Our fathers, when they founded the nation, had little thought that slavery was ever to attain such vast extension. They supposed that it would gradually die out from the South, as it had disappeared from the North. Yet the whole danger to their work lay here. Slavery, if anything, was the wedge which was to split the Union asunder. When the Constitution was formed, in 1787, the slaveholders, by dint of great effort, succeeded in getting the little end of the wedge inserted. It was very narrow, a mere sharp line, and it went in only a very little way; so it seemed to be nothing at all. The slaveholders at that time did not contend that slavery was right or good. They admitted that it was a political evil. They confessed, many of them, that it was a moral evil. All the great Southern revolutionary bodies had accustomed themselves to believe in the rights of man, in the principles of humanity, in the blessings of liberty; and they could not _defend_ slavery. Mason of Virginia, in the debates in the Federal Convention, denounced slavery and the slave-trade. "The evil of slavery," said he, "affects the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when done by slaves. They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich a country. They produce the most pernicious effects on the manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country." Williamson of North Carolina declared himself in principle and practice opposed to slavery. Madison "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man." But the extreme Southern States, South Carolina and Georgia, insisted on the right of importing slaves, at least for a little while; and so they were allowed to import them for twenty years. They also insisted on having their slaves represented by themselves in Congress, and so they were allowed to count three fifths of the slaves in determining the ratio. This seemed a small thing, but it was the entering of the wedge. It was tolerating the principle of slavery; not admitting it, but tolerating it. At the same time that this Convention was forming, the Federal Constitution Congress was prohibiting slavery in all the territory northwest of the Ohio. This prohibition of slavery was adopted by the unanimous votes of the eight States present, including Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Two years later it was recognized and confirmed by the first Congress under the Constitution. Jefferson, a commissioner to revise the statute law of Virginia, prepared a bill for gradual emancipation in that State. In 1790 a petition was presented to Congress, signed by Benjamin Franklin, the last public act of his life, declaring equal liberty to be the birthright of all, and asking Congress to "devise means for restoring liberty to the slaves, and so removing this inconsistency from the character of the American