in 1777, for the passage of a law emancipating the slaves, Mr. Jefferson says:  “The principles of the amendment were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day; but it was found that the public mind would not bear the proposition, yet the day is not far distant, when it must bear and adopt it.”—­Jefferson’s Memoirs, v. 1, p. 35.  It is well known that Jefferson, Pendleton, Mason, Wythe and Lee, while acting as a committee of the Virginia House of Delegates to revise the State Laws, prepared a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves by law.  These men were the great lights of Virginia.  Mason, the author of the Virginia Constitution; Pendleton, the President of the memorable Virginia Convention in 1787, and President of the Virginia Court of Appeals; Wythe was the Blackstone of the Virginia bench, for a quarter of a century Chancellor of the State, the professor of law in the University of William and Mary, and the preceptor of Jefferson, Madison, and Chief Justice Marshall.  He was author of the celebrated remonstrance to the English House of Commons on the subject of the stamp act.  As to Jefferson, his name is his biography.

Every slaveholding member of Congress from the States of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, voted for the celebrated ordinance of 1787, which abolished the slavery then existing in the Northwest Territory.  Patrick Henry, in his well known letter to Robert Pleasants, of Virginia, January 18, 1773, says:  “I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil.”  William Pinkney, of Maryland, advocated the abolition of slavery by law, in the legislature of that State, in 1789.  Luther Martin urged the same measure both in the Federal Convention, and in his report to the Legislature of Maryland.  In 1796, St. George Tucker, of Virginia, professor of law in the University of William and Mary, and Judge of the General Court, published an elaborate dissertation on slavery, addressed to the General Assembly of the State, and urging upon them the abolition of slavery by law.

John Jay, while New York was yet a slave State, and himself in law a slaveholder, said in a letter from Spain, in 1786, “An excellent law might be made out of the Pennsylvania one, for the gradual abolition of slavery.  Were I in your legislature, I would present a bill for the purpose, drawn up with great care, and I would never cease moving it till it became a law, or I ceased to be a member.”

Daniel D. Tompkins, in a message to the Legislature of New-York January 8, 1812, said:  “To devise the means for the gradual and ultimate extermination from amongst us of slavery, is a work worthy the representatives of a polished and enlightened nation.”

The Virginia Legislature asserted this power in 1832.  At the close of a month’s debate, the following proceedings were had.  I extract from an editorial article of the Richmond Whig, of January 26, 1832.