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 bandage for a single hour...  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!”

Hon. James Campbell, in an address before the Pennsylvania Society of 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 on 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.”—­pp. 233, 4.

Mr. Tucker, of Virginia, Judge of the Supreme Court of that state, and professor of law in the University of William and Mary, addressed a letter to the General Assembly of that state, in 1796, urging the abolition of slavery, from which the following is an extract.  Speaking of the slaves in Virginia, he says:  “Should we not, at the time of the revolution, have broken their fetters?  Is it not our duty to embrace the first moment of constitutional health and vigor to effectuate so desirable an object, and to remove from us a stigma with which our enemies will never fail to upbraid us, nor our consciences to reproach us?”