ecognized
as a cardinal principle in our Federal system. It does not follow that
both parties to this contest were wholly right or wholly wrong in their
claims. The determination of the question of right or wrong must be left
to the candid inquirer after examination of the evidence. The object of
these preliminary investigations has been to clear the subject of the
obscurity produced by irrelevant issues and the glamour of ethical
illusions.

[Footnote 1: It will be remembered that, during her colonial condition,
Virginia made strenuous efforts to prevent the importation of Africans,
and was overruled by the Crown; also, that Georgia, under Oglethorpe,
did prohibit the introduction of African slaves until 1752, when the
proprietors surrendered the charter, and the colony became a part of the
royal government, and enjoyed the same privileges as the other
colonies.]

[Footnote 2: South Carolina subsequently (in 1803) repealed her law
forbidding the importation of slaves. The reason assigned for this
action was the impossibility of enforcing the law without the aid of the
Federal Government, to which entire control of the revenues, revenue
police, and naval forces of the country had been surrendered by the
States. "The geographical situation of our country," said Mr. Lowndes,
of South Carolina, in the House of Representatives on February 14, 1804,
"is not unknown. With navigable rivers running into the heart of it, it
was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren ...
engaged in this trade, from introducing them [the negroes] into the
country. The law was completely evaded.... Under these circumstances,
sir, it appears to me to have been the duty of the Legislature to repeal
the law, and remove from the eyes of the people the spectacle of its
authority being daily violated."

The effect of the repeal was to permit the importation of negroes into
South Carolina during the interval from 1803 to 1808. It in probable
that an extensive _contraband_ trade was carried on by the New England
slavers with other ports, on account of the lack of means to enforce the
laws of the Southern States forbidding it.]

[Footnote 3: One from the Society of Friends assembled at Philadelphia
and New York, the other from the Pennsylvania society of various
religious denominations combined for the abolition of slavery.

For report of the debate, see Benton's "Abridgment," vol. i, pp.
201-207, _et seq._]

[Footnote 4: See