It was, however, a wise law,
moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one. Twenty-five years
later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and thirty-five
years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of Virginia, was
passed by Northern votes. I am not, just now, complaining of this law,
but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the proposed law of
1817 was far less offensive than the present one. In 1774 the Continental
Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue
the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and less
than three months before the passage of the Declaration of Independence,
the same Congress which adopted that declaration unanimously resolved
"that no slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."
[Great applause.]
On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the
slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a piratical
warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a cruel war
against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except South
Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from the
necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted.
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