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CHAPTER the Constitution from giving liberty to a single slave That business remains with the individual states; it is 1790. not committed to Congress, who have no right to intermeddle with it." He was therefore opposed to all the resolutions.

March 23.

After some further debate, in which the merits of the Quakers continued to hold a large place, the sixth resolution was agreed to. The seventh, pledging Congress to exert their full powers for the restriction of the slave trade and, as it might also be understood, for the discountenancing of slavery-was struck out. The committee then rose, and reported the resolutions to the House.

The next day, as soon as the preliminary business had been disposed of, it was moved to take up this report. Ames, so eloquent formerly on the molasses duty, but silent hitherto throughout this debate, now expressed the opinion that the subject might rest at the stage it had reached. He regretted the time consumed, and the manner also in which the debate had been conducted. He reprobated the idea of a declaration of abstract propositions. Let the report lie on the files of the House, where it might be occasionally referred to.

Ames was highly complimented by Jackson, who wished that more of the members from the eastward had acted in a similar spirit. Madison thought the suggestion of Ames a good one, with this modification, that the report of the Committee of the Whole should be entered on the journals for the information of the public, and to quiet the fears of the South, by showing that Congress claimed no power to prohibit the importation of slaves before 1808, and no power of manumission at any time.

Burke "complained of this as an uncandid method of disposing of the business. He would rather it should

It was CHAPTER

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pass regularly through the forms of the House. smuggling the affair to let it rest here, as it deprived the people of the counsel of their Senate." Smith took the 1790. same ground. The precedents quoted of memorials entered on the journals were not applicable to the present question, which involved a discussion of the powers of Congress. On a question as to those powers, the Senate, composing one branch of the Legislature, should certainly be consulted. Both reports were now to be entered on the journals, without any declaration to show which had been approved and which rejected. They were precluded from having the yeas and nays on the report, and yet it would be called the act of the House. Madison contended that, as it was impossible to shut the door altogether upon this business, the method proposed was the most conciliatory, and the best adapted to the present situation of things. The motion finally prevailed, by a vote of twenty-nine to twenty-five, and the report was entered on the journal as follows:

"That the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit can not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 1808.

"That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them, in any of the states, it remaining with the several states alone to provide any regulations therein which humanity and true policy require.

"That Congress have authority to restrain the citizens of the United States from carrying on the African slave trade for the purpose of supplying foreigners with slaves, and of providing by proper regulations for the humane treatment, during their passage, of slaves imported by the said citizens into the said states admitting such importation.

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"That Congress have also authority to prohibit foreigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United 1790. States for transporting persons from Africa to any foreign port."

Such was the termination of this remarkable and very characteristic debate, the first of a series recurring from time to time down to the present day, and constituting, of late years, one of the chief staples of congressional discussion. The report of the select committee had been evidently intended to avoid any occasion for excitement or controversy. Though a certain power over the African slave trade had been claimed for Congress, the right of interfering with slavery as it existed in the states, or even of prohibiting the further importation of slaves prior to 1808, was expressly renounced. The fury, therefore, with which this report had been assailed, and the long and violent debate it had occasioned, were wholly unexpected. This attack, it is to be observed, came almost entirely from South Carolina and Georgia. "The South" spoken of in the debate must be understood as limited to those two states, with the addition, perhaps, of North Carolina, which still admitted the importation of slaves, burdened, however, with a considerable impost, upon the express ground, as stated in the act, that this traffic was of "evil consequence and highly impolitic." A majority of the representatives from Maryland and Virginia evidently leaned to anti-slavery views-a sentiment since greatly modified in those states by the immense domestic slave trade which has sprung up within the last thirty years.

The extreme violence of the Southern members, whose policy it was a policy ever since adhered to-to prevent Congress from taking any action of any sort hostile to slavery, did not fail of a certain effect. All the friends

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of the funding system were highly alarmed at this new CHAPTER influx of bitter sectional feeling while that great question still remained unsettled. Though the majority in 1790. favor of the doctrines of the select committee, as to the power of Congress over the slave trade, was very decisive, yet they shrank from any attempt to give to that doctrine a practical effect. Indeed, the final disposition made of the report professed to have for its object not so much the vindication of the power of Congress as the appeasing the alarms of the South. The Quakers, however, and other opponents of the slave trade, acting, as they did, under the impulse of a strong moral sentiment, were not to be silenced or quieted by those prudential considerations which operated with such force on Ames and others.

Some further discussion of this question of slavery took place a few days after, on the consideration of a March 26 bill for accepting the North Carolina cession and erecting a government for the ceded territory. One of the conditions of the cession was that Congress should make no regulation tending to the emancipation of slaves. It would be curious to know what was said upon that subject, but of that debate no report exists. The act, as passed, erected the ceded district into the "Territory south of the Ohio," to stand upon the same footing, in every respect, except the exclusion of slavery, with the Territory northwest of the Ohio. Of this new territory, coincident with the present State of Tennessee, and of which William Blount was presently appointed governor, the greater part, at this time, was in possession of the Indians. To only two detached portions had the Indian title been extinguished; one of four or five thousand square miles (the late State of Frankland), the northeast corner of the present State of Tennessee; the

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CHAPTER other an oblong tract of some two thousand square miles, around the town of Nashville, on both sides of the Cum1790. berland River.

March 29.

The funding resolutions coming up in the House, the first and second clauses, declaring that adequate provision ought to be made for the domestic as well as the foreign debt, passed without a division. The third clause, placing the over-due interest on the same level with the principal, was also agreed to by a considerable majority. When the fourth clause was reached—that relating to the assumption of the state debts-a recommitment being moved, it was carried by a majority of two, the position of parties on that question having been reversed by the arrival of the North Carolina delegation. The remaining clauses were also recommitted, and the debate was renewed with as much pertinacity as ever. Bland, the only Virginian who supported the assumption and he died before the matter was finally settled -in giving his reasons for differing from his colleagues, made some interesting statements. The debt of Virginia amounted to $3,300,000, and the interest had hitherto been paid by the import duties, certificates of interest being receivable in payment. But that was now at an end, and the whole charge, such being the policy now pursued by the Virginia Legislature in matters of taxation, would fall upon the land and negroes. Since the commencement of the Revolutionary war, enormous emigrations had taken place from Virginia, and were still going on. Nine tenths of the people of Kentucky had emigrated from that state, and more than half of Georgia had been peopled in the same way. The Territory south of the Ohio, the cession of which had just been accepted, had been chiefly peopled from Virginia. Large numbers had emigrated to other states. Upon

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