appear to legislate for the sake of appearances....  I should like to know what honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his state of Rhode Island:  “I wish the law made so strong as to prevent this trade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for only stealing a negro.  Those who buy them are as bad as those who import them, and deserve hanging quite as much.”  The yeas and nays recorded at the end of the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution of imprisonment.  The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostly from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although South Carolina as well as Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays.  Virginia and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful, virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays.

[Footnote 28:  Annals of Congress, 1806-1807, p. 174.]

[Footnote 29:  Ibid., pp. 238, 239.]

When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7, Mr. Bidwell renewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation of slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach the same end by a proviso “That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this act,” This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker.  Those voting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina.  The noes were all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, and one from Pennsylvania.  The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill to a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46.  Among the members who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from New York, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina.  In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the Northern side, was chairman, and Early was not included.

This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, that forfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United States where slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradual extinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the President might deem best for them and the country.  Early moved that for this there be substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion; and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provision with their lives.  This reckless assertion suggests that Early was either set against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blind rage.