The Great Conspiracy | Page 8

and who, on the
contrary, still wished to continue it," as well as in deference to the
sensitiveness of Northern people, who, though having few slaves
themselves, "had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others" a
clause of the great indictment of King George III., which, since it was
not omitted for any other reason than that just given, shows pretty
conclusively that where the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all
men are created equal," they included in the term "men," black as well
as white, bond as well as free; for the clause ran thus: "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 dye, he is
now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase
that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on
whom he also obtruded them; thus paying of former crimes committed
against the LIBERTIES of our people with crimes which he urges them

to commit against the LIVES of another."
[Prior to 1752, when Georgia surrendered her charter and became a
Royal Colony, the holding of slaves within its limits was expressly
prohibited by law; and the Darien (Ga.) resolutions of 1775 declared
not only a "disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of
Slavery in America" as "a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and
highly dangerous to our Liberties (as well as lives) but a determination
to use our utmost efforts for the manumission of our slaves in this
colony upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and
themselves."]
During the war of the Revolution following the Declaration of
Independence, the half a million of slaves, nearly all of them in the
Southern States, were found to be not only a source of weakness, but,
through the incitements of British emissaries, a standing menace of
peril to the Slaveholders. Thus it was that the South was overrun by
hostile British armies, while in the North-comparatively free of this
element of weakness--disaster after disaster met them. At last, however,
in 1782, came the recognition of our Independence, and peace,
followed by the evacuation of New York at the close of 1783.
The lessons of the war, touching Slavery, had not been lost upon our
statesmen. Early in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States her claims
of jurisdiction and otherwise over the vast territory north-west of the
Ohio; and upon its acceptance, Jefferson, as chairman of a Select
Committee appointed at his instance to consider a plan of government
therefor, reported to the ninth Continental Congress an Ordinance to
govern the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States
to the United States, extending from the 31st to the 47th degree of north
latitude, which provided as "fundamental conditions between the
thirteen original States and those newly described" as embryo States
thereafter--to be carved out of such territory ceded or to be ceded to the
United States, not only that "they shall forever remain a part of the
United States of America," but also that "after the year 1800 of the
Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in
any of the said States"--and that those fundamental conditions were

"unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress
assembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration is
proposed to be made."
But now a signal misfortune befell. Upon a motion to strike out the
clause prohibiting Slavery, six States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, voted to
retain the prohibitive clause, while three States, Maryland, Virginia and
South Carolina, voted not to retain it. The vote of North Carolina was
equally divided; and while one of the Delegates from New Jersey voted
to retain it, yet as there was no other delegate present from that State,
and the Articles of Confederation required the presence of "two or
more" delegates to cast the vote of a State, the vote of New Jersey was
lost; and, as the same Articles required an affirmative vote of a majority
of all the States--and not simply of those present--the retention of the
clause prohibiting Slavery was also lost. Thus was lost the great
opportunity of restricting Slavery to the then existing Slave States, and
of settling the question peaceably for all time. Three years afterward a
similar Ordinance, since become famous as "the Ordinance of '87," for
the government of the North-west Territory (from which the Free States
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have since been
carved and admitted to the Union) was adopted in Congress by