political state? Are not the tendencies plain? Do not the signs of the
times point plainly the way in which we are going? [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South
and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was
not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but
by moral and philanthropic views. Petitions for the abolition of slavery
were presented to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts
alike. To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive
slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate,
and but seven dissenting votes in the House. 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