Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/362

Rh to the welfare of their people and state. I would have a convention, a sort of high tribunal, formed of the best men both of the North and of the South, to deliberate on the question of slavery, and thus I believe that the friends of freedom and of the Union would alike have reason to rejoice in its results.

The noblest of the Slave States should take the lead of the rest, by the adoption of those measures of legislative emancipation for the slave which at this moment make the Spanish monarchy in advance of the American republic.

No States appear to me more likely to take the lead in such a liberal movement than the youthful, liberal Georgia among the Southern States, and Virginia among the Middle States. Virginia, one of the oldest of the American States, one of the foremost in civil liberty, and in the war for independence; Virginia, the native land of Washington, Jefferson, and many other great men, and before all, of Washington that true type of the man and the citizen of the New World, whose greatness was of