[Footnote 20:  Frank Moore ed., Correspondence of Henry Laurens (New York, 1861), pp. 20, 21.  The version of this letter given by Professor Wallace in his Life of Henry Laurens, p. 446, which varies from the present one, was derived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written.  Cf. South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, X. 49.  For related items in the Laurens correspondence see D.D.  Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, pp. 445, 447-455.]

In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs had no exception in regard to slavery.  The Quakers alone condemned it.  When in 1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman of his state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said “there was not a gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in the country.  It was a misfortune—­he considered it a curse; but there was no way of getting rid of them.”  Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problem rather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtless reflected the thought of his community.[21] The legislation of North Carolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative than liberal.

[Footnote 21:  Annals of Congress, VII, 661.  American historians, through preoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro with anti-slavery expressions.  In reciting the speech of Macon here quoted McMaster has replaced “blacks” with “slaves”; and incidentally he has made the whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina.  Rhodes in turn has implicitly followed McMaster in both errors.  J.B.  McMaster, History of the People of the United States, II, 359; J.F.  Rhodes, History of the United States, I, 19.]

The central government of the United States during the Revolution and the Confederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in its diplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment of property in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories.  Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions were included in the first projects for establishing governments in them.  Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 for a state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowed to drop out of consideration.  In the next year an ordinance drafted by Jefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governments over the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one of its features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughout the region concerned.  Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress could enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven state delegations.  When the ballot