the necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted. 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. I repeat, therefore, the
question, Is it not plain in what direction we are tending? [Sensation.]
In the colonial time, Mason, Pendleton, and Jefferson were as hostile to
slavery in Virginia as Otis, Ames, and the Adamses were in
Massachusetts; and Virginia made as earnest an effort to get rid of it
as old Massachusetts did. But circumstances were against them and they
failed; but not that the good-will of its leading men was lacking. Yet
within less than fifty years Virginia changed its tune, and made