Samuell Gorton’s literary style is clearly evident in the remarkable statute against negro slavery, passed by the General Assembly in 1652—the first legislative edict of emancipation ever adopted in America. This statute was passed during the Coddington secession of 1651-54, and consequently voices officially only the sentiment of Providence and Warwick. Roger Williams was in England at the time of its passage, and there can be little doubt that Samuell Gorton was its author and principal advocate. Though it subsequently became a dead letter, it was apparently never repealed, and merits perpetuation in the annals of the anti-slavery conflict. It reads as follows: “Whereas there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to the end that they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it bee ordered, that no blacke mankinde or white, being forced by covenant bond or otherwise, to serve any man or his assigns longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Colonie forty pounds.”[54] Samuell Gorton was elected General Assistant, a position corresponding with that of Lieutenant Governor, in 1649, and in 1651, during the Coddington secession, he was chosen to the highest position at the gift of the Commonwealth—he became its President. During the following year, he was Moderator or Speaker of the General Assembly, and he several times subsequently served as General Assistant. He was also active in the affairs of the Town of Warwick, being for many years a member of the Town Council, and holding other positions of honor and responsibility. “After the venerable founder of Providence,” says his biographer,[55] “no man was more instrumental in establishing the foundations of equal civil rights and ‘soul liberty’ in Rhode Island than Samuell Gorton.” He was especially active in assuring the protection of the Colony for the persecuted Quakers.[56] He sent them messages of sympathy when they were in prison in Massachusetts, and was authorized by the General Assembly to reply to the epistles of the Massachusetts authorities protesting against their finding an asylum in Rhode Island. When Massachusetts appealed to England, Samuell Gorton was designated to prepare a letter on behalf of the Rhode Island Government to John Clarke, the representative of the Colony in the Mother Country, to be presented to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. He requests Clarke “to plead our case in such sorte as wee may not bee compelled to exercise any civill