This memorial was signed by John Jay; Alexander Hamil- John Jay. ton; Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State; James Duane, Mayor of the City of New York; and one hundred and twenty-nine others, including many eminent civilians and clergymen. The Constitution of the Manumission Society, from which this memorial proceeded, declared it to be the duty of Christians to endeavor to enable the slaves "to share equally with us in our civil and religious liberty, to which they are by nature as much entitled as ourselves." As President of the New-York Manumission Society (an office held by Mr. Jay until his appointment as Chief-Justice, when he resigned it, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, was elected in his place), he drafted a public acknowledgment of an anonymous gift to the treasury of the Society, of which the following is an extract: "What act of public or private justice and philanthropy can occasion more pleasing emotions in the breasts of Christians, or be more agreeable to HIM who shed his blood for the redemption of men, than such as tend to restore the oppressed to their natural rights, and to raise unfortunate members of the same great family with ourselves from the abject situation of beasts of burthen, bought and sold and worked for the benefit and at the pleasure of persons who were not created more free, more rational, more immortal, nor with more extensive rights and privileges, than they were."— From the original MS. in the Jay Collection at Bedford, N.Y. The candid reader cannot fail to contrast these sentiments of the first Chief-Justice with the assertion of his latest successor, Chief-Justice Taney, that, at the time the Constitution of the United States was formed, the opinion was "fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race," that the negro "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The eminent South-Carolina patriots, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens, have left their testimony on this subject in no ambiguous terms. Christopher Gadsden. Henry Mr. Gadsden was one of the most prominent public servants of the South, both in the Continental and the Colonial Legislatures. In a letter to Fr. S. Johnson, in Connecticut, dated at Charleston, S.C., 16th April, 1766, he says,— "We are a very weak province, a rich growing one, and of as much importance to Great Britain as any upon the continent; and great part of our weakness (though at the same time 'tis part of our riches) consists in having such a number of slaves amongst us; and we find in our case, according to the general perceptible workings of Providence, where the crime most commonly though slowly, yet surely, draws a similar and suitable punishment, that slavery begets slavery. Jamaica and our West-India Islands demonstrate this observation, which I hope will not be our case now, whatever might have been the consequences had the fatal attempts been delayed a few years longer, when we had drank deeper of the Circean draught, and the measure of our iniquities were filled up."— MS. Letter (printed in the Hist. Mag., Sept. 1861, p. 261) in possession of the Hon. George Bancroft. Mr. Laurens was for two years President of the Continental Congress, and afterwards appointed minister to Holland. He was a commissioner, with Franklin and Jay, for negotiating a peace with Great Britain. Mr. Laurens wrote to his son, from Charleston, S.C., 14th August, 1776 66 You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country, ages before my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it. In former days, there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest: the day, I hope, is approaching, when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my negroes produce, if sold at public auction to-morrow. I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favor: nevertheless, I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting the laws and Henry off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me, "I am not one of those who arrogate the peculiar care of Providence in each fortunate event; nor one of those who dare trust in Providence for defence and security of their own liberty, while they enslave, and wish to continue in slavery, thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many as a promoter, not only of strange, but of dangerous doctrines: it will therefore be necessary to proceed with caution. You are apparently deeply interested in this affair; but, as I have no doubts concerning your concurrence and approbation, I most sincerely wish for your advice and assistance, and hope to receive both in good time.” Collection of the Zenger Club, pp. 20, 21. Laurens. Conven Such were the prevailing principles of the people, as Federal expressed by their leading representatives, when the Conven- tion. tion for framing the Federal Constitution assembled in Philadelphia, in May, 1787. It is highly proper that a constant regard should be had to these principles in interpreting the language of the Constitution. The position and purpose of the Convention were unprecedented. It was the first time in the history of the world that an assemblage of men had been called together, with delegated power from the people, to prepare an instrument which was to establish a Government, and to be the source and test of all their laws. Some of the delegates to this Convention had been members of the Continental Congress of 1776; and, as was said by John Quincy Adams at the Jubilee of the Constitution in New York, "this act was the complement to the Declaration of Independence; founded upon the same principles, carrying them out into practical execution, and forming with it one entire system of national government." The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The Articles of Confederation proved an unsuccessful experiment. When the exigencies of the war were over, and the Government fully assumed the functions of an independent nation, it was seen that an error had been committed in "the substitution of State sovereignty, instead of the constituent sovereignty of the people, as the foundation of the Revolution and of the Union." It is a significant fact, that, in the Preamble to the Constitution, this departure from the principles of the Declaration of Independence is tacitly recognized, and is rectified by a recurrence to the truth, that to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This preamble, of only a single sentence, is the key to the Constitution. Without considering and comprehending it, no one should attempt to interpret any of the separate articles of that instrument. “WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION, ESTABLISH JUSTICE, INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILLITY, PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENCE, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE, AND SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY, DO ORDAIN AND ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." The Constitution is, and was intended to be, the PEOPLE'S document, the palladium of their liberty. It was to defend and to bless the negro as well as the white man: for negroes had fought side by side with our white soldiers in the common struggle for liberty; and, in several of the States, they, as citizens, had voted for the delegates to the Convention, and afterwards on the adoption of the Constitution. It was established for the purpose of securing liberty; and nothing can be clearer to a careful student of the history of that period, than that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, " parts of one consistent whole, founded on one and the same theory stitution of government," believed, that, under their influence and The Conoperation, slavery would, and they intended that it should, and Slasoon be abolished. It had been declared by Lord Mansfield, in the Court of King's Bench, in England, that slavery was "so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." At the time the Federal Constitution was adopted, there was not, in the State Constitutions, any thing to warrant or justify slavery. Every thing of that kind has come by later amendments. As in the preparation of the Declaration of Independence, so in the formation of the Constitution, the authors did not ignore the existence of slavery. It was an evil that had been forced upon them by Great Britain, against their consent; and was one of the moving causes for the separation from the mother-country. They had, in the most emphatic manner, by resolutions and otherwise, expressed their abhorrence of slavery, and their determination to emancipate the negroes without unnecessary delay. All that the slaveholders asked of the Convention was a temporary protection for what they regarded, in one sense, their property, until they could, in their own time and in their own way, bring about this desirable result. Mr. Pinckney declared, "If the Southern States were let alone, they will probably of themselves stop importations. He would himself, as a citizen of South Carolina, vote for it.” Mr. Sherman observed that" the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees complete it." Mr. Ellsworth added, and no one expressed dissent from this opinion," Slavery, in time, will not be a speck in our country." It was an eminent Virginian, Mr. Madison, who declared that "he thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea of property in men." That idea was accordingly everywhere scrupulously avoided. But still, in three separate clauses, the Constitution recog very. |