Abraham Lincoln

Committee which reported the Ordinance of '87, and that _on every occasion, when it was under the

consideration of Congress, he voted against all amendments_.--_Jour. Am. Congress_, Sept. 29th, 1786. Oct.

4th. When the ordinance came up for its final passage, Mr. Pinckney was sitting in the Convention, and did

not take any part in the proceedings of Congress.]

[Footnote 21:--By reference to notes 4, 6, 10, 13, 15, and 16 it will be seen that, of the twenty-three who acted

upon the question of prohibition, twelve were from the present slaveholding States.]

[Footnote 22:--Vide notes 5 and 17, ante.]

[Footnote 23:--"The remaining sixteen" were Nathaniel Gorham, Massachusetts; Alex. Hamilton, New York;

William Livingston and David Brearly, New Jersey; Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, and

Gouverneur Morris, Pennsylvania; Gunning Bedford, John Dickinson, and Jacob Broom, Delaware; Daniel, of

St. Thomas, Jenifer, Maryland; John Blair, Virginia; Richard Dobbs Spaight, North Carolina; and John

Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, South Carolina.]

[Footnote 24:--"The only distinction between freedom and slavery consists in this: in the former state, a man

is governed by the laws to which he has given his consent, either in person or by his representative; in the

latter, he is governed by the will of another. In the one case, his life and property are his own; in the other,

they depend upon the pleasure of a master. It is easy to discern which of the two states is preferable. No man

in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free rather than slave.... Were not the disadvantages of slavery too

obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from

it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest

springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry and clips the wings of commerce, and

works misery and indigence in every shape."--HAMILTON, Works, vol. 2, pp. 3, 9.

"That you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men, who, alone in this

land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding

freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from

the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice toward 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 fellow-men."--Philadelphia, Feb. 3rd, 1790. _Franklin's Petition to Congress for the Abolition

of Slavery._

Mr. Gouverneur Morris said: "He never would concur in upholding domestic slavery. It was a notorious

institution. It was the curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed.... The admission of slavery into the

representation, when fairly explained, comes to this--that the inhabitant of South Carolina or Georgia, who

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goes to the coast of Africa, and, in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his

fellow-creatures from their dearest connections, and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more

votes, in a government instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind, than the citizen of Pennsylvania

or New Jersey, who views with a laudable horror so notorious a practice.... He would sooner submit himself to

a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a

constitution."--_Debate on Slave Representation in the Convention. Madison Papers_.]

[Footnote 25:--An eminent jurist (Chancellor Walworth) has said that "The preamble which was prefixed to

these amendments, as adopted by Congress, is important to show in what light that body considered them." (8

_Wend. R.,_ p. 100.) It declares that a number of the State Conventions "having at the time of their adopting

the Constitution expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further