intention on the part of congress to exercise their authority to its full extent to promote the humane objects aimed at in the Quakers' memorial.
After a warm speech against the injustice and unconstitutionality of meddling with the question of slavery in any shape, Tucker moved to strike out the whole report, and substitute for it a simple resolution, refusing to take the memorial into consideration "as unconstitutional, and tending to injure some of the states of the Union." Jackson seconded the motion in a speech equally warm, to which Vining replied. But this motion of Tucker's, after a good deal of time spent upon that point, was declared out of order.
White, of Virginia, moved to strike out the first resolution, as containing a definition of the powers of congress, a subject not referred to the committee. His colleague, Moore, passing by the report, attacked the memorial and its authors, accusing the Quakers of harboring runaway slaves. He hoped emancipation would take place at a proper time, but he wished to have it brought about by other means than by the influence of people who had been inimical to independence. Burke was not au advocate for slavery, but he wished to preserve the tranquility of the Union, which this unnecessary and impolitic measure bade fair to throw into a state of confusion. The memorial was a reflection on the southern states. The negroes there lived better and in more comfortable houses than the poor of Europe. He referred to an advertisement which he had lately seen in a New York paper of a woman and child to be sold. That, he declared, was a species of cruelty unknown in the southern states. There the negroes have property, horses, cattle, hogs, and furniture. With respect to their ceremony of marriage, they took each other from love and friendship. Though eastern gentlemen expressed so great an antipathy to this species of property, many of them who settled in the south became as fond of it as any others — a fling to which Gerry subsequently replied that the eastern states could not be held responsible for the misdoings of their emigrant citizens, since it was no uncommon thing, even in the animal world, for exotics to degenerate.
Smith, of South Carolina, exerted his utmost efforts in an elaborate defense of slavery and the slave-trade, the objections to which he considered to spring from "misguided and misinformed humanity." The southern states required slaves to cultivate their lands, which could not be done by white people. A white laborer from the northern states asks two dollars per day when employed in any of the southern states. The low countries, in which rice and indigo are cultivated, would be deserted if emancipation took place; and what would then become of the revenue? To 6et the slaves loose would be a curse to them. A plan had been thought of in Virginia of shipping them off as soon as they were freed, and this was called humanity! Jefferson's scheme for gradual emancipation, as set forth in his Notes upon Virginia, was derided as impracticable. Emancipation would probably result in an exterminating war. If, on the other hand, a mixture of blood should take place, we should all be mulattoes! The very advocates of manumission held the blacks in contempt, and refused to associate with them. No scheme could be devised to stop the
