Washington, in a letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786, says: "There
is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan
adopted for the abolition of slavery; but there is only one proper and
effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by
_legislative_ authority." In a letter to Lafayette, May 10, 1786, he
says: "It (the abolition of slavery) certainly might, and assuredly
ought to be effected, and that too by _legislative_ authority." In a
letter to John Fenton Mercer, Sept. 9, 1786, he says: "It is among my
first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country
may be abolished by _law_." In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he says:
"There are in Pennsylvania, _laws_ for the gradual abolition of slavery,
which neither Maryland nor Virginia have at present, but which nothing
is more certain than that they _must have_, and at a period not remote."
Jefferson, speaking of movements in the Virginia Legislature in 1777,
for the passage of a law emancipating the slaves, says: "The principles
of the amendment were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born
after a certain day; but it was found that the public mind would not
bear the proposition, yet the day is not far distant when _it must bear
and adopt it_."--Jefferson's Memoirs, v. i. p. 35. It is well known that
Jefferson, Pendleton, Mason, Wythe and Lee, while acting as a committee
of the Virginia House of Delegates to revise the State Laws, prepared a
plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves by law. These men were
the great lights of Virginia. Mason, the author of the Virginia
Constitution; Pendleton, the President of the memorable Virginia
Convention in 1787, and President of the Virginia Court of Appeals;
Wythe was the Blackstone of the Virginia bench, for a quarter of a
century Chancellor of the State, the professor of law in the University
of William and Mary, and the preceptor of Jefferson, Madison, and Chief
Justice Marshall. He was the author of the celebrated remonstrance to
the English House of Commons on the subject of the stamp act. As to