History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 / Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens

He regarded the "buying, selling, and holding men in slavery, as inconsistent with the Christian religion." When his memorial came before the Yearly Meeting for action, it confessed itself "unprepared to act," and voted it "not proper then to give a positive judgment in the case." In 1696 the Yearly Meeting pronounced against the further importation of slaves, and adopted measures looking toward their moral improvement. George Keith, catching the holy inspiration of humanity, with a considerable following, denounced the institution of slavery "as contrary to the religion of Christ, the rights of man, and sound reason and policy."[512]

While these efforts were, to a certain extent, abortive, yet, nevertheless, the Society of the Friends made regulations for the better treatment of the enslaved Negroes. The sentiment thus created went far toward deterring the better class of citizens from purchasing slaves. To his broad and lofty sentiments of humanity, the pious William Penn sought to add the force of positive law. The published views of George Fox, given at Barbadoes in 1671, in his "Gospel Family Order, being a short discourse concerning the ordering of Families, both of Whites, Blacks, and Indians," had a salutary effect upon the mind of Penn. In 1700 he proposed to the Council "the necessitie of a law [among others] about ye marriages of negroes." The bill was referred to a joint committee of both houses, and they brought in a bill "for regulating Negroes in their Morals and Marriages &c." It reached a second reading, and was lost.[513] Penn regarded the teaching of Negroes the sanctity of the marriage relation as of the greatest importance to the colony, and the surest means of promoting pure morals. Upon what grounds it was rejected is not known. He presented, at the same session of the Assembly, another bill, which provided "for the better regulation of servants in this province and territories." He desired the government of slaves to be prescribed and regulated by law, rather than by the capricious whims of masters. No servant was to be sold out of the Province without giving his consent, nor could he be assigned over except before a justice of the peace. It provided for a regular allowance to servants at the expiration of their time, and required them to serve five days extra for every day's absence from their master without the latter's assent. A penalty was fixed for concealing runaway slaves, and a reward offered for apprehending them. No free person was allowed to deal with servants, and justices and sheriffs were to be punished for neglecting their duties in the premises.

In case a Negro was guilty of murder, he was tried by two justices, appointed by the governor, before six freeholders. The manner of procedure was prescribed, and the nature of the sentence and acquittal. Negroes were not allowed to carry a gun or other weapons. Not more than four were allowed together, upon pain of a severe flogging. An Act for raising revenue was passed, and a duty upon imported slaves was levied, in 1710. In 1711-12, an Act was passed "to prevent the importation of negroes and Indians" into the Province. A general petition for the emancipation of slaves by law was presented to the Legislature during this same year; but the wise law-makers replied, that "it was neither just nor convenient to set them at liberty." The bill passed on the 7th of June, 1712, but was disapproved by Great Britain, and was accordingly repealed by an Act of Queen Anne, Feb. 20, 1713. In 1714 and 1717, Acts were passed to check the importation of slaves. But the English government, instead of being touched by the philanthropic endeavors of the people of Pennsylvania, was seeking, for purposes of commercial trade and gain, to darken the continent with the victims of its avarice.

Negroes had no political rights in the Province. Free Negroes were prohibited from entertaining Negro or Indian slaves, or trading with them. Masters were required, when manumitting slaves, to furnish security, as in the other colonies. Marriages between the races were forbidden. Negroes were not allowed to be abroad after nine o'clock at night.

In 1773 the Assembly passed "An Act making perpetual the Act entitled, An Act for laying a duty on negroes and mulatto slaves," etc., and added ten pounds to the duty. The colonists did much to check the vile and inhuman traffic; but, having once obtained a hold, it did eat like a canker. It threw its dark shadow over personal and collective interests, and poisoned the springs of human kindness in many hearts. It was not alone hurtful to the slave: it transformed and blackened character everywhere, and fascinated those who were anxious for riches beyond the power of moral discernment. Here, however, as in New Jersey, the Negro found the Quaker his practical friend; and his upper and better life received the pruning advice, refining and elevating influence, of a godly people. But intelligence in the slave was an occasion of offending, and prepared him to realize his deplorable situation. So to enlighten him was to excite in him a deep desire for liberty, and, not unlikely, a feeling of revenge toward his enslavers. So there was really danger in the method the guileless Friends adopted to ameliorate the condition of the slaves.

When England began to breathe out threatenings against her contumacious dependencies in North America, the people of Pennsylvania began to reflect upon the probable outrages their Negroes would, in all probability, commit. They inferred that the Negroes would be their enemy because they were their slaves. This was the equitable findings of a guilty conscience. They did not dare expect less than the revengeful hate of the beings they had laid the yoke of bondage upon; and verily they found themselves with "fears within, and fightings without."

CHAPTER XXV.

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GEORGIA was once included in the territory of Carolina, and extended from the Savannah to the St. John's River. A corporate body, under the title of "The Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia," was created by charter, bearing date of June 9, 1732. The life of their trust was for the space of twenty-one years. The rules by which the trustees sought to manage the infant were rather novel; but as a discussion of them would be irrelevant, mention can be made only of that part which related to slavery. Georgia was the last colony—the thirteenth—planted in North America by the English government. Special interest centred in it for several reasons, that will be explained farther on.

The trustees ruled out slavery altogether. Gen. John Oglethorpe, a brilliant young English officer of gentle blood, the first governor of the colony, was identified with "the Royal African Company, which alone had the right of planting forts and trading on the coast of Africa." He said that "slavery is against the gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime." Another of the trustees, in a sermon preached on Sunday, Feb. 17, 1734, at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London, declared, "Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions." Beautiful sentiments! Eloquent testimony against the crime of the ages! At first blush the student of history is apt to praise the sublime motives of the "trustees," in placing a restriction against the slave-trade. But the declaration of principles quoted above is not borne out by the facts of history. On this point Dr. Stevens, the historian of Georgia, observes, "Yet in the official publications of that body [the trustees], its inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not on humane and liberal grounds, and even Oglethorpe owned a plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South Carolina, about forty miles above Savannah."[514] To this reliable opinion is added:—

"The introduction of slaves was prohibited to the colony of Georgia for some years, not from motives of humanity, but for the reason it was encouraged elsewhere, to wit: the interest of the mother country. It was a favorite idea with the 'mother country,' to make Georgia a protecting blanket for the Carolinas, against the Spanish settlements south of her, and the principal Indian tribes to the west; to do this, a strong settlement of white men was sought to be built up, whose arms and interests would defend her northern plantations. The introduction of slaves was held to be unfavorable to this scheme, and hence its prohibition. During the time of the prohibition, Oglethorpe himself was a slave holder in Carolina."[515]

The reasons that led the trustees to prohibit slavery in the colony are put thus tersely.—

"1st. Its expense: which the poor emigrant would be entirely unable to sustain, either in the first cost of a negro, or his subsequent keeping. 2d. Because it would induce idleness and render labour degrading. 3d. Because the settlers, being freeholders of only fifty-acre lots, requiring but one or two extra hands for their cultivation, the German servants would be a third more profitable than the blacks. Upon the last original design I have mentioned, in planting this colony, they also based an argument against their admission, viz., that the cultivation of silk and wine, demanding skill and nicety, rather than strength and endurance of fatigue, the whites were better calculated for such labour than the negroes. These were the prominent arguments, drawn from the various considerations of internal and external policy, which influenced the Trustees in making this prohibition. Many of them, however, had but a temporary bearing, none stood the test of experience."[516]

It is clear, then, that the founders of the colony of Georgia were not moved by the noblest impulses to prohibit slavery within their jurisdiction. In the chapter on South Carolina, attention was called to the influence of the Spanish troops in Florida on the recalcitrant Negroes in the Carolinas, the Negro regiment with subalterns from their own class, and the work of Spanish emissaries among the slaves. The home government thought it wise to build up Georgia out of white men, who could develop its resources, and bear arms in defence of British possessions along an extensive border exposed to a pestiferous foe. But the Board of Trade soon found this an impracticable scheme, and the colonists themselves began to clamor "for the use of negroes."[517] The first petition for the introduction and use of Negro slaves was offered to the trustees in 1735. This prayer was promptly and positively denied, and for fifteen years they refused to grant all requests for the use of Negroes. They adhered to their prohibition in letter and spirit. Whenever and wherever Negroes were found in the colony, they were sold back into Carolina. In the month of December, 1738, a petition, addressed to the trustees, including nearly all the names of the foremost colonists, set forth the distressing condition into which affairs had drifted under the enforcement of the prohibition, and declared that "the use of negroes, with proper limitations, which, if granted, would both occasion great numbers of white people to come here, and also to render us capable to subsist ourselves, by raising provisions upon our lands, until we could make some produce fit for export, in some measure to balance our importations." But instead of securing a favorable hearing, the petition drew the fire of the friends of the prohibition against the use of Negroes. On the 3d of January, 1739, a petition to the trustees combating the arguments of the above-mentioned petition, and urging them to remain firm, was issued at Darien. This was followed by another one, issued from Ebenezer on the 13th of March, in favor of the position occupied by the trustees. A great many Scotch and German people had settled in the colony; and, familiar with the arts of husbandry, they became the ardent supporters of the trustees. James Habersham, the "dear fellow-traveller," of Whitefield, exclaimed,—

"I once thought, it was unlawful to keep negro slaves, but I am now induced to think God may have a higher end in permitting them to be brought to this Christian country, than merely to support their masters. Many of the poor slaves in America have already been made freemen of the heavenly Jerusalem, and possibly a time may come when many thousands may embrace the gospel, and thereby be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. These, and other considerations, appear to plead strongly for a limited use of negroes; for, while we can buy provisions in Carolina cheaper than we can here, no one will be induced to plant much."

But the trustees stood firm against the subtle cunning of the politicians, and the eloquent pleadings of avarice.

On the 7th October, 1741, a large meeting was held at Savannah, and a petition drawn, in which the land-holders and settlers presented their grievances to the English authorities in London. On the 26th of March, 1742, Mr. Thomas Stephens, armed with the memorial, as the agent of the memorialists, sailed for London. While the document ostensibly set forth their wish for a definition of "the tenure of the lands," really the burden of the prayer was for "Negroes." He presented the memorial to the king, and his Majesty referred it to a committee of the "Lords of Council for Plantation Affairs." This committee transferred a copy of the memorial to the trustees, with a request for their answer. About this time Stephens presented a petition to Parliament, in which he charged the trustees with direliction of duty, improper use of the public funds, abuse of their authority, and numerous other sins against the public welfare. It created a genuine sensation. The House resolved to go into a "committee of the whole," to consider the petitions and the answer of the trustees. The answer of the trustees was drawn by the able pen of the Earl of Egmont, and by them warmly approved on the 3d of May, and three days later was read to the House of Commons. A motion prevailed "that the petitions do lie upon the table," for the perusal of the members, for the space of one week. At the expiration of the time fixed, Stephens appeared, and all the petitions of the people of Georgia to the trustees in reference to "the tenure of lands," and for "the use of negroes," were laid before the honorable body. In the committee of the whole the affairs of the colony were thoroughly investigated; and, after a few days session, Mr. Carew reported a set of resolutions, being the sense of the committee after due deliberation upon the matters before them:—

"That the province of Georgia, in America, by reason of its situation, may be an useful barrier to the British provinces on the continent of America against the French and Spaniards, and Indian nations in their interests; that the ports and harbors within the said province may be a good security to the trade and navigation of this kingdom, that the said province, by reason of the fertility of the soil, the healthfulness of the climate, and the convenience of the rivers, is a proper place for establishing a settlement, and may contribute greatly to the increasing trade of this kingdom; that it is very necessary and advantageous to this nation that the colony of Georgia should be preserved and supported; that it will be an advantage to the colony of Georgia to permit the importation of rum into the said colony from any of the British colonies; that the petition of Thomas Stephens contains false, scandalous and malicious charges, tending to asperse the characters of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, in America."

When the resolution making the importation of rum lawful reached a vote, it was amended by adding, "As also the use of negroes, who may be employed there with advantage to the colony, under proper regulations and restrictions." It was lost by a majority of nine votes. A resolution prevailed calling Thomas Stephens to the bar of the House, "to be reprimanded on his knees by Mr. Speaker," for his offence against the trustees.

On the next day Stephens, upon his bended knees at the bar of the House of Commons, before the assembled statesmen of Great Britain, was publicly reprimanded by the speaker, and discharged after paying his fees. Thus ended the attempt of the people of the colony of Georgia to secure permission, over the heads of the trustees, to introduce slaves into their service.

The dark tide of slavery influence was dashing against the borders of the colony. The people were discouraged. Business was stagnated. Internal dissatisfaction and factional strife wore hard upon the spirit of a people trying to build up and develop a new country. Then the predatory incursions of the Spaniards, and the threatening attitude of the Indians, unnerved the entire Province. In this state of affairs white servants grew insolent and insubordinate. Those whose term of service expired refused to work. In this dilemma many persons boldly put the rule of the trustees under foot, and hired Negroes from the Carolinas. At length the trustees became aware of the clandestine importation of Negroes into the colony, and thereupon gave the magistrates a severe reproval. On the 2d of October, 1747, they received the following reply:—

"We are afraid, sir, from what you have wrote in relation to negroes, that he Honourable Trustees have been misinformed as to our conduct relating thereto; for we can with great assurance assert, that this Board has always acted an uniform part in discouraging the use of negroes in this colony, well knowing it to be disagreeable to the Trustees, as well as contrary to an act existing for the prohibition of them, and always give it in charge to those whom we had put in possession of lands, not to attempt the introduction or use of negroes. But notwithstanding our great caution, some people from Carolina, soon after settling lands on the Little Ogeechee, found means of bringing and employing a few negroes on the said lands, some time before it was discovered to us, upon which they thought it high time to withdraw them, for fear of being seized, and soon after withdrew themselves and families out of the colony, which appeals to us at present to be the resolution of divers others."[518]

It was charged that the law-officers knew of the presence of Negroes in Georgia; that their standing and constant toast was, "the one thing needful" (Negroes); and that they themselves had surreptitiously aided in the procurement of Negroes for the colony. The supporters of the colonists grew less powerful as the struggle went forward. The most active grew taciturn and conservative. The advocates of Negro labor became bolder, and more acrimonious in debate; and at length the champions of exclusive white labor shrank into silence, appalled at the desperation of then opponents. The Rev. Martin Bolzius, one of the most active supporters of the trustees, wrote those gentlemen on May 3, 1748:—

"Things being now in such a melancholy state, I must humbly beseech your honors, not to regard any more our of our friend's petitions against negroes."

The Rev. George Whitefield and James Habersham used their utmost influence upon the trustees to obtain a modification of the prohibition against "the use of negroes." On the 6th of December, 1748, Rev. Whitefield, speaking of a plantation and Negroes he had purchased, wrote the trustees:—

"Upwards of five thousand pounds have been expended in that undertaking, and yet very little proficiency made in the cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had a negro been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum which has been laid out. An unwillingness to let so good a design drop, and having a rational conviction that it must necessarily, if some other method was not fixed upon to prevent it—these two considerations, honoured gentlemen, prevailed on me about two years ago, through the bounty of my good friends, to purchase a plantation in South Carolina, where negroes are allowed. Blessed be God, this plantation has succeeded; and though at present I have only eight working hands, yet in all probability there will be more raised in one year, and with a quarter the expense, than has been produced at Bethesda for several years last past. This confirms me in the opinion I have entertained for a long time, that Georgia never can or will be a flourishing province without negroes are allowed."[519]

The sentiment in favor of the importation of Negro slaves had become well-nigh unanimous. The trustees began to waver. On the 10th of January, 1749, another petition was presented to the trustees. It was carefully drawn, and set forth the restrictions under which slaves should be introduced. On the 16th of May following, it was read to the trustees; and they resolved to have it "presented to His Majesty in council." They also asked that the prohibition against the introduction of Negroes, passed in "1735, be repealed." The Earl of Shaftesbury, at the head of a special committee, draughted a bill repealing the prohibition. On the 26th of October, 1749, a large and influential committee of twenty-seven drew up and signed a petition urging the immediate introduction of slavery, with certain limitations. The paper was duly attested, and returned to the trustees. The opposition to the introduction of slavery into the colony of Georgia had been conquered; and, after a long and bitter struggle, slavery was firmly and legally established in this the last Province of the English in the Western world. The colonists were jubilant.

The charter under which the trustees acted expired by limitation in 1752, and a new form of government was established under the Board of Trade. The royal commission appointed a governor and council. One of the first ordinances enacted by them was one whereby "all offences committed by slaves were to be tried by a single justice, without a jury, who was to award execution, and, in capital cases, to set a value on the slave, to be paid out of the public treasury." At the first session of the Assembly in 1755, a law was passed "for the regulation and government of slaves." In 1765 an Act was passed establishing a pass system, and the rest of the legislation in respect to slaves was a copy of the laws of South Carolina.

The history of slavery in Georgia during this period is unparalleled and incomparably interesting. It illustrates the power of the institution, and shows that there was no Province sufficiently independent of its influence so as to expel it from its jurisdiction. Like the Angel of Death that passed through Egypt, there was no colony that it did not smite with its dark and destroying pinions. The dearest, the sublimest, interests of humanity were prostrated by its defiling touch. It shut out the sunlight of human kindness; it paled the fires of hope; it arrested the development of the branches of men's better natures, and peopled their lower being with base and consuming desires; it placed the "Golden Rule" under the unholy heel of time-servers and self-seekers; it made the Church as secular as the Change, and the latter as pious as the former: it was a gigantic system, at war with the civilization of the Roundheads and Puritans, and an intolerable burden to a people who desired to build a new nation in this New World in the West.

Part III.

CHAPTER XXVI.

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THE policy of arming the Negroes early claimed the anxious consideration of the leaders of the colonial army during the American Revolution. England had been crowding her American plantations with slaves at a fearful rate; and, when hostilities actually began, it was difficult to tell whether the American army or the ministerial army would be able to secure the Negroes as allies. In 1715 the royal governors of the colonies gave the Board of Trade the number of the Negroes in their respective colonies. The slave population was as follows:—

Sixty years afterwards, when the Revolution had begun, the slave population of the thirteen colonies was as follows:—

Such a host of beings was not to be despised in a great military struggle. Regarded as a neutral element that could be used simply to feed an army, to perform fatigue duty, and build fortifications, the Negro population was the object of fawning favors of the white colonists. In the Non-Importation Covenant, passed by the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, on the 24th of October, 1774, the second resolve indicated the feeling of the representatives of the people on the question of the slave-trade:—

"2. We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[520]

It, with the entire covenant, received the signatures of all the delegates from the twelve colonies.[521] The delegates from the Southern colonies were greatly distressed concerning the probable attitude of the slave element. They knew that if that ignorant mass of humanity were inflamed by some act of strategy of the enemy, they might sweep their homes and families from the face of the earth. The cruelties of the slave-code, the harsh treatment of Negro slaves, the lack of confidence in the whites everywhere manifested among the blacks,—as so many horrid dreams, harassed the minds of slaveholders by day and by night. They did not even possess the courage to ask the slaves to remain silent and passive during the struggle between England and themselves. The sentiment that adorned the speeches of orators, and graced the writings of the colonists, during this period, was "the equality of the rights of all men." And yet the slaves who bore their chains under their eyes, who were denied the commonest rights of humanity, who were rated as chattels and real property, were living witnesses to the insincerity and inconsistency of this declaration. But it is a remarkable fact, that all the Southern colonies, in addition to the action of their delegates, ratified the Non-Importation Covenant. The Maryland Convention on the 8th of December, 1774; South Carolina Provincial Congress on the 11th January, 1775; Virginia Convention on the 22d March, 1775; North Carolina Provincial Congress on the 23d of August, 1775; Delaware Assembly on the 25th of March, 1775 (refused by Gov. John Penn); and Georgia,—passed the following resolves thereabouts:—

"1. Resolved, That this Congress will adopt, and carry into execution, all and singular the measures and recommendations of the late Continental Congress.

"4. Resolved, That we will neither import or [nor] purchase any slave imported from Africa or elsewhere after this date."

Meetings were numerous and spirited throughout the colonies, in which, by resolutions, the people expressed their sentiments in reference to the mother country. On the 18th of July, 1774, at a meeting held in Fairfax Court-House, Virginia, a series of twenty-four resolutions was presented by George Washington, chairman of the committee on resolutions, three of which were directed against slavery.

"17 Resolved. That it is the opinion of this meeting, that, during our present difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be imported into any of the British colonies on this continent; and we take this opportunity of declaring our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop for ever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade....

"21. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this meeting, that this and the other associating colonies should break off all trade, intercourse, and dealings with that colony, province, or town, which shall decline, or refuse to agree to, the plan which shall be adopted by the General Congress....

"24. Resolved, That George Washington and Charles Broadwater, lately elected our representatives to serve in the General Assembly, be appointed to attend the Convention at Williamsburg on the first day of August next, and present these resolves, as the sense of the people of this county upon the measures proper to be taken in the present alarming and dangerous situation of America."

Mr. Sparks comments upon the resolutions as follows:—

"The draught, from which the resolves are printed, I find among Washington's papers, in the handwriting of George Mason, by whom they were probably drawn up; yet, as they were adopted by the Committee of which Washington was chairman, and reported by him as moderator of the meeting, they may be presumed to express his opinions, formed on a perfect knowledge of the subject, and after cool deliberation. This may indeed be inferred from his letter to Mr. Bryan Fairfax, in which he intimates a doubt only as to the article favoring the idea of a further petition to the king. He was opposed to such a step, believing enough had been done in this way already; but he yielded the point in tenderness to the more wavering resolution of his associates.

"These resolves are framed with much care and ability, and exhibit the question then at issue, and the state of public feeling, in a manner so clear and forcible as to give them a special claim to a place in the present work, in addition to the circumstance of their being the matured views of Washington at the outset of the great Revolutionary struggle in which he was to act so conspicuous a part....

"Such were the opinions of Washington, and his associates in Virginia, at the beginning of the Revolutionary contest. The seventeenth resolve merits attention, from the pointed manner in which it condemns the slave trade."[522]

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Dean Woodward, dated April 10, 1773, says,—

"I have since had the satisfaction to learn that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America, that many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty; and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the king for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that Colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed, and as the interest of a few merchants here has more weight with Government than that of thousands at a distance."[523]

Virginia gave early and positive proof that she was in earnest on the question of non-importation. One John Brown, a merchant of Norfolk, broke the rules of the colony by purchasing imported slaves, and was severely rebuked in the following article:—

"'TO THE FREEMEN OF VIRGINIA:

"'Committee Chamber, Norfolk, March 6, 1775

"'Trusting to your sure resentment against the enemies of your country, we, the committee, elected by ballot for the Borough of Norfolk, hold up for your just indignation Mr. John Brown, merchant of this place.

"'On Thursday, the 2d of March, this committee were informed of the arrival of the brig Fanny, Capt. Watson, with a number of slaves for Mr. Brown: and, upon inquiry, it appeared they were shipped from Jamaica as his property, and on his account; that he had taken great pains to conceal their arrival from the knowledge of the committee; and that the shipper of the slaves, Mr. Brown's correspondent, and the captain of the vessel, were all fully apprised of the Continental prohibition against that article.

"'From the whole of this transaction, therefore, we, the committee for Norfolk Borough, do give it as our unanimous opinion, that the said John Brown, has wilfully and perversely violated the Continental Association to which he had with his own hand subscribed obedience, and that, agreeable to the eleventh article, we are bound forthwith to publish the truth of the case, to the end that all such foes to the rights of British America may be publicly known and universally contemned as the enemies of American liberty, and that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him.'"

And the first delegation from Virginia to Congress in August, 1774, had instructions as follows, drawn by Thomas Jefferson:—

"For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those Colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice."[524]

It is scarcely necessary to mention the fact, that there were several very cogent passages in the first draught of the Declaration of Independence that were finally omitted. The one most pertinent to this history is here given:—

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of Infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.[525]

The solicitude concerning the slavery question was not so great in the Northern colonies. The slaves were not so numerous as in the Carolinas and other Southern colonies. The severe treatment of slaves had been greatly modified, the spirit of masters toward them more gentle and conciliatory, and the public sentiment concerning them more humane. Public discussion of the Negro question, however, was cautiously avoided. The failure of attempted legislation friendly to the slaves had discouraged their friends, while the critical situation of public affairs made the supporters of slavery less aggressive. On the 25th of October, 1774, an effort was made in the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts to re-open the discussion, but it failed. The record of the attempt is as follows:—

"Mr. Wheeler brought into Congress a letter directed to Doct. Appleton, purporting the propriety, that while we are attempting to free ourselves from our present embarrassments, and preserve ourselves from slavery, that we also take into consideration the state and circumstances of the negro slaves in this province. The same was read, and it was moved that a committee be appointed to take the same into consideration. After some debate thereon, the question was put, whether the matter now subside, and it passed in the affirmative."[526]