If they had “supposed” that this representation would have controlled the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every question vital to its interests, would Hamilton, Franklin, Sherman, Gerry, Livingston, Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it?  Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an infatuate immolation.  At the adoption of the United States constitution, slavery was regarded as a fast waning system.  This conviction was universal.  Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Grayson, Tucker, Madison, Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Blair, Mason, Page, Parker, Randolph, Iredell, Spaight, Ramsey, Pinkney, Martin, McHenry, Chase, and nearly all the illustrious names south of the Potomac, proclaimed it before the sun.  A reason urged in the convention that formed the United States constitution, why the word slave should not be used in it, was, that when slavery should cease, there might remain upon the National Charter no record that it had ever been. (See speech of Mr. Burrill, of R.I., on the Missouri question.)

I now proceed to show by testimony, that at the date of the United States constitution, and for several years before and after that period, slavery was rapidly on the wane; that the American Revolution with the great events preceding, accompanying, and following it, had wrought an immense and almost universal change in the public sentiment of the nation on the subject, powerfully impelling it toward the entire abolition of the system—­and that it was the general belief that measures for its abolition throughout the Union, would be commenced by the individual States generally before the lapse of many years.  A great mass of testimony establishing this position might be presented, but narrow space, and the importance of speedy publication, counsel brevity.  Let the following proofs suffice.  First, a few dates as points of observation.

The first general Congress met in 1774.  The revolutionary war commenced in ’75.  Independence was declared in ’76.  The articles of confederation were adopted by the thirteen states in ’78.  Independence acknowledged in ’83.  The convention for forming the U.S. constitution was held in ’87, the state conventions for considering it in ’87, and ’88.  The first Congress under the constitution in ’89.

Dr. Rush, of Pennsylvania, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, in a letter to Granville Sharpe, May 1, 1773, says “A spirit of humanity and religion begins to awaken in several of the colonies in favor of the poor negroes.  Great events have been brought about by small beginnings. Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago in opposing negro slavery in Philadelphia, and NOW THREE-FOURTHS OF THE PROVINCE AS WELL AS OF THE CITY CRY OUT AGAINST IT.”—­[Stuart’s Life of Sharpe, p. 21.]

In the preamble to the act prohibiting the importation of slaves into Rhode Island, June, 1774, is the following:  “Whereas the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which that of personal freedom must be considered the greatest, and as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others, therefore,” &c.