disregarded.

In many of the States, however, there were organized abolition
societies, whose object was to promote the cause of emancipation
already in progress and to protect the rights of free negroes.
The Friends, or Quakers, were especially active in the promotion
of a propaganda for universal emancipation. A petition which was
presented to the first Congress in February, 1790, with the
signature of Benjamin Franklin as President of the Pennsylvania
Abolition Society, contained this concluding paragraph

"From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally, and is
still, the birthright of all men, and influenced by the strong
ties of humanity and the principles of their institutions, your
memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable
endeavors to loosen the bonds of slavery, and to promote the
general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these
impressions they earnestly entreat your attention to the subject
of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the
restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, alone, in this
land of freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you
will devise means for removing this inconsistency of character
from the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice
towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very
verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species
of traffic in the persons of our fellowmen."*

* William Goodell, "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," p. 99.

The memorialists were treated with profound respect. Cordial