The same year the American Congress issued a solemn MANIFESTO to the world.  These were its first words:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Once, these were words of power; now, “a rhetorical flourish.”

The Virginia Gazette of March 19, 1767, in an essay on slavery says:  “There cannot be in nature, there is not in all history, an instance in which every right of man is more flagrantly violated.  Enough I hope has been effected to prove that slavery is a violation of justice and religion.”

The celebrated Patrick Henry of Virginia, in a letter, Jan. 18, 1773, to Robert Pleasants, afterwards president of the Virginia Abolition Society, says:  “Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery.  It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law that warrants slavery.  I exhort you to persevere in so worthy a resolution.”

The Pennsylvania Chronicle of Nov. 21, 1768, says:  “Let every black that shall henceforth be born amongst us be deemed free.  One step farther would be to emancipate the whole race, restoring that liberty we have so long unjustly detained from them.  Till some step of this kind be taken we shall justly be the derision of the whole world.”

In 1779, the Continental Congress ordered a pamphlet to be published, entitled, “Observations on the American Revolution,” from which the following is an extract:  “The great principle (of government) is and ever will remain in force, that men are by Nature free; and so long as we have any idea of divine justice, we must associate that of human freedom.  It is conceded on all hands, that the right to be free CAN NEVER BE ALIENATED.”

Extract from the Pennsylvania act for the abolition of slavery, passed March 1, 1780:  * * * “We conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our power, to extend a portion of that freedom to others which has been extended to us.  Weaned by a long course of experience from those narrow prejudices and partialities we had imbibed, we find our hearts enlarged with kindness and benevolence towards men of all conditions and nations:  * * * Therefore be it enacted, that no child born hereafter be a slave,” &c.

Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, written just before the close of the Revolutionary War, says:  “I think a change already perceptible since the origin of the present revolution.  The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, and the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, FOR A TOTAL EMANCIPATION.”