Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/34

22 from Georgia the western part of her territory, it was easy for the South to extend slavery over that virgin soil. In 1803, Louisiana was purchased from France; then, or in 1804, when it was organized into two territories, it would have been easy to apply the Ordinance of 1787, and prevent slavery from extending beyond the original thirteen States. But though some provisions restricting slavery were made, the ideas of that Ordinance were forgotten. Since that time five new States have been formed out of territory acquired since the revolution,—Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Texas,—all slave States; the last two with constitutions aiming to make slavery perpetual. The last of these was added to the Union on the 22nd of December, 1845, two hundred and twenty-five years after the day when the Forefathers first set foot on Plymouth Rock; while the sons of the Pilgrims were eating and drinking and making merry, the deed of Annexation was completed, and slavery extended over nearly 400,000 square miles of new territory, whence the semi-barbarous Mexicans had driven it out.

Slavery might easily have been abolished at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed in 1744 the Continental Congress, in their celebrated "non-importation Agreement," resolved never to import or purchase any slaves after the last of December in that year. In 1775, they declare in a "Report" that it is not possible "for men who exercise their reason to believe that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in and unbounded power over others." Indeed the Declaration itself is a denial of the national right to allow the existence of slavery: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are [the right to] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;—that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." But the original draft of this paper contained a condemnation yet more explicit: "He [the king of England] has waged cruel war against human nature itself; violating its most sacred rights of life and Liberty in the persons of a