your heart. I shall be happy to join you, in so laudable
a work."

To Robert Morris he wrote in October 1786: "There is not a man living,
who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the
abolition of slavery; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by
which it can be accomplished, and that is, by legislative authority; and
this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting. But when
slaves, who are happy and contented with their present masters, are
tampered with and seduced to leave them; when masters are taken unawares
by these practices; when a conduct of this kind begets discontent on one
side and resentment on the other; and when it happens to fall on a man
whose purse will not measure with that of the Society [Quakers], and he
loses his property for want of means to defend it; it is oppressive in
such a case, and not humanity in any, because it introduces more evils
than it can cure."

To John F. Mercer, of Virginia, he wrote, a few months later: "I never
mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it, to
possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see
some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by
law."

In 1794, he wrote to Tobias Lear, his private secretary, then in
England, endeavoring to negotiate the sale of some of Washington's wild
lands, that one object he had in view in making sales was to place
himself in a position to emancipate his slaves. "Another motive," he
wrote--"which is, indeed, more powerful than all the rest--is, to
liberate a certain species of property, which I possess, very
reluctantly to my own feelings, but which imperious necessity compels,"
&c.

In 1797, he wrote to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis: "I wish, from my soul
that the legislature of this state could see the policy of a gradual
abolition of slavery. It might prevent much future mischief."

CHAPTER XLII.

WASHINGTON AT THE CLOSE OF HIS LIFE--EXPOSURE TO A STORM--TAKES
COLD--ITS FATAL EFFECTS--TOBIAS LEAR'S ACCOUNT OF HIS SICKNESS AND
DEATH--HIS FUNERAL--INTELLIGENCE OF HIS DEATH REACHES
CONGRESS--PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWO HOUSES--ACTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES--NATIONAL MOURNING--FUNERAL ORATION BY GENERAL
LEE--EFFECT OF WASHINGTON'S DEATH ABROAD--HONORS TO HIS
MEMORY--FONTANES' FUNERAL ORATION AT PARIS.

When the winter of 1799 set in, cold and stormy, toward the middle of