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 have 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, the way I hope preparing under the auspices of heaven, FOR A TOTAL EMANCIPATION, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.”

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, in Williamsburg, 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 the 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 wish it on an assurance of its effect.”—­Jefferson’s Posthumous Works, vol. 1, p. 268.

In 1786, John jay, afterward Chief Justice of the United States, 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.