Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/432

 above six months. This Pennsylvania system of gradual emancipation had been imitated in the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. The other eight states retained their old colonial slave-holding systems. But New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia had prohibited the further importation of slaves, and in Virginia and Maryland the old colonial restrictions on emancipation had been repealed, leaving thereby full play, and not without considerable results, to the conscience and generosity of the slave-holders. Jefferson and Wythe, as commissioners to revise the statute law of Virginia, had agreed upon a bill for gradual emancipation; but when the revision of the statutes came before the House of Delegates (1785), Jefferson was absent as minister at Paris, those who shared his opinions thought that the favorable moment had not arrived, and the bill was not brought forward. Even in New York, an attempt (1785) to pass an act for the gradual abolition of slavery had failed to succeed. Yet in all the states, from North Carolina northward, warm opponents of slavery and ardent advocates for emancipation were more or less numerous, including many distinguished citizens. Influenced, perhaps, by the sarcasms thrown out in the federal convention, Rhode Island, shortly after the adjournment of that body, had passed a law (Oct., 1187) forbidding its citizens to engage in the slave-trade. The kidnapping of three colored persons at Boston, enticed on board a vessel and carried to the West Indies, where they were sold as slaves, produced a great excitement in Massachusetts, and occasioned (1788) a similar prohibitory act there — an example speedily imitated by Connecticut and Pennsylvania. But as the federal constitution gave to congress the exclusive regulation of commerce, it had become very questionable whether these laws retained any force.

Nor was the opposition to slavery confined to legislative acts alone. The united synod of New York and Philadelphia, while constituting themselves as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, had issued a pastoral letter (1788), in which they strongly recommended the abolition of slavery and the instruction of the negroes in letters and religion. The Methodist Episcopal Church, lately introduced and rapidly increasing, especially in Maryland and Virginia, had even gone so far as to disqualify slave-holders to be members of their communion. Coke, the first bishop, was exceedingly zealous on this subject; but the rule was afterwards relaxed. In consequence of the efforts and preaching of Woolman and others, opposition to slavery had come to be a settled tenet of the Quakers.

The same opinions had been taken up as matters of humanity and policy as well as of religion. A society "for promoting the abolition of slavery, for the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and for improving the condition of the African race," had been organized in Philadelphia (1787), of which Franklin was president, and Dr. Rush and Tench Coxe secretaries. A similar society had been formed in New York, of which Jay was an active member; and this example already had been or soon was imitated in all the states form Virginia northward.