Page:The landmark of freedom.djvu/46

Rh in man." And Washington, in letters written near this period—which completely describe the aims of an Abolitionist—avowed "that it was among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery may be abolished by law," and that to this end "his suffrage should not be wanting."

In this spirit was the National Constitution adopted. In this spirit the National Government was first organized under Washington. And here there is a fact of peculiar significance, to which I have already on a former occasion called attention, but which is well worthy of perpetual memory. At the time that this great chief took his first oath to support the Constitution of the United States, the national ensign nowhere within the national territory covered a single slave. On the sea an execrable piracy, the trade in slaves, was still, to the national scandal, tolerated under the national flag. In the States, as a sectional institution, beneath the shelter of local laws, slavery unhappily found a home. But in the only territories, at this time belonging to the nation, the broad region of the north-west, it had already, by the Ordinance of Freedom, been made impossible, even before the adoption of the Constitution. The District of Columbia, with its fatal dowry, had not yet been acquired. Entering upon his high duties, Washington, himself an Abolitionist, was surrounded by men, who, by their lives and declared opinions, were pledged to warfare with slavery. There was John Adams,