Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/412

 

Number of Slaves in the United States at the period of the declaration of Independence. — Proportion in each of the thirteen States. — Declaration against slavery in the State Constitution of Delaware. — Constitutions of Massachusetts and New Hampshire held to prohibit slavery, by Supreme Courts, 1783. — Act of Pennsylvania Assembly, 1780, forbids introduction of slaves, and gives freedom to all persons thereafter born in that State. — A similar law enacted in Connecticut and Rhode Island, 1784. — Virginia Assembly prohibits further introduction of slaves, 1778, and emancipation encouraged, 1782. — Maryland enacts similar laws, 1783. — Opinions of Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. — New York and New Jersey prohibit further introduction of slaves. — North Carolina declares further introduction of slaves highly impolitic, 1786. — Example of other States not followed by Georgia and South Carolina. — Action of Congress on the subject of the Territories, 1784. — Jefferson's provision excluding slavery, struck out of ordinance. — Proceedings of 1787. — Ordinance for the government of the territory north-west of the Ohio, including Jefferson's provision prohibiting slavery, passed by unanimous vote.

The number of slaves in the United States at the time of the Declaration of Independence has been estimated at half a million. The following table exhibits their numbers in each state. It appears that slavery existed in all of the thirteen states at the commencement of the revolutionary war; but shortly after its close, as we shall see hereafter, slavery and the slave-trade were abolished in some of the states:

No distinct provision on the subject of slavery appears in any of the state constitutions of the period, except in that of Delaware, which provided "that no person hereafter imported from Africa ought to be held in slavery under any pretense whatever;" and that "no negro, Indian, or mulatto slave ought to be brought into this state for sale from any part of the world."

Legal proceedings commenced in Massachusetts prior to the revolution to test the legality of slavery there, and though resulting in favor of the claimants of freedom, failed, however, to produce a general emancipation. Some attempts made at the commencement of the revolution to introduce the subject into the provincial Congress of Massachusetts were defeated; and that body seemed to recognize the legality of slavery by a resolution that no negro slave should be enlisted in the army. In 1777, a prize ship from Jamaica, with several slaves on board, was brought into Salem by a privateer. The slaves were advertised for sale; but the General Court interfered, and they were set at liberty. The declaration, presently inserted into the Massachusetts Bill of