis. Whether this position of honor 
 was assigned by intention, or occurred accidentally, I 
 
74 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 can not state. But there it is, and if you forget to look 
 for yourself, it will probably be shown to you by the 
 attendant. 
 
 Mr. Davis, with his family, visited Boston in 1858, 
 and was received with marked attention by all. During 
 this visit he was introduced, and frequently came to the 
 Athenaeum, where I made his acquaintance. Among 
 other objects of interest in the institution, I showed 
 him Washington s library and this oration of Dr. Bu 
 chanan. Nothing so fixed his attention as this; he read 
 it and expressed himself amazed. He had heard that 
 such sentiments were expressed at the South, but had 
 never seen them. 
 
 I am conscious that while I have taxed your patience, 
 I have given but an imperfect presentation of the sub 
 ject. If this endeavor shall serve to incite members of 
 the Club to investigate the subject for themselves, my 
 object will have been attained. 
 
Addenda. 
 
 Since the preceding pages were in type, I have seen, in the library 
 of the New York Historical Society, the printed minutes of the first 
 convention held by the Abolition Societies of the United States, which 
 met at Philadelphia, January i, 1794, and was several days in session, 
 of which mention was made on page 59. These minutes show that 
 my statement of the societies represented needs correction. The 
 Rhode Island Society appears to have had no delegates present. The 
 Virginia Society appointed delegates ; but, for reasons stated below, they 
 were not admitted. Several societies, however, were represented, of 
 which before I had seen no mention. As the convention met in the 
 depth of winter, and as traveling was then expensive and difficult, it is 
 evidence of a deep interest in the subject, that so many delegations 
 attended. 
 
 The convention met in the City Hall, at Philadelphia, and organized 
 by choosing Joseph Bloomfield, of New Jersey, President; John 
 McCrea, Secretary ; and Joseph Fry, Door-keeper. 
 
 The following societies were represented by the delegates named : 
 
 Connecticut Society Uriah Tracy. 
 
 New York Society Peter Jay Munroe, Moses Rogers, Thomas 
 Franklin, Jr., William Dunlap. 
 
 New Jersey Society Joseph Bloomfield, William Coxe, Jr., John 
 Wistar, Robert Pearson, Franklin Davenport. 
 
 Pennsylvania Society William Rogers, William Rawle, Samuel 
 Powel Grirfitts, Robert Patterson, Samuel Coates, Benjamin Rush. 
 
7 6 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Washington (Ptf.) Society Absalom Baird. 
 
 De/aivare Society Warren Mifflin, Isaiah Rowland, Joseph Hodg 
 son, John Pemberton. 
 
 Wilmington (Z)<?/.) Society Joseph Warner, Isaac H. Starr, Robert 
 Coram. 
 
 Maryland Society Samuel Sterett, James Winchester, Joseph Town- 
 send, Adam Fonerdon, Jesse Hollingsworth. 
 
 Chester-town (Md.~) Society Joseph Wilkinson, James Maslin, Abra 
 ham Ridgely. 
 
 A letter, directed to the convention, from Robert Pleasants, chair 
 man of the Committee of Correspondence of the Virginia Society, was 
 presented and read. By this letter it appeared that Samuel Pleasants 
 and Israel Pleasants, of Philadelphia, were appointed to represent that 
 society in the convention; and in case of their declining, or being pre 
 vented from acting, the convention were at liberty to nominate two 
 other persons as their representatives. In the letter was inclosed "an 
 authentic account of several vessels lately fitted out in Virginia for the 
 African slave-trade." The convention, after considering the proposi 
 tion of the Virginia Society, adopted the following resolution : 
 
 "Reso/ved, That as information, and an unreserved comparison of 
 one another s sentiments, relative to the important cause in which we 
 are severally engaged, are our principal objects; and as the persons ap 
 pointed by the Virginia Society are not citizens of that State, nor mem 
 bers of that Society, to admit them, or, according to their proposal, 
 for us to elect others as their representatives, would be highly im 
 proper." 
 
 The president was directed to acknowledge the receipt of the letter, 
 to inform the Virginia Society of the above resolution, and to thank 
 them for the important information contained in the letter. 
 
 Benjamin Rush, William Dunlap, Samuel Sterett, William Rawle, 
 and Warner Mifflin, were appointed a committee to report the objects 
 
Anti- Slavery Opinions before 1800. 77 
 
 proper for the consideration of the convention, and the best plan for 
 carrying the same into execution. Under the direction of this com 
 mittee, memorials were prepared to be sent to the legislatures of the 
 several States which had not abolished slavery ; a memorial to Con 
 gress asking for the enactment of a law making the use of vessels and 
 men in the slave-trade a penal offense; and an address to the citizens 
 of the United States, already printed in a note, pp. 60-63. ^ was 
 also voted " to recommend to the different Abolition societies to ap 
 point delegates to meet in convention, at Philadelphia, on the first 
 Wednesday of January, 1795, and on the same day in every year after 
 ward, until the great objects of their original association be accom 
 plished." 
 
 I was so fortunate as to find, also, in the New York Historical Soci 
 ety s library, the minutes of the conventions of 1795 and 1797. The 
 convention of 1795 met in the City Hall, at Philadelphia, January 7, 
 and continued in session till the I4th of that month. The societies 
 represented, and delegates, were as follows : 
 
 Rhode Island Society Theodore Foster. The credentials from the 
 president of the society stated that George Benson was also appointed 
 to represent the society; but he did not appear. 
 
 Connecticut Society Jonathan Edwards, Uriah Tracy, Zephaniah 
 Swift. 
 
 New York Society John Murray, Jr., William Johnson, Lawrence 
 Embree, William Dunlap, William Walton Woolsey. 
 
 New Jersey Society James Sloan, Franklin Davenport. Other dele 
 gates appointed, Joseph Bloomfield, William Coxe, Jr., and John Wis- 
 tar, did not appear. It was explained to the convention that the ab 
 sence of Mr. Bloomfield was occasioned by sickness. 
 
 Pennsylvania Society William Rawle, Robert Patterson, Benjamin 
 Rush, Samuel Coates, Caspar Wistar, James Todd, Benjamin Say. 
 
78 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Washington (Pa) Society Thomas Scott, Absalom Baird, Samuel 
 Clark. 
 
 Delaware Society Richard Bassctt, John Ralston, Allen McLane, 
 Caleb Boyer. 
 
 Wilmington (Del) Society Cyrus Newlin, James A. Bayard, Joseph 
 Warner, William Poole. 
 
 Maryland Society Samuel Sterett, Adam Fonerdon, Joseph Town- 
 send, Joseph Thornburgh, George Buchanan, John Bankson, Philip 
 Moore. 
 
 Chester-town (Md.) Society Edward Scott, James Houston. 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Rush was elected President; Walter Franklin, Secre 
 tary; and Joseph Fry, Door-keeper. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, William Dunlap, Caspar Wistar, Cyrus Newlin, 
 Caleb Boyer, Philip Moore, and James Houston were appointed the 
 committee on business. Memorials were prepared, and adopted by the 
 convention, to be sent to the legislatures of South Carolina and Georgia, 
 as both States still persisted in the importation of slaves. An address to 
 the Abolition Societies of the United States was also adopted, the spirit 
 of which may be inferred from the following extract : 
 
 " When we have broken his chains, and restored the African to the 
 enjoyment of his rights, the great work of justice and benevolence is 
 not accomplished. The new-born citizen must receive that instruction, 
 and those powerful impressions of moral and religious truths, which 
 will render him capable and desirous of fulfilling the various duties he 
 owes to himself and to his country. By educating some in the higher 
 branches, and all in the useful parts of learning, and in the precepts of 
 religion and morality, we shall not only do away the reproach and 
 calumny so unjustly lavished upon us, but confound the enemies of 
 truth, by evincing that the unhappy sons of Africa, in spite of the de 
 grading influence of slavery, are in nowise inferior to the more for 
 tunate inhabitants of Europe and America." 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 79 
 
 The fourth annual convention of the Abolition Societies of the 
 United States was held in the Senate Chamber, at Philadelphia, May 
 3, 1797. The societies represented, and delegates, were as follows: 
 
 New York Society Willett Seaman, Thomas Eddy, Samuel L. 
 Mitchell, William Dunlap, Elihu Hubbard Smith. 
 
 New Jersey Society Joseph Bloomfield, Richard Hartshorne, Joseph 
 Sloan, William Coxe, Jr., William Carpenter. 
 
 Pennsylvania Society Benjamin Rush, William Rawle, Samuel P. 
 Griffitts, Casper Wistar, Samuel Coates, Robert Patterson, James 
 Todd. 
 
 Maryland Society Francis Johonnett, Jesse Tyson, Gerrard T. 
 Hopkins. 
 
 Cboptank (Md.) Society Seth Hill Evitts. 
 Virginia Society (at Richmond) Joseph Anthony. 
 Alexandria (Fa.) Society George Drinker. 
 
 Joseph Bloomfield was elected President; Thomas P. Cope, Secre 
 tary; and Jacob Meyer, Door-keeper. 
 
 Communications from the New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
 Maryland, Choptank (Md.), Virginia, and Alexandria (Va.) Abolition 
 Societies were read. The minutes of the convention of 1797 are more 
 elaborately compiled, and contain more statistics than the previous re 
 ports. Among other papers adopted by the convention, was an "Ad 
 dress to the Free Africans." Besides the seven societies, which sent 
 delegates, the eight societies following, which sent none, were re 
 ported, viz : the Rhode Island, Connecticut, Washington (Pa.), Del 
 aware (at Dover), Wilmington (Del.), Chester-town (Md.), Winches 
 ter (Va.), and Kentucky Societies. Among the memorials presented 
 to Congress, in 1791, was one from the Caroline County (Md.) Society. 
 Besides the Maryland Society, at Baltimore, there appear to have been 
 three local societies on the Eastern Shore of that State. 
 
8o Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 The several societies reported their membership, in 1797, as follows : 
 New York Society, two hundred and fifty ; New Jersey Society, " com 
 piled partially;" Pennsylvania Society, five hundred and ninety-one; 
 Maryland Society, two hundred and thirty-one ; Choptank (Md.) So 
 ciety, twenty-five; Wilmington (Del.) Society, sixty; Virginia So 
 ciety, one hundred and forty-seven ; Alexandria (Va.) Society, sixty- 
 two. From the other societies no reports of membership were received. 
 The Choptank (Md.) Society, formed in 1790, reported having liber 
 ated more than sixty slaves ; the Wilmington (Del.) Society reported 
 having liberated eighty since 1788 ; and the Alexandria (Va.) Society 
 reported having made twenty-six complaints under the law against the 
 importation of slaves. By votes of previous conventions, the Abolition 
 Societies were required to sustain schools for the education of Africans. 
 The minutes for 1797 contain interesting reports from the several so 
 cieties of their success in this department of benevolence. 
 
 Before the year 1782, it was illegal in Virginia for a master to liber 
 ate his slaves without sending them out of the State. The Assembly 
 of Virginia then passed an act permitting the manumission of slaves. 
 Judge Tucker, of that State, in his " Dissertation on Slavery," estimated 
 that, from 1782 to 1791, ten thousand slaves were liberated in Virginia 
 by their masters. 
 
 Of the anti-slavery literature of this period, which has not already 
 been noticed, there is in the New York Historical Society s library, 
 "An Oration spoken before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion 
 of Freedom, and the Relief of Persons unlawfully held in Bondage, 
 convened at Hartford the 8th of May, 1794. By Theodore Dwight.* 
 Hartford, 1794." 8vo, 24 pp. Also, a " Discourse delivered April 
 12, 1797, at the Request of the New York Society for Promoting the 
 Manumission of Slaves, and protecting such of them as have been or 
 
 *The " Dwight " to whom, with others, Bishop Gregoire inscribed his * Literature 
 of Negroes," was probably Theodore Dwight, and not President Timothy Dwight, as 
 stated on page 31. 
 
Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 81 
 
 may be liberated. By Samuel Miller, A. M. New York, 1787." 
 8vo, 36 pp. 
 
 In the Boston Athenaeum library are the following tracts : 
 
 "A Dissuasion to Great Britain and the Colonies from the Slave 
 Trade to Africa. By James Swan. Revised and abridged. Boston, 
 1773." 8vo, 40 pp. The original edition was printed in 1772. 
 
 "A Forensic Dispute on the Legality of Enslaving the Africans, held 
 at a Public Commencement in Cambridge, N. E., July 21, 1773, by 
 the Candidates for the Bachelors Degrees. Boston, 1773." 8vo, 
 48 pp. 
 
 "A Short Account of that Part of Africa inhabited by the Negroes. 
 [By Anthony Benezet.] Philadelphia, 1772." 8vo, 80 pp. 
 
 "An Address to the British Settlements in America upon Slavehold- 
 ing. Second edition. To which are added Observations on a Pam 
 phlet entitled Slavery not forbidden by Scripture ; or, a Defence of 
 the West Indian Planters. By a Pennsylvanian [Dr. Benjamin Rush]. 
 Philadelphia, 1773." 8vo, pp. 28 -J- 54. Also, another edition issued 
 the same year, with the title somewhat varied ; the second part being 
 termed, "A Vindication of the Address to the Inhabitants," etc. The 
 pamphlet entitled " Slavery not forbidden by Scripture," etc., was 
 written by R. Nisbet, and is in the Library of Congress. 
 
 " Memorials presented to the Congress of the United States, by the 
 different Societies instituted for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, in 
 the States of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, 
 Maryland, and Virginia. Published by the Pennsylvania Society for 
 promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Philadelphia. Printed by Fran 
 cis Bailey, 1792." 8vo, 31 pp. 
 
 This tract contains the memorials which were presented to the 
 House of Representatives, December 8, 1791, and which were read 
 and referred. The Rhode Island memorial is signed by David Howell, 
 President, and dated December 28, 1790. Connecticut by Ezra 
 Stiles, President; Simon Baldwin, Secretary; January 7, 1791. New 
 York by Matthew Clarkson, Vice-President ; December 14,. 179* 
 
82 Anti-Slavery Opinions before 1800. 
 
 Pennsylvania by James Pemberton, President ; John McCrea and 
 Joseph P. Norris, Secretaries ; October 3, 1791. Washington (Pa.) 
 by Andrew Swearingen, Vice-President. Maryland, in Baltimore 
 "Signed by the members generally ;" but the names of no members are 
 given. Chester-town, Maryland by James M. Anderson, President ; 
 Daniel McCurtin, Secretary ; November 19,1791. Caroline County, 
 Maryland by Edward White, Vice-President ; Charles Emery, Sec 
 retary ; September 6, 1791. 
 
 Of the sixteen Abolition Societies existing in the United States during 
 this decade, it appears that six were in States which, at the outbreak of 
 the late rebellion, were non-slaveholding ; and ten were in slaveholding 
 States. 
 
DR. GEORGE BUCHANAN S 
 
 ORATION ON SLAVERY, 
 
 BALTIMORE, July 4 , 1791. 
 
AN 
 
 ORATION 
 
 UPON THE 
 
 MORAL AND POLITICAL EVIL 
 
 o F 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 D ELIV ERED AT A PUBLIC MEETING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MARYLAND SOCIETY 
 
 FOR PROMOTING THE 
 
 ABOLITION of SLAVERY, 
 
 And the RELIEF of FREE NEGROES, and 
 others unlawfully held in BONDAGE. 
 
 BALTIMORE, July 4 th, 1791. 
 
 By GEORGE BUCHANAN, M. D 
 
 Member of the American Philosophical Society. 
 
 BALTIMORE: Printed by PHILIP EDWARDS. 
 
 M,DCC,XCIII. 
 
****** * * * * * *********** 
 
 At a special meeting of the "MARYLAND SOCIETY for 
 
 promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of free 
 Negroes and others unlawfully held in Bondage," held at 
 Baltimore, July $th, 1791, 
 " UNANIMOUSLY RESOLVED 
 
 A 
 
 HAT the President present the Thanks of this Society 
 to Dr. George Buchanan, for the excellent ORATION, by him 
 delivered this Day and at the same time request a copy there 
 of in the Name and for the Use of the Society." 
 
 Extract from the Minutes. 
 
 JOSEPH TOWNSEND, Secretary. 
 President, SAMUEL STERETT, 
 Vice President, ALEX R - M KiM. 
 
 ****** *********** * * * * * 
 
To THE HONORABLE 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON, Efq. 
 SECRETARY OF STATE, 
 
 VV HOSE Patriotism, since the American Revolution, 
 has been uniformly marked, by a sincere, steady and active 
 Attachment to the Interest of his Country ; and whose literary 
 Abilities have distinguished him amongst the first of Statesmen 
 and Philosophers 
 
 THIS ORATION 
 
 Is respectfully inscribed, as an humble Testimony of the 
 
 highest Regard and Esteem, by 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
ORATION 
 
 CITIZENS and FELLOW-MEMBERS, 
 
 WUMMONED by your voice, I appear before you with diffi- 
 dence ; the arduous task you have imposed upon me, would 
 have been better executed by some one of greater abilities and 
 information, and one more versed in public speaking. 
 
 However, my feeble exertions shall not be wanting to promote 
 the intentions of so laudable an institution ; and while I endea 
 vour to fulfil the purport of this meeting, I shall hope not to fail 
 in proving its utility. 
 
 Too much cannot be offered against the unnatural custom that 
 pervades the greatest part of the world, of dragging the human 
 race into slavery and bondage, nor of exposing the ignominy of 
 such barbarity. 
 
 Let an impartial view of man be taken, so far as it respects his 
 existence, and in the chain of thought, the white, swarthy and 
 black, will be all linked together, and at once point out their 
 equality. God hath created mankind after his own image, and 
 granted to them liberty and independence ; and if varieties may 
 be found in their structure and colour, these are only to be attri 
 buted to the nature of their diet and habits, as also of the soil 
 and climate they may inhabit, and serve as flimsy pretexts for 
 enslaving them. 
 
 In the first rudiment of society, when simplicity characterised 
 the conduct of man, slavery was unknown, every one equally 
 enjoyed that peace and tranquility at home, to which he was 
 naturally born : But this equality existed but for a time; as yet 
 no laws, no government was established to check the ambitious, 
 or to curb the crafty j hence reprisals were made upon the best 
 
 property 
 
8 
 
 property by the strong and robust, and finally subjected the weak 
 and indigent to poverty and want. 
 
 Here then arose a difference in the circumstances of men, and 
 the poor and weak were obliged to submit themselves to the con 
 trol of the rich and powerful ; but although the authority exer 
 cised was at first mild, and ensured to the bondsmen almost the 
 same privileges with their masters, yet the idea of power soon 
 crept in upon the mind, and at length lenity was converted into 
 rigidity, and the gall of servitude became insupportable ; the 
 oppressed, soon found that that liberty, which they had just given 
 up, was an inalienable privilege of man, and sought means to 
 regain it: this was effected, but not until a time when igno 
 rance began to decline, when improvements were made in the 
 arts, commerce and governments, and when men could seek 
 protection from law, or by industry could ward off the bitterness 
 of poverty, and ensure to themselves an independence. 
 
 Happy circumstance ! To feel oneself emancipated from the 
 chains of slavery, must awaken every delicate sensation of the 
 soul, and transport the gloomy mind into a region of bliss ; for 
 what is life, without an enjoyment of those privileges which have 
 been given to us by nature ? It is a burden, which, if not awed by 
 Divine Providence, would be speedily cast off, by all who sweat 
 under the yoke of slavish servitude, and know no alternative but 
 an unceasing submission to the goads of a brutal master. 
 
 Ages have revolved since this happy condition of human 
 affairs; and although mankind have been gradually verging from 
 a state of simplicity to a more social refinement, yet the govern 
 ments of those primitive times laid open an analogy for licen 
 tiousness ; and we find, by pursuing the history of man, that 
 slavery was again introduced, and stained the annals of all the 
 powers of Europe. 
 
 The idea of possessing, as property, was too lucrative to be 
 totally eradicated; it diffused itself into Egypt and Cyprus, which 
 became the first and most noted markets for the sale and purchase 
 of slaves, and soon became the cause of rapine and bloodshed in 
 Greece and Rome : there it was an established custom to subject 
 to slavery all the captives in time of war ; and not only the Em 
 perors, but the nobility, were in possession of thousands to them 
 they served as instruments of diversion and authority. 
 
 To give an idea only of the amphitheatrical entertainments, 
 so repugnant to humanity, would make the most obdurate heart 
 feel with keen sensibility, For to hear with patience of 
 
 voracious 
 
9 
 
 voracious animals being turned loose among human beings, to 
 give sport to the rich and great, when, upon reflection, he may 
 be assured, that the merciless jaw knew no restraint but pre 
 cipitately charged upon its prey whom it left, without remorse, 
 either massacred or maimed. 
 
 Such was the practice among the ancients, and to charge the 
 modern with like enormities, would by many be deemed crim 
 inal. 
 
 But I fear not to accuse them the prosecution of the present 
 barbarous and iniquitous slave trade affords us too many in 
 stances of cruelties exercised against the harmless Africans. A 
 trade, which, after it was abolished in Europe by the general in 
 troduction of Christianity, was again renewed about the fourteenth 
 century by the mercenary Portuguese, and now prosecuted by 
 the Spaniards, French and British, in defiance of every princi 
 ple of justice, humanity and religion. 
 
 Ye moderns, will you not blush at degenerating into ancient 
 barbarity, and at wearing the garb of Christians, when you pur 
 sue the practices of savages ? 
 
 Hasten to reform, and put an end to this unnatural and de 
 structive trade Do you not know that thousands of your fellow- 
 mortals are annually entombed by it ? and that it proves ruinous 
 to your government ? You go to Africa to purchase slaves for 
 foreign markets, and lose the advantages of all the proper ar 
 ticles of commerce, which that country affords. You bury 
 your seamen upon the pestiferous shores ; and, shocking to hu 
 manity ! make monsters of all you engage in the traffic. 
 
 Who are more brutal than the Captains of vessels in the slave 
 trade? Not even the tawny savage of the American wilds, who 
 thirsts after the blood of the Christian, and carries off his scalp 
 the trophy of splendid victory ! 
 
 They even countenance the practice of the ancients, in seeing 
 a sturdy mastiff tear in pieces some poor wretch of their hateful 
 cargoes, or in viewing their wreathes and tortures, when smart 
 ing under the lash of a seasoned cat.* 
 
 It is time to abolish these enormities, and to stay such repeated 
 insults from being offered to Divine Providence : Some dreadful 
 curse from heaven may be the effect of them, and the innocent 
 be made to suffer for the guilty. 
 
 What, will you not consider that the Africans are men ? that 
 they have human souls to be saved ? that they are born free and 
 independent ? A violation of which prerogatives is an infringe 
 ment upon the laws of God. 
 
 But 
 
 %A ivbif ivith nine tails. 
 
IO 
 
 But, are these the only crimes you are guilty of in pursuing 
 the trade ? No you stir up the harmless Africans to war, and 
 stain their fields with blood : you keep constant hostile ferment 
 in their territories, in order to procure captives for your uses ; 
 some you purchase with a few trifling articles, and waft to distant 
 shores to be made the instruments of grandeur, pride and luxury. 
 
 You commit also the crime of kidnapping others, whom you 
 forcibly drag from their beloved country, from the bosoms of their 
 dearest relatives ; so leave a wife without a husband, a sister 
 without a brother, and a helpless infant to bemoan the loss of its 
 indulgent parent. 
 
 Could you but see the agonizing pangs of these distressed mor 
 tals, in the hour of their captivity, when deprived of every thing 
 that is dear to them, it would make even the heathenish heart to 
 melt with sorrow ; like a noble Senator of old, death is their choice 
 in preference to lingering out their lives in ignominious slavery 
 and often do we see them meet it with a smile. 
 
 The horrors of the grave intimidate not even the delicate fe 
 males ; too many melancholy instances are recorded of their 
 plunging into the deep, and carrying with them a tender infant 
 at the breast ; even in my own recollection, suicide has been com 
 mitted in various forms by these unhappy wretches, under the 
 blind infatuation of revisiting the land of their nativity. 
 
 Possessed of Christian sentiments, they fail not to exercise them 
 when an opportunity offers. Things pleasing rejoice them, and 
 melancholy circumstances pall their appetites for amusements. 
 They brook no insults, and are equally prone to forgiveness as 
 to resentment ; they have gratitude also, and will even expose 
 their own lives, to wipe off the obligation of past favours ; nor 
 do they want any of the refinements of taste, so much the boast 
 of those who call themselves Christians. 
 
 The talent for music, both vocal and instrumental, appears na 
 tural to them : Neither is theirgenius for literature to be despised ; 
 many instances are recorded of men of eminence amongst them : 
 Witness Ignatius Sancho, whose letters are admired by all men of 
 taste Phillis Wheatley, who distinguished herself as a poetess 
 The physician of New Orleans The Virginia calculator Ban- 
 neker, the Maryland Astronomer, and many others whom it 
 would be needless to mention. These are sufficient to shew, 
 that the Africans, whom you despise, whom you inhumanly 
 treat as brutes, and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery, 
 with the tyrannizing hands of Despots, are equally capable of 
 improvements with yourselves. 
 
 This 
 
ir 
 
 This you may think a bold assertion, but it is not made with 
 out reflection, nor independent of the testimony of many, who 
 have taken pains with their education. 
 
 Because you see few, in comparison to their number, who make 
 any exertions of abilities at all, you are ready to enjoy the com 
 mon opinion, that they are an inferior set of beings, and de 
 stined by nature to the cruelties and hardships you impose upon 
 them. 
 
 But be cautious how long you hold such sentiments ; the time 
 may come, when you will be obliged to abandon themconsider 
 the pitiable situation of these most distressed beings; deprived 
 of iheir liberty and reduced to slavery ; consider also, that they 
 toil not for themselves, from the rising of the Sun to its going 
 down, and you will readily conceive the cause of their inaction. 
 What time, or what incitement has a slave to become wise ? 
 there is no great art in hilling corn, or in running a furrow; 
 and to do this, they know they are doomed, whether they seek 
 into the mysteries of science, or remain ignorant as they are. 
 
 To deprive a man of his liberty, has a tendency to rob his 
 soul of every spring to virtuous actions; and were slaves to be 
 come fiends, the wonder could not be great. Nothing more 
 assimilates a man to a beast, says the learned Montesque, than 
 being among freemen, himself a slave; for slavery clogs the 
 mind, perverts the moral faculty, and reduces the conduct of 
 man to the standard of brutes. 
 
 What right then have you to expect greater things from these 
 poor mortals ? You would not blame a brute for committing 
 ravages upon his prey, nor ought you to censure a slave, for 
 making attempts to regain his liberty even at the risque of life 
 itself. 
 
 Ye mercenary Portuguese, ye ambitious French, and ye deceit 
 ful Britons, I again call upon you to take these things into 
 your consideration ; it is time, a remorse of conscience had seized 
 upon you; it is time, you were apprised of your danger: Be 
 hold the thousands that are annually lost to your governments, 
 in the prosecution of an unlawful and iniquitous trade. 
 
 View the depredations that you commit upon a nation, born 
 equally free with yourselves ; consider the abyss of misery into 
 which you plunge your fellow-mortals, and reflect upon the hor 
 rid crimes you are hourly committing under the bright sunshine 
 of revealed religion. Will you not then find yourselves upon a 
 precipice, and protected from ruin, only because you are too 
 
 wicked to be lost ? 
 
 What 
 
12 
 
 What Empire, or what State can have the hope of existing, 
 which prosecutes a trade, that proves a sinking fund to her cof 
 fers, and to her subjects, that tramples the human species under 
 foot, with as much indifference as the dirt, and fills the world 
 with misery and woe ? 
 
 Let not a blind hardness of opinion any longer bias your 
 judgments, and prevent you from acting like Christians. 
 
 View the Empires amongst the ancients; behold Egypt in the 
 time of Secostris, Greece in the time of Cyrus, and Rome in 
 the reign of Augustus ; view them all, powerful as enemies, 
 patterns of virtue and science, bold and intrepid in war, free 
 and independent; and now see them sacrificed at the shrine of 
 luxury, and dwindled into insignificance. When in power, they 
 usurped the authority of God, they stretched out their arms to 
 encompass their enemies, and bound their captives in iron chains 
 of slavery. 
 
 Vengeance was then inflicted, their spoils became the instru 
 ments of pride, luxury and dissipation, and finally proved the 
 cause of their present downfall. 
 
 Then look back at home ; view your degeneracy from the 
 times of Louis the I4th and Charles the 2d, and if a universal 
 blush don t prevail, it will argue a hardness of heart, tempered 
 by a constant action of wickedness upon the smooth anvil of re 
 ligion. 
 
 For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it 
 destroys every human principle, vitiates the mind, instills ideas 
 of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of go 
 vernment, 
 
 What a distressing scene is here before us. America, I start at 
 your situation ! The idea of these direful effects of slavery de 
 mand your most serious attention. What ! shall a people, who 
 flew to arms with the valour of Roman Citizens, when encroach 
 ments were made upon their liberties, by the invasion of foreign 
 powers, now basely descend to cherish the seed and propagate the 
 growth of the evil, which they boldly sought to eradicate. To 
 the eternal infamy of our country, this will be handed down to 
 posterity, written in the blood of African innocence. 
 
 If your forefathers have been degenerate enough to introduce 
 slavery into your country, to contaminate the minds of her citi 
 zens, you ought to have the virtue of extirpating it. 
 
 Emancipated from the shackles of despotism, you know no su 
 perior ; free and independent, you stand equally respected among 
 
 your 
 
3 
 
 your foes, and your allies. Renowned in history, for your va 
 lour, and for your wisdom, your way is left open to the highest 
 eminence of human perfection. 
 
 But while with pleasing hopes you may anticipate such an event, 
 the echo of expiring freedom cannot fail to assail the ears, and 
 pierce the heart with keen reproach. 
 
 In the first struggles for American freedom, in the enthusiastic 
 ardour for attaining liberty and independence, one of the most 
 noble sentiments that ever adorned the human breast, was loud 
 ly proclaimed in all her councils 
 
 Deeply penetrated with a sense of Equality, they held it as a 
 fixed principle, "that all men are by nature and of right ought to 
 be free, that they are created equal and endowed by their Creator 
 with certain inalienable rights, amongst which are life, liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness." 
 
 Nevertheless, when the blessings of peace were showered upon 
 them, when they had obtained these rights which they had so boldly 
 contended for, then they became apostates to their prin 
 ciples, and rivetted the fetters of slavery upon the unfortunate 
 Africans. 
 
 Deceitful men ! who could have suggested, that American pa 
 triotism would at this day countenance a conduct so inconsistent ; 
 that while America boasts of being a land of freedom, and an 
 asylum for the oppressed of Europe, she should at the same time 
 foster an abominable nursery for slaves, to check the shoots of 
 her growing liberty ? 
 
 Deaf to the clamours of criticism, she feels no remorse, and 
 blindly pursues the object of her destruction; she encourages the 
 propagation of vice, and suffers her youth to be reared in the 
 habits of cruelty. 
 
 Not even the sobs and groans of injured innocence, which 
 reek from every State, can excite her pity, nor human misery 
 bend her heart to sympathy. 
 
 Cruel and oppressive she wantonly abuses the Rights of Man, 
 and willingly sacrifices her liberty at the altar of slavery : What 
 an opportunity is here given for triumph among her enemies? 
 Will they not exclaim, that upon this very day, while the Ame 
 ricans celebrate the anniversary of Freedom and Independence, 
 abject slavery exists in all her States but one.* 
 
 How degenerately base to merit the rebuke. Fellow-country 
 men, let the heart of humanity awake and direct your counsels ; 
 
 reflect 
 
 ^Massachusetts. 
 
4 
 
 reflect that slavery gains root among you ; look back upon the 
 curses which it has heaped upon your ancestors, and unanimous 
 ly combine to drive the fiend Monster from your territories ; it 
 is inconsistent with the principles of your government, with the 
 education of your youth, and highly derogatory to the true spi 
 rit of Christianity. 
 
 In despotic governments, says Montesque, where they are al 
 ready in a state of political slavery, civil slavery is more tolerable 
 than in other governments ; for there the minds of masters and 
 servants are equally degenerate and act in unison. But in Ame 
 rica, this cannot be the case; here the pure forms of Republican 
 ism are established, and hold forth to the world the enjoyment of 
 Freedom and Independence. 
 
 Her citizens have thrown off the load of oppression, under 
 which they formerly laboured ; and elated with their signal vic 
 tories, have become oppressors in their turn. 
 
 They have slaves, over whom they carry the iron rod of sub 
 jection, and fail not to exercise it with cruelty, hence their situ 
 ations become insupportable, misery inhabits their cabins, and 
 persecution pursues them in the field. 
 
 I would wish to be partial to my country, and carry a hand of 
 lenity ; it is more pleasing to celebrate than to detract, but who 
 ever takes a view of the situation of its slaves, will find it even 
 worse than this description. 
 
 Naked and starved, they often fall victims to the inclemencies 
 of the weather, and inhumanly beaten; sacrifices to the turbu 
 lent tempers of their cruel masters. 
 
 Unfortunate Africans ! born in freedom, and subjected to sla 
 very ! How long will you remain the spoils of despotism, and the 
 harbinger of human calamities ? Cannot your distresses awaken 
 the heart of sensibility, and excite her pity ? Cannot your un 
 lawful treatment call forth the voice of humanity to plead your 
 cause ? 
 
 Americans ! step forward ; you have already diffused a spirit of 
 Liberty throughout the world ; you have set examples of hero 
 ism ; and now let me intreat you to pave the way to the exercise 
 of humanity : an opportunity is offered to raise yourselves to 
 the first eminence among mankind. 
 
 Rouse then from your lethargy, and let not such torpid indif 
 ference prevail in your councils. Slavery, the most implacable 
 enemy to your country, is harboured amongst you ; it makes a 
 rapid progress, and threatens you with destruction. 
 
 Already 
 
15 
 
 Already has it disturbed the limpid streams of liberty, it has 
 polluted the minds of your youth, sown the seeds of despotism, 
 and without a speedy check to her ravages, will sink you into a 
 pit of infamy, where you shall be robbed of all the honours you 
 have before acquired. 
 
 Let it be viewed either morally or politically, and no one 
 argument can be adduced in its favour. 
 
 The savage mind may perhaps become reconciled to it, but the 
 heart of the Christian must recoil at the idea. He sees it for 
 bidden in Holy Writ, and his conscience dictates to him, that it 
 is wrong. 
 
 " He that stealeth a man" says Exodus, " and selleth him, 
 or if be be found in bis band, he shall surely be put to death. 1 
 
 Oh my countrymen ! are there any of you who can con over 
 this elegant passage of Scripture, without trembling ; or can you 
 stand before the great Author of your existence, with an arm 
 uplifted to subject his creatures to slavery, without dreading an 
 execution of this divine threat. 
 
 " The nation, to whom they shall be in bondage, will I judge, 
 said God" and what that judgment may be, is beyond the sug 
 gestion of mortals. We may be hurled amidst the elements of 
 woe to expiate the guilt, for he who holdeth men in slavery 
 liveth in sin. 
 
 In a civilized country, where religion is tolerated in all its 
 purity, it must be the fault of ignorance, or a stubborn indif 
 ference to Christianity, to rebel against divine sentiments; and 
 considering slavery in a political view, it must appear equal 
 ly as destructive to our terrestial happiness, as it endangers our 
 enjoyment of heavenly bliss. 
 
 For who is there, unless innured to savage cruelties, that can 
 hear of the inhuman punishments daily inflicted upon the unfor 
 tunate Blacks, without feeling for their situations ? 
 
 Can a man who calls himself a Christian, coolly and deliberate 
 ly tie up, thumb screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmerci 
 fully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty ? Or can 
 any one be an eye witness to such enormities, without at the 
 same time being deeply pursuaded of its guilt ? 
 
 I fear these questions may be answered in the affirmative, but 
 I hope by none of this respectable audience; for such men must 
 be monsters, not of the regular order of nature, and equally 
 prone to murder, or to less cruelties. 
 
 But independent of these effects, which the existence of slavery 
 
 in 
 
i6 
 
 in any country has over the moral faculty of man, it is highly 
 injurious to its natural ceconomy ; it debars the progress of agri 
 culture, and gives origin to sloth and luxury. 
 
 View the fertile fields of Great Britain, where the hand of 
 freedom conducts the plowshare, then look back upon your own, 
 and see how mean will be the comparison. 
 
 Your labourers are slaves, and they have no inducement, no 
 incentive to be industrious ; they are cloathed and victualled, 
 whether lazy or hard-working ; and from the calculations that 
 have been made, one freeman is worth almost two slaves in the 
 field, which makes it in many instances cheaper to have hire 
 lings ; for they are incited to industry by the hopes of repu 
 tation and future employment, and are careful of their apparel 
 and their instruments of husbandry, where they must provide 
 them for themselves, whereas, the others have little or no tempta 
 tion to attend to any of these circumstances. 
 
 But this, the prejudiced mind is scarce able to scan, the pride 
 of holding men as property is too flattering to yield to the dic 
 tates of reason, and blindly pushes on man to his destruction. 
 
 What a pity is it, that darkness should so obscure us, that 
 America with all her transcending glory, should be stigmatized 
 with the infamous reproach of oppression, and her citizens be 
 called Tyrants. 
 
 Fellow-countrymen, let the hand of persecution be no longer 
 raised against you. Act virtuously ; do unto all men as you would 
 they should do unto you, and exterminate the pest of slavery 
 from your land. 
 
 Then will the tongues of slander be silenced, the shafts of cri 
 ticism blunted, and America enter upon a new theatre of glory. 
 
 But unless these things shall be done, unless the calamitous 
 situation of the slaves shall at least be alleviated, what is America 
 to expect ? Can she think that such repeated insults to Divine 
 Authority will pass off with impunity ? Or can she suppose, that 
 men, who are naturally born free, shall forever sweat under the 
 yoke of ignominious slavery, without making one effort to regain 
 their liberty ? 
 
 No, my countrymen, these things are not to be expected. 
 Heaven will not overlook such enormities ! She is bound to 
 punish impenitent sinners, and her wrath is to be dreaded by all! 
 Moreover, the number of slaves, that are harboured amongst 
 you holds forth an alarm ; in many parts of the continent they 
 exceed the whites, and are capable of ransacking the country. 
 
 What 
 
I? 
 
 What then, if the fire of Liberty shall be kindled amongst 
 them ? What, if some enthusiast in their cause shall beat to arms, 
 and call them to the standard of freedom ? Would they fly 
 in clouds, until their numbers became tremendous, and threaten 
 the country with devastation and ruin ? It would not be the 
 feeble efforts of an undisciplined people, that could quell their 
 fury. 
 
 Led on by the hopes of freedom, and animated by the aspiring 
 voice of their leader, they would soon find, that "a day, an hour 
 of virtuous liberty, was worth a whole eternity of bondage." 
 
 Hark ! Methinks 1 hear the work begun, the Blacks have 
 sought for Allies, and found them in the wilderness ; they have 
 called the rusty savages to their assistance, and are preparing to 
 take revenge of their haughty masters.* 
 
 A revenge, which they consider as justly merited ; for being 
 no longer able to endure their unnatural and unlawful bondage, 
 they are determined to seek Liberty or Death, 
 
 Why then is there not some step to be taken to ward ofFthe dread 
 ful catastrophe ? 
 
 Fellow countrymen, will you stand and see your aged parents, 
 your loving wives, your dutiful children butchered by the mer 
 ciless hand of the enthusiast, when you have it in your power to 
 prevent it ? 
 
 In this enlightened period, when the Rights of Man is the 
 topick of political controversy, and slavery is considered not only 
 unnatural but unlawful, why do you not step forward and com- 
 pleat the glorious work you have begun, and extend the merciful 
 hand to the unfortunate Blacks ? Why do you not form some 
 wise plan to liberate them, and abolish slavery in your country ? 
 
 If it should be deemed injudicious or impolitic to effect it at 
 once, let it be done gradually; let the children for one or two 
 generations be liberated at a certain age, and in less than half a 
 century will the plague be totally rooted out from amongst you 
 then will you begin to see your consequence thousands of good 
 citizens will be added to your number, and your arms will be 
 come invincible : Gratitude will induce them to become your 
 friends; for the PROMISE alone of freedom to a slave ensures 
 his loyalty; witness their conduct in the second Punic war which 
 the Senate of Rome carried on against Hannibal ; not a man 
 
 disgraced 
 
 #This was thrown out as a conjecture of what possibly might happen, and the insur 
 rections in St. Domingo tend to prove the danger, to be more considerable than has generally 
 been supposed, and sufficient to alarm the inhabitants of these States. 
 
i8 
 
 disgraced himself, but all with an intrepidity peculiar to vete 
 rans, met their foes, fought and conquered. 
 
 Witness also the valour of a few Blacks in South-Carolina, who 
 under the promise of freedom, joined the great and good Colonel 
 JOHN LAURENS ; and in a sudden surprised the British, and dis 
 tinguished themselves as heroes. 
 
 I remember it was said, they were foremost in the ranks, and 
 nobly contended for their promised reward. 
 
 At this critical juncture, when savage cruelties threatened to in 
 vade your peaceful territories, and murder your citizens, what 
 great advantage might be derived from giving freedom to the 
 Africans at once. Would they not all become your Allies ; 
 would they not turn out hardy for the wilderness, to drive the 
 blood-thirsty savage to his den, and teach him it were better to 
 live peceably at home, than to come under the scourge of such 
 newly liberated levies. 
 
 Americans arouse It is time to hear the cause of the wretch 
 ed sons of Africa, enslaved in your country ; they plead not 
 guilty to every charge of crime, and unmeritedly endure the 
 sufferings you impose upon them. 
 
 Yet, like haughty Despots, or corrupt judges, you forbid a trial. 
 Justice however to yourselves and humanity toward your fel 
 low mortals, loudly demand it of you, and you ought not to 
 hesitate in obeying their sacred mandates. 
 
 A few years may be sufficient to make you repent of your un 
 relenting indifference, and give a stab to all your boasted hon 
 ours ; then may you, pitiable citizens, be taught wisdom, when 
 it will be too late ; then may you cry out, Abba Father, but 
 mercy will not be found, where mercy was refused. 
 
 Let all the social feelings of the soul, let honour, philan 
 thropy, pity, humanity, and justice, unite to effect their eman 
 cipation. 
 
 For eternal will be the disgrace of keeping them much longer 
 in the iron fetters of slavery, but immortal the honour of ac 
 complishing their FREEDOM. 
 
 To the SOCIETY. 
 
 SUCH were the sentiments, my friends, that first induced 
 you to form yourselves into this Society. 
 
 For seeing human nature debased in the most vile manner, and 
 
 seeing 
 
seeing also that your country deeply suffered from the iniquitous 
 custom of holding man in slavery, you have justly concluded 
 "that at this particular crisis, when Europe and America appear 
 to pay some attention to this evil, the united endeavours of a 
 few, might greatly influence the public opinion, and produce 
 from the transient sentiment of the times, effects, extensive, last 
 ing and useful." But however great have been your exertions ; 
 however much they have been guided by the precepts of huma 
 nity and religion, your public reward has been censure and crit 
 icism ; but let not such airy weapons damp your ardour for do 
 ing good; your just reward is in Heaven, not on earth. 
 
 Yours is the businesss of mercy and compassion, not of op 
 pression. You forcibly rescue from the hands of no man his 
 property, but by your examples and precepts you promote the 
 Abolition of Slavery, and give relief to free Negroes, and others 
 unlawfully held in bondage. 
 
 You have shown an anxiety to extend a portion of that free 
 dom to others, which GOD in his Providence hath extended 
 unto you, and a release from that thraldom to which yourselves 
 and your country were so lately tyrannically doomed, and from 
 which you have been but recently delivered. You have evinced 
 to the world your inclination to remove as much as possible the 
 sorrows of those who have lived in undeserved bondage, and 
 that your hearts are expanded with kindness toward men of all 
 colours, conditions and nations ; and if you did not interest 
 yourselves in their behalf, how long might their situations remain 
 hard and distressing. 
 
 Numbers might passively remain for life in abject slavery from 
 an ignorance of the mode of acquiring their emancipation, not 
 withstanding they may be justly entitled to their freedom by birth 
 and by the law. 
 
 If the hand of prosecution is now raised against you, for re 
 lieving your fellow mortals from the distresses of unlawful slavery, 
 and restoring them to liberty, it is to be hoped it will not be of 
 long duration ; the principles of your institutions will be daily 
 made more known, and others will begin to think as you do; 
 they will find upon reflection, that they have no just power or 
 authority to hold men in slavery, and seeing that your actions 
 are charitable and disinterested, will cordially inlist under your 
 banners, and aid your benevolent exertions. 
 
 Already have you reason to suppose, that your good examples 
 have been influencial ; you humbly began with a few, and you 
 now see your numbers hourly encreasing. 
 
2O 
 
 It may be the effusions of a youthful fancy, solicitous of ag 
 grandizing your merit, but I fear not to say, that the operations 
 of similar institutions will date one of the most splendid aeras of 
 American greatness. 
 
 Go on then, my friends, pursue the dictates of an unsullied 
 conscience, and cease not until you have finished your work- 
 but let prudence guide you in all your undertakings, and let 
 not an enthusiastic heat predominate over reason. Your cause 
 is a just one, consistent with law and equity, and must finally be 
 advocated by all men of Humanity and Religion, 
 
 " For, //s Liberty alone which gives the flower 
 " of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, 
 * j4nd we are tueeds without it." 
 
 TASK, 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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