In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but by moral and philanthropic views.  Petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts alike.  To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and but seven dissenting votes in the House.  It was, however, a wise law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one.  Twenty-five years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of Virginia, was passed by Northern votes.  I am not, just now, complaining of this law, but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive than the present one.  In 1774 the Continental Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave:  and less than three months before the passage of the Declaration of Independence, the same Congress which adopted that declaration unanimously resolved “that no slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies.” [Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the slave trade was characterized as “an execrable commerce,” as “a piratical warfare,” as the “opprobrium of infidel powers,” and as “a cruel war against human nature.” [Applause.] All agreed on this except South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from the necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted.  Indeed, abolition societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject than we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day.  On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its lands lying northwest of the Ohio River.  Jefferson, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode Island, as a committee on that and territory thereafter to be ceded, reported that no slavery should exist after the year 1800.  Had this report been adopted, not only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi also would have been free; but it required the assent of nine States to ratify it.  North Carolina was divided, and thus its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey refused to vote.  In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to by six States.  Three years later, on a square vote to exclude slavery from the Northwest, only one vote, and that from New York, was against it.  And yet, thirty-seven years later, five thousand citizens