probation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in (however the uncultivated state of the country or other specious arguments may plead for it) a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties as well as lives, debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, and corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest, and laying the basis of that liberty we contend for, and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest posterity, upon a very wrong foundation. We therefore resolve at all times to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this Colony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves."—Am. Archives, 4th Series, Vol. I. p. 1135.
The soul of Virginia, during this period, found also fervid utterance through Jefferson, who by precocious and immortal words, has enrolled himself among the earliest Abolitionists of the country. In his Address to the Virginia Convention of 1774, he openly avowed, while vindicating the rights of British America, that "the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state." And then again, in the Declaration of Independence, he embodied sentiments, which, when practically applied, will give freedom to every slave throughout the land. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," says our country, speaking by the voice of Jefferson, "that all men are created equal—that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And again, in the Congress of the Confederation, he brought forward, as early as 1784, a resolution to exclude from all the territory "ceded or to
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