laws be passed prohibiting emigrants from other states from bringing
with them persons deemed slaves by the laws of any other states in the
Union, so long as such persons should be continued as slaves in
Kentucky. The Legislature had power to prohibit the bringing into the
state slaves for the purpose of sale. Masters were required to treat
their slaves with humanity, to properly feed and clothe them, and to
abstain from inflicting any punishment extending to life and limb.
Laws could be passed granting owners the right to emancipate their
slaves, but requiring security that the slaves thus emancipated should
not become a charge upon the county.

During the session of Congress in 1791, the Pennsylvania Society for
the Abolition of Slavery presented another memorial, calling upon
Congress to exercise the powers they had been declared to possess by
the report of the committee which had been spread upon the Journals of
the house. Thus emboldened, other anti-slavery societies, of Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and a few local societies of
Maryland, presented memorials praying for the suppression of slavery
in the United States. They were referred to a select committee; and,
as they made no report, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the next
year, called the attention of Congress to the subject. On the 24th of
November, 1792, a Mr. Warner Mifflin, an anti-slavery Quaker from
Delaware, addressed a memorial to Congress on the general subject of
slavery, which was read and laid upon the table without debate. On the
26th of November, Mr. Stute of North Carolina offered some sharp
remarks upon the presumption of the Quaker, and moved that the
petition be returned to the petitioner, and that the clerk be
instructed to erase the entry from the Journal. This provoked a heated
discussion; but at length the petition was returned to the author,
and the motion to erase the record from the Journal was withdrawn by
the mover.

In 1793 a law was passed providing for the return of fugitives from
justice and from service, "In case of the escape out of any state or
territory of any person held to service or labor under the laws
thereof, the person to whom such labor was due, his agent, or
attorney, might seize the fugitive and carry him before any United
States judge, or before any magistrate of the city, town, or county in
which the arrest was made; and such judge or magistrate, on proof to
his satisfaction, either oral or