US MUHLENBERG,
_Speaker of the House of Representatives_.

"JOHN ADAMS,
_Vice-President of the United States, and
President of the Senate_.

"Approved--March the twenty-second, 1794.
G'o: WASHINGTON, _President of the United States_."

In 1797 Congress again found themselves confronted by the dark problem
of slavery, that would not down at their bidding. The Yearly Meeting
of the Quakers of Philadelphia sent a memorial to Congress,
complaining that about one hundred and thirty-four Negroes, and others
whom they knew not of, having been lawfully emancipated, were
afterwards reduced to bondage by an _ex post facto_ law passed by
North Carolina, in 1777, for that cruel purpose. After considerable
debate, the memorial went to a committee, who subsequently reported
that the matter complained of was purely of judicial cognizance, and
that Congress had no authority in the premises.

During the same session a bill was introduced creating all that
portion of the late British Province of West Florida, within the
jurisdiction of the United States, into a government to be called the
Mississippi Territory. It was to be conducted in all respects like the
territory north-west of the Ohio, with the single exception that
slavery should not be prohibited. During the discussion of this
section of the bill, Mr. Thatcher of Massachusetts moved to amend by
striking out the exception as to slavery, so as to make it conform to
the ideas expressed by Mr. Jefferson a few years before in reference
to the Western Territory. But, after a warm debate, Mr. Thatcher's
motion was lost, having received only twelve votes. An amendment of
Mr. Harper of South Carolina, offered a few days later, prohibiting
the introduction of slaves into the new Mississippi Territory, from
without the limits of the United States, carried without opposition.

Georgia revised her Constitution in 1798, and prohibited the
importation of slaves "from Africa or any foreign place." Her
slave-code was greatly moderated. Any person maliciously killing or
dismembering a slave was to suffer the same punishment as if the act
had been committed upon a free white person, except in case of
insurrection, or "unless such death should happen by accident, in
giving such slave moderate correction." But, like Kentucky, the
Georgia constitution forbade