A moral and political situation, slavery and the abolitionist movement, had an impact on the Plymouth community. Wm. T. Davis has written about some aspects of the attitudes in Plymouth. His observations have a special validity because he gathered them during his active public life as lawyer, banker, historian, writer and political leader while the storm clouds were gathering. We know that in the family tradition Charlotte Burgess, in particular was sympathetic to the cause of freedom for the blacks. Strong and moving words on slavery were contained in the eloquent address by a young Daniel Webster, 1782-1852, to the Pilgrim Society dinner in 1820, the occasion being the commemoration of the landing two hundred years previously. “It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer; I see the smoke of the furnace where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and midnight labor in this work of hell and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and tortures. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it.”[29] From the assessor’s records, Davis estimates there were fifty slaves of all ages in Plymouth in 1740. He lists many of these slaves and their owners.[30] When the Massachusetts Constitution was adopted in 1780 slavery was forbidden. In 1781 the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts so decided in the case of Walker vs. Jennison. Davis cites a case of a slave in which his grandfather had a part.[31]