Mansfield supported them in a decision that in English countries,
governed by English laws, freedom was the rule, and slavery illegal,
unless the colony, through its assembly, expressly legalized the slave
traffic.

When the first convention met in Philadelphia, Jefferson included among
the articles of indictment against George the Third this paragraph: "He
has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery or to
incur a miserable death in the transportation thither." This passage,
however, was struck out of the Declaration in compliance with the wishes
of the delegates from two colonies, who desired to continue slavery. But
in 1784 Jefferson reopened the question by reporting an ordinance
prohibiting slavery after the year 1800 in the territory that afterwards
became Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the
territory north of the Ohio River. This anti-slavery clause was lost in
the convention by only a single vote. "The voice of a single
individual," wrote Jefferson, "would have prevented this abominable
crime. But Heaven will not always be silent. The friends to the rights
of human nature will in the end prevail."

Indeed, in the Southern States up to the very beginning of the Civil War
there was a strong anti-slavery sentiment. When the first meeting was
held in Baltimore to organize the Abolition Society, eighty-five
abolition societies in various counties of Southern States sent
delegates to the convention. It is a striking fact that the South can
claim as much credit for the organization of the Abolition Society as
William Lloyd Garrison and his friends in the North. For the real
responsibility for slavery does not rest upon Virginia, the Carolinas or