The celebrated William Pinkney, in a speech before the Maryland House of Delegates, in 1789, on the emancipation of slaves, said, “Sir, by the eternal principles of natural justice, no master in the state has a right to hold his slave in bondage for a single hour....  I would as soon believe the incoherent tale of a schoolboy, who should tell me he had been frightened by a ghost, as that the grant of this permission (to emancipate) ought in any degree to alarm us.  Are we apprehensive that these men will become more dangerous by becoming freemen?  Are we alarmed, lest by being admitted into the enjoyment of civil rights, they will be inspired with a deadly enmity against the rights of others?  Strange, unaccountable paradox!  How much more rational would it be, to argue that the natural enemy of the privileges of a freeman, is he who is robbed of them himself!  Dishonorable to the species is the idea that they would ever prove injurious to our interests—­released from the shackles of slavery, by the justice of government and the bounty of individuals—­the want of fidelity and attachment would be next to impossible.”

Hon. James Campbell, in an address before the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, July 4, 1787, said, “Our separation from Great Britain has extended the empire of humanity.  The time is not far distant when our sister states, in imitation of our example, shall turn their vassals into freemen.”  The Convention that formed the United States’ Constitution being then in session, attended at the delivery of this oration with General Washington at their head.

A Baltimore paper of September 8th, 1780, contains the following notice of Major General Gates:  “A few days ago passed through this town the Hon. General Gates and lady.  The General, previous to leaving Virginia, summoned his numerous family of slaves about him, and amidst their tears of affection and gratitude, gave them their FREEDOM.”

In 1791 the university of William and Mary, in Virginia, conferred upon Granville Sharpe the degree of Doctor of Laws.  Sharpe was at that time the acknowledged head of British abolitionists.  His indefatigable exertions, prosecuted for years in the case of Somerset, procured that memorable decision in the Court of King’s Bench, which settled the principle that no slave could be held in England.  He was most uncompromising in his opposition to slavery, and for twenty years previous he had spoken, written, and accomplished more against it than any man living.

In the “Memoirs of the Revolutionary War in the Southern Department,” by Gen. Lee, of Va., Commandant of the Partizan Legion, is the following:  “The Constitution of the United States, adopted lately with so much difficulty, has effectually provided against this evil, (by importation) after a few years.  It is much to be lamented that having done so much in this way, a provision had not been made for the gradual abolition of slavery.”—­p. 233, 4.