1777, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts freed their slaves and
permitted them to vote, "provided they had the requisite age, property
and residence." The 15th Amendment of a later day was an outrageous
document, framed regardless of any such qualifications, but giving
the ignorant black man rights even above the white citizens.

In order to induce the Southern States to accept the Federal
constitution in the beginning and have the country become a Union of
States, the opposers of slavery had to compromise the use of terms, and
take measures that seemed expedient. They fondly hoped as time rolled
on, to legislate the freedom of slaves. But the invention of the cotton
gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793, immensely increased the value of slave
labor, and forever fastened the institution upon the southern planters,
so far as future legislation was concerned. It had been so difficult to
separate the cotton fiber by hand, requiring a whole day to one pound,
that it was only a minor product; but now the wonderful source of
revenue made possible by the new invention, caused the importation of
many more slaves, and cotton growing in a million acres became king of
the marts. The planter would not willingly give up his property honestly
acquired, and plainly permitted by the constitution.

Slavery was a constant obstacle to the perfect Union of States.
In 1790 during the second session of the first congress, the Quakers
and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, through Benjamin Franklin, its
President, prayed Congress to restore to liberty those held in bondage.
The question was debated in the House in a warm, excited manner. Members
from South Carolina and Georgia argued that slavery, being commended by
the Bible, could not be wrong; that the Southern States would not have
entered into the Confederacy unless their property had been guaranteed
them, and any action of the general government looking to the