In a letter to Dr. Price, of London, who had just published a pamphlet in favor of the abolition of slavery, Mr. Jefferson, then minister at Paris, (August 7, 1785,) says:  “From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve of your pamphlet in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice—­a minority which, for weight and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number.”  Speaking of Virginia, he says:  “This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression,—­a conflict in which the SACRED SIDE IS GAINING DAILY RECRUITS.  Be not, therefore, discouraged—­what you have written will do a great deal of good; and could you still trouble yourself with our welfare, no man is more able to give aid to the laboring side.  The College of William and Mary, since the remodelling of its plan, is the place where are collected together all the young men of Virginia, under preparation for public life.  They are there under the direction (most of them) of a Mr. Wythe, one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the subject of slavery are unequivocal.  I am satisfied, if you could resolve to address an exhortation to those young men with all that eloquence of which you are master, that its influence on the future decision of this important question would be great, perhaps decisive.  Thus. you see, that so far from thinking you have cause to repent of what you have done, I wish you to do more, and I wish it on an assurance of its effect.”—­Jefferson’s Posthumous Works, vol. 1, p. 268.

In 1786, John Jay drafted and signed a petition to the Legislature of New York, on the subject of slavery, beginning with these words:  “Your memorialists being deeply affected by the situation of those, who, although, FREE BY THE LAWS OF GOD, are held in slavery by the laws of the State,” &c.  This memorial bore also the signatures of the celebrated Alexander Hamilton; Robert R. Livingston, afterwards Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the United States, and Chancellor of the State of New York; James Duane, Mayor of the City of New York, and many others of the most eminent individuals in the State.

In the preamble of an instrument, by which Mr. Jay emancipated a slave in 1784, is the following passage: 

“Whereas, the children of men are by nature equally free, and cannot, without injustice, be either reduced to or HELD in slavery.”

In his letter while Minister at Spain, in 1786, he says, speaking of the abolition of slavery:  “Till America comes into this measure, her prayers to heaven will be IMPIOUS.  I believe God governs the world; and I believe it to be a maxim in his, as in our court, that those who ask for equity ought to do it.”