History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 | Page 7

SLAVERY.--PETITION
PRESENTED BY THE MISSOURI DELEGATES FOR THE
ADMISSION OF THAT STATE INTO THE UNION.--THE
ORGANIZATION OF THE ARKANSAS
TERRITORY.--RESOLUTIONS PASSED FOR THE RESTRICTION
OF SLAVERY IN NEW STATES.--THE MISSOURI
CONTROVERSY.--THE ORGANIZATION OF THE
ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETIES.--AN ACT FOR THE GRADUAL
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN NEW JERSEY.--ITS

PROVISIONS.--THE ATTITUDE OF THE NORTHERN PRESS ON
THE SLAVERY QUESTION.--SLAVE POPULATION OF
1820.--ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT AT THE NORTH.
The nineteenth century opened auspiciously for the cause of the Negro.
Although slavery had ceased to exist in Massachusetts and Vermont,
the census of 1800 showed that the slave population in the other States
was steadily on the increase. In the total population of 5,305,925, there
were 893,041 slaves. The subjoined table exhibits the number of slaves
in each of the slave-holding States in the year 1800.
CENSUS OF 1800--SLAVE POPULATION.
District of Columbia 3,244 Connecticut 951 Delaware 6,153 Georgia
59,404 Indiana Territory 135 Kentucky 40,343 Maryland 105,635
Mississippi Territory 3,489 New Jersey 12,422 New Hampshire 8 New
York 20,343 North Carolina 133,296 Pennsylvania 1,706 Rhode Island
381 South Carolina 146,151 Tennessee 13,584 Virginia 345,796 -------
Aggregate 893,041
On the 2d of January, 1800, a number of Colored citizens of the city
and county of Philadelphia presented a memorial to Congress, through
the delegate from that city, Mr. Waln, calling attention to the
slave-trade to the coast of Guinea. The memorial charged that the
slave-trade was clandestinely carried on from various ports of the
United States contrary to law; that under this wicked practice free
Colored men were often seized and sold as slaves; and that the
fugitive-slave law of 1793 subjected them to great inconvenience and
severe persecutions. The memorialists did not request Congress to
transcend their authority respecting the slave-trade, nor to emancipate
the slaves, but only to prepare the way, so that, at an early period, the
oppressed might go free.
Upon a motion by Mr. Waln for the reference of the memorial to the
Committee on the Slave-trade, Rutledge, Harper, Lee, Randolph, and
other Southern members, made speeches against such a reference. They
maintained that the petition requested Congress to take action on a
question over which they had no control. Waln, Thacher, Smilie, Dana,

and Gallatin contended that there were portions of the petition that
came within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and, therefore, ought
to be received and acted upon. Mr. Rutledge demanded the yeas and
nays; but in such a spirit as put Mr. Waln on his guard, so he withdrew
his motion, and submitted another one by which such parts of the
memorial as came within the jurisdiction of Congress should be
referred. Mr. Rutledge raised a point of order on the motion of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania that a "part" of the memorial could not
be referred, but was promptly overruled. Mr. Gray, of Virginia, moved
to amend by adding a declaratory clause that the portions of the
memorial, not referred, inviting Congress to exercise authority not
delegated, "have a tendency to create disquiet and jealousy, and ought,
therefore, to receive the pointed disapprobation of this House." After
some discussion, it was finally agreed to strike out the last clause and
insert the following: "ought therefore to receive no encouragement or
countenance from this House." The call of the roll resulted in the
adoption of the amendment, with but one vote in the negative by Mr.
Thacher, of Maine, an uncompromising enemy of slavery. The
committee to whom the memorial was referred brought in a bill during
the session prohibiting American ships from supplying slaves from the
United States to foreign markets.
On the 2d of April, 1802, Georgia ceded the territory lying west of her
present limits, now embracing the States of Alabama and Mississippi.
Among the conditions she exacted was the following:
"That the territory thus ceded shall become a State, and be admitted
into the Union as soon as it shall contain sixty thousand free inhabitants,
or at an earlier period, if Congress shall think it expedient, on the same
conditions and restrictions, with the same privileges, and in the same
manner, as provided in the ordinance of Congress of the 13th day of
July, 1787, for the government of the western territory of the United
States: which ordinance shall, in all its parts, extend to the territory
contained in the present act of cession, the article only excepted which
forbids slavery."
The demand was acceded to, and, as the world knows, Alabama and

Mississippi became the most cruel slave States in the United States.
Ohio adopted a State constitution in 1802-3, and the residue of the
territory not included in the State as it is now, was designated as
Indiana Territory. William Henry Harrison was appointed governor.
One of the earliest moves of the government of the new territory was to
secure a modification of the ordinance