When the report was taken up by congress, Spaight of North Carolina made a motion to strike out the provision just quoted, and it was seconded by Reed of South Carolina. On the vote North Carolina was divided; but all the other southern States represented, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, voted for the motion, the colleagues of Jefferson of Virginia and those of Chase of Maryland out-voting these two southerners standing by the provision. All the northern States represented, which were the then four New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for the provision. But as it failed to get the necessary seven States it was not retained. Thus it appears that at the close of the Revolutionary war the interest of the south in and her attachment to slavery were so great that by her representatives in congress she appears to be almost unanimous against the proposal to keep the institution from extending. This action of the south shows that both Virginia in ceding that part of the West Territory which was three years afterwards by the ordinance of 1787 put under Jefferson's provision which had been rejected when it had been proposed for all the territory, and the south in voting unanimously for the ordinance, were not actuated by hostility to slavery. The soil of the territory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to which the ordinance applied probably may have been thought by Virginians unsuited to tobacco, the then sole crop upon which slave labor could be lucratively used. Be that as it may, that the southern States in subsequent cessions made not long afterwards guarded against slavery prohibition must be kept in mind. When they are, it is proved that always from the time that Jefferson's provision failed to carry in 1784, as has been told above, the prevalent sentiment of the southern people overwhelmingly favored slavery. Let us illustrate from later times. Writers who claim that the south, meditating secession, purposed to reopen the African slave-trade, adduce some relevant evidence which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if not convincing. They show that A. H. Stephens of Georgia, who afterwards became vice-president of the confederacy, in 1859 used language indicating that he thought it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area of slavery, to get more Africans; and they further show similar utterances made at the time by certain papers and other prominent men of the south. But the constitution of the Confederate States, adopted in 1861, contains this provision: "The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America is hereby forbidden, and congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same."