Would any one believe that I am master of slaves, of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue, as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them.

I believe a time will come, when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Every thing we can do, is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and our abhorrence for slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished for reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity. It is the furtherest advance we can make towards justice, it is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that law, which warrants slavery. I know not where to stop. I could say many things on the subject; a serious view of which, gives a gloomy perspective to future times!-Letter to Robert Pleasants.

I repeat it again, that it would rejoice my very soul that every one of my fellow beings was emancipated. As we ought with gratitude to admire that decree of heaven, which has numbered us among the free, we ought to lament and deplore the necessity of holding our fellow men in bondage.—Debate in Virginia Convention.

JAMES MONROE.

We have found that this evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union; and has been prejudicial to all the states in which it has existed.-Speech in the Virginia Convention.

JOHN JAY.

This

The state of New York is rarely out of my mind or heart, and I am often disposed to write much respecting its affairs; but I have so little information as to its present political objects and operations, that I am afraid to attempt it.-An excellent law might be made out of the Pennsylvania one, for the gradual abolition of slavery. Till America comes into this measure, her prayers to Heaven will be impious. is a strong expression, but it is just. Were I in your legislature, I would present a bill for the purpose with great care, and I would never cease moving it till it became a law, or I ceased to be a member. I believe God governs the world, and I believe it to be a maxim in his as in our court, that those who ask for equity ought to do it. Letter from Spain, 1780.

[As president of the "Society for promoting the manumission of slaves, and protecting such of them as have been or may be liberated." formed in New York in 1785, he wrote a letter, from which the following extracts are taken, to an English society formed in 1788:]

Our society has been favored with your letter of the first of May last, and we are happy that efforts so honorable to your nation are making in your country to promote the cause of justice and humanity relative to the Africans. That they who know the value of liberty, and are blessed with the enjoyment of it, ought not to subject others to slavery, is like most other moral precepts, more generally admitted in theory than observed in practice. This will continue to be too much the case while men are impelled to action by their passions rather than by their reason, and while they are more solicitous to acquire wealth than to do as they would be done by. Hence it is that India and Africa experience unmerited oppression from nations who have been long distinguished by their attachment to their civil and religious liberties, but who have expended not much less blood and treasure in violating the rights of others than in defending their The United States are far from being irreproachable in this respect. It undoubtedly is very inconsistent with their declarations on the subject of human rights, to permit a single slave to be found within their jurisdiction; and we confess the justice of your strictures on that head.

own.

Permit us, however, to observe, that although consequences ought not to deter us from doing what is right, yet it is not easy to persuade men in general to act on that magnanimous and disinterested principle. It is well known that errors, either in opinion or practice, long entertained or indulged, are difficult to eradicate, and particularly so when they have become, as it were, incorporated in the civil institutions and domestic economy of a whole people.

[The following facts are given by his son.]

"In 1784, my father executed an instrument for the prospective manumission of a slave then in his service. In the preamble of this paper, is the following passage:

'Whereas, the children of men are by nature equally free, and cannot, without injustice, be either reduced to or HELD in slavery.'

"In 1786, he drafted and signed a petition to the Legislature of New York, beginning with these words :

'Your memorialist being deeply affected by the situation of those, who, although FREE BY THE LAWS OF GOD, are held in slavery by the laws of the State.'

"The abolition he proposed was gradual, but it was definite, certain, and compulsory. His plan was, that a day should be fixed. by law, after which every child born of a slave should be free, but should be held as a servant till a certain age, when he should be entitled to every right and privilege, without exception, to which white men were by law entitled; and that voluntary manumissions should be freely allowed. This plan was adopted by the Legislature of New York during his administration.

"Having thus truly stated the conduct he pursued, and the sentiments he avowed in regard to slavery; I leave it to others to decide how far they prove an able and triumphant vindication of the Colonization Society, its principles and practice.""

6

WILLIAM JAY.

JOEL BARLOW.

Nor shall I strain
The powers of pathos in a task so vain,
As Afric's wrongs to sing, for what avails
To harp for you these known familiar tales;
To tongue mute misery, and re-rack the soul
With crimes oft copied from that bloody scroll,
Where slavery pens her woes, tho' 'tis but there
We learn the weight that mortal life can bear.
The tale might startle still the accustom'd ear,
Still shake the nerve that pumps the pearly tear,
Melt every heart, and through the nation gain
Full many a voice to break the barbarous chain.
But why to sympathy for guidance fly,
(Her aid 's uncertain and of scant supply,)
When your own self-excited sense affords
A guide more sure, and every sense accords?
Where strong self-interest join'd with duty lies,
Where doing right demands no sacrifice,
Where profit, pleasure, life expanding fame
League their allurements to support the claim.
'Tis safest there the impleaded cause to trust,
Men well instructed will be always just.

Tyrants are never free, and small and great,
All masters must be tyrants soon or late;
So Nature works, and oft the lordling knave
Turns out at once a tyrant and a slave.
Struts, cringes, bullies, begs, as courtiers must,
Makes one a God, another treads in dust,
Fears all alike, and filches whom he can,
But knows no equal, finds no friend in man.

Ah, would you not be slaves with lords and kings?
Then be not masters, there the danger springs;
The whole crude system that pervades this earth,
Of rank, privation, privilege of birth,

False honor, fraud, corruption, civil jars,

The rage of conquest, and the curse of wars,

Pandora's fatal shower, all ills combined,

That erst o'erwhelmed, and still distress mankind,
Box'd up secure in your deliberate hand,
Wait your behest, to fix or fly this land.
Equality of right is Nature's plan,

And following Nature is the march of man.
Enslave her tribes! What, half mankind emban,
Then read, expound, enforce the rights of man!
Prove plain and clear, how Nature's hand of old,

Cast all men equal in her human mould!
Their fibres, feelings, reasoning powers the same,
Like wants await them, like desires inflame;
Write, speak, avenge, for ancient sufferings feel,
Impale each tyrant on their pens of steel,

Declare how freemen can a world create,

And slaves and masters ruin every state.-The Columbiad

SAMUEL ADAMS.

"His principles on the subject of human rights, carried him far beyond the narrow limits which many loud asserters of their own liberty have prescribed to themselves, to the recognition of this right in every human being. One day the wife of Mr. Adams returning home, informed her husband that a friend had made her a present of a female slave. Mr. Adams replied in a firm decided manner, She may come, but not as a slave, for a slave cannot live in my house; if she comes, she must come free.' She came, and took up her free abode with the family of this great champion of American liberty, and there she continued free, and there she died free."—Rev. Mr. Allen, Uxbridge, Mass.

KOSCIUSKO.

General Kosciusko, by his will, placed in the hands of Mr. Jefferson a sum exceeding twenty thousand dollars, to be laid out in the purchase of young female slaves, who were to be educated and emancipated. The laws of Virginia prevented the will of Kosciusko from being carried into effect.-Aurora, 1820.

HORATIO GATES.

A few days ago, passed through this town, the Hon. General Gates and lady, on their way to take possession of their new and elegant seat on the banks of the East river. The general, previous to leaving Virginia, summoned his numerous family and slaves about him, and amidst their tears of affection and gratitude, gave them their freedom; and what is still better, made provision that their liberty should be a blessing to them.-Baltimore paper, Sept. 8, 1790.

WILLIAM PINKNEY.

SIR,-Iniquitous, and most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary system of partial bondage, which her laws have hitherto supported with a solicitude worthy of a better object, and her citizens by their practice countenanced.

Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which the parent country lent her fostering aid, from motives of interest, but which even she would have disdained to encourage, had England been the destined mart of such inhuman merchandise, its continuance is as shameful as its origin.

Eternal infamy awaits the abandoned miscreants, whose selfish souls could ever prompt them to rob unhappy Africa of her sons, and freight them hither by thousands, to poison the fair Eden of Liberty with the rank weed of individual bondage! Nor is it more to the credit of our ancestors, that they did not command these savage spoilers to bear their hateful cargo to another shore, where the shrine of freedom knew no votaries, and every purchaser would at once be both a master and a slave.

In the dawn of time, when the rough feelings of barbarism had not experienced the softening touches of refinement, such an unprincipled prostration of the inherent rights of human nature would have needed the gloss of an apology; but to the everlasting reproach of Maryland, be it said, that when her citizens rivalled the nation from whence they emigrated, in the knowledge of moral principles, and an enthusiasm in the cause of general freedom, they stooped to become the purchasers of their fellow creatures, and to introduce an hereditary bondage into the bosom of their country, which should widen with every successive generation.

For my own part, I would willingly draw the veil of oblivion over this disgusting scene of iniquity, but that the present abject state of those who are descended from these kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it forward to the memory.

But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure to our ancestors, or those from whom they purchased? Are not we EQUALLY guilty? They strewed around the seeds of slavery-we cherish and sustain the growth. They introduced the system-we enlarge, invigorate, and confirm it. Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people of Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude of Roman citizens, when the hand of oppression was lifted up against themselves; who could behold their country desolated and their citizens slaughtered; who could brave, with unshaken firmness, every calamity of war before they would submit to the smallest infringement of their rights-that this very people could yet see thousands of their fellow creatures, within the limits of their territory, bending beneath an unnatural yoke; and, instead of being assiduous to destroy their shackles, anxious to immortalize their duration, so that a nation of slaves might forever exist in a country where freedom is its boast.

Sir, it is really matter of astonishment to me, that the people of Maryland do not blush at the very name of freedom. I admire that modesty does not keep them silent in her cause. That they who have, by the deliberate acts of their legislature, treated her most obvious dictates with contempt; who have exhibited for a long series of years, a spectacle of slavery which they still are solicitous to perpetuate; who, not content with exposing to the world for near a century, a speaking picture of abominable oppression, are still ingenious to prevent the hand of generosity from robbing it of half its horrors; that they should step forward as the zealous partisans of freedom, cannot but astonish a person who is not casuist enough to reconcile antipathies.