The evidence still accumulates. At a later day in the proceedings of the Convention, as if to set the seal upon the solemn determination to have no sanction of Slavery in the Constitution, the word "servitude," which appeared in the clause on the apportionment of representatives and taxes was struck out, and the word "service" inserted. This was done by unanimous vote, on the motion of Mr. Randolph, of Virginia; and the reason assigned for this substitution, according to Mr. Madison, in his authentic report of the debate, was, that "the former was thought to express the condition of slaves, and the latter _the obligations of free persons_."[118] With such care was Slavery excluded from the Constitution. [118] Ibid., Sept. 13. Nor is this all. In the Massachusetts Convention, to which the Constitution, when completed, was submitted for ratification, a veteran of the Revolution, General Heath, openly declared, that, according to his view, Slavery was sectional, and not national. His language was pointed. "I apprehend," he said, "that it is not in our power _to do anything for or against those who are in slavery in the Southern States_. No gentleman within these walls detests every idea of Slavery more than I do; it is generally detested by the people of this Commonwealth; and I ardently hope that the time will soon come when our brethren in the Southern States will view it as we do, and put a stop to it; but to this we have no right to compel them. Two questions naturally arise: _If we ratify the Constitution, shall we do anything by our act to hold the blacks in slavery? or shall we become partakers of other men's sins? I think neither of them._"[119] Afterwards, in the first Congress under the Constitution, on a motion, much debated, for a duty on the importation of slaves, the same Roger Sherman, who in the National Convention opposed the idea of property in man, authoritatively exposed the true relations of the Constitution to Slavery. His language was, that "the Constitution does not consider these persons as a species of property; it speaks of them as persons."[120] [119] Debates, Resolutions, etc., of the Convention of Massachusetts, January 30, 1788. [120] Annals of Congress, 1st Cong. 1st Sess., col. 342. Thus distinctly and constantly, from the very lips of the framers of the Constitution, we learn the falsehood of recent assumptions in favor of Slavery and in derogation of Freedom.