r the
passage of the act were to be free; they were to dwell with their
parents till a certain age, then to be educated at the public expense in
"tillage, arts, or sciences," until the males were twenty-one years old
and the females eighteen; then they were to be colonized in some
suitable region, furnished with arms, implements, seeds and cattle;
declared a free and independent people, under American protection until
strong enough to stand alone; and meanwhile their place as laborers was
to be filled by whites sent for by vessels to other parts of the world.
It is hardly strange that the Legislature did not even take the measure
into consideration, and it does not appear that Jefferson ever returned
to it. Practical legislation was not his forte. But his influence told
nobly, as has been related, in barring slavery from the Northwestern
territory, and, had just a little more support been found in 1784, would
have saved the Southwest also to freedom, with almost certain promise of
result in early freeing of the whole country. Just two or three votes in
the Continental Congress,--on such small hinges does the destiny of
nations seem to turn.

The inertia which holds men even exceptionally high-minded from breaking
strong ties of custom and convenience is shown by a letter of Patrick
Henry to a Quaker in 1773, in which he declared slavery "as repugnant to
humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of
liberty. Every thinking, honest man rejects it as speculation, but how
few in practice from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that I
am a master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the
general inconvenience of living without them."

There is no need to dwell further on the anti-slavery sentiments of the
group of great leaders who were the glory of the nation. It is to be
noted that Franklin took a characteristically active part in aiding to
establish an anti-slavery society in Philadelphia in 1782. Shrewd as he
was high-minded and benevolent, Franklin was always a special master in
organizing men in societies for effective and progressive action. His
tact won France to the American alliance, and decisively turned the
scale in the Revolutionary war; and his conciliatory yet resolute spirit
was a main factor in the constitutional convention. This Pennsylvania
anti-slavery society led the way to the early adoption by the State of
gradual emancipation. Franklin, an optimist by temperam