6,153
Georgia 59,404
Indiana Territory 135
Kentucky 40,343
Maryland 105,635
Mississippi Territory 3,489
New Jersey 12,422
New Hampshire 8
New York 20,343
North Carolina 133,296
Pennsylvania 1,706
Rhode Island 381
South Carolina 146,151
Tennessee 13,584
Virginia 345,796
-------
Aggregate 893,041

On the 2d of January, 1800, a number of Colored citizens of the city
and county of Philadelphia presented a memorial to Congress, through
the delegate from that city, Mr. Waln, calling attention to the
slave-trade to the coast of Guinea. The memorial charged that the
slave-trade was clandestinely carried on from various ports of the
United States contrary to law; that under this wicked practice free
Colored men were often seized and sold as slaves; and that the
fugitive-slave law of 1793 subjected them to great inconvenience and
severe persecutions. The memorialists did not request Congress to
transcend their authority respecting the slave-trade, nor to
emancipate the slaves, but only to prepare the way, so that, at an
early period, the oppressed might go free.

Upon a motion by Mr. Waln for the reference of the memorial to the
Committee on the Slave-trade, Rutledge, Harper, Lee, Randolph, and
other Southern members, made speeches against such a reference. They
maintained that the petition requested Congress to take action on a
question over which they had no control. Waln, Thacher, Smilie, Dana,
and Gallatin contended that there were portions of the petition that
came within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and, therefore,
ought to be received and acted upon. Mr. Rutledge demanded the yeas
and nays; but in such a spirit as put Mr. Waln on his guard, so he
withdrew his motion, and submitted another one by which such parts of
the memorial as came within the jurisdiction of Congress should be
referred. Mr. Rutledge raised a point of order on the motion of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania that a "part" of the memorial could not be
referred, but was promptly overruled. Mr. Gray, of Virginia, moved to
amend by adding a declaratory clause that the portions of the
memorial, not referred, inviting C