Indeed, abolition
societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact
that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton
were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject than
we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day. On March 1,
1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its lands lying northwest
of the Ohio River. Jefferson, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode
Island, as a committee on that and territory thereafter to be ceded,
reported that no slavery should exist after the year 1800. Had this
report been adopted, not only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi also would have been free; but it required the
assent of nine States to ratify it. North Carolina was divided, and thus
its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey refused to vote.
In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to by six States. Three
years later on a square vote to exclude slavery from the Northwest, only
one vote, and that from New York, was against it. And yet, thirty-seven
years later, five thousand citizens of Illinois, out of a voting mass of
less than twelve thousand, deliberately, after a long and heated contest,
voted to introduce slavery in Illinois; and, to-day, a large party in the
free State of Illinois are willing to vote to fasten the shackles of
slavery on the fair domain of Kansas, notwithstanding it received the
dowry of freedom long before its birth as a political community.
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