the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive slave
law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and
but seven dissenting votes in the House. It was, however, a wise law,
moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one. Twenty-five years
later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and thirty-five
years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of Virginia, was
passed by Northern votes. I am not, just now, complaining of this law, but
I am trying to show how the current sets; for the proposed law of 1817 was
far less offensive than the present one. In 1774 the Continental Congress
pledged itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue the slave
trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and less than three
months before the passage of the Declaration of Independence, the same
Congress which adopted that declaration unanimously resolved "that no
slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies." [Great
applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the
slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a piratical
warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a cruel war
against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except South
Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from the
necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted. Indeed, abolition
societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact
that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton were
qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject than we
of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day. On March 1, 1784,
Virginia ceded to the confederation all its lands lying northwest of the
Ohio River. Jefferson, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode Island, as
a committee on that and territory thereafter to be ceded, reported that
no slavery should exist after the year 1800. Had this report been adopted,
not only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi
also would have been free; but it required the assent of nine States to
ratify it. North Carolina was divided, and thus its vote was lost; and
Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey refused to vote. In point of fact, as it
was, it was assented to by six States. Three years later on a square vote
to exclude slavery from t