Hamilton was one of the founders of the Manumission Society, the object of which was the abolition of slaves in the State of New York. Patrick Henry, speaking of slavery, said: “A serious view of this subject gives a gloomy prospect to future times.” Slavery was thought by the founders of our Republic to be a dying institution, and all the provisions of the Constitution touching slavery looked towards gradual emancipation as an inevitable result of the growth of the democracy. From an economic standpoint slave labor had ceased to be profitable. “The whole interior of the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating, for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry.” The cultivation of cotton wasJefferson encountered difficulties greater than he could overcome, and after vain wrestlings the words that broke from him, ‘ I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever,’ were the words of despair.
It was the desire of Washington's heart that Virginia should remove slavery by a public act; and as the prospects of a general emancipation grew more and more dim . . . he did all that he could by bequeathing freedom to his own slaves.
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friends of negro slavery.
In fact, the very principles of the Declaration of Independence sounded the deathknell of slavery forever.
No stronger utterances against this national sin are to be found anywhere than in the letters and published writings of Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry.
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1889.
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