Thereupon Mr. Willey announced that he would offer the following amendment: "That after the fourth day of July, 1863, the children born of slave mothers within the limits of the said State shall be free, and that no law shall be passed by the said State by which any citizen of either of the States of this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States; provided that the convention that ordained the constitution aforesaid, to be reconvened in the manner prescribed in the schedule thereto annexed, shall by a solemn public ordinance declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition, and shall transmit to the President of the United States on or before the 15th of November, 1862, an authentic copy of the said ordinance; upon receipt whereof the President by proclamation shall announce the fact; whereupon and without any further procedure on the part of Congress the admission of the said State into the Union shall be considered as complete."[86] Throughout the debate that followed there were found many supporters of the program of gradual emancipation for the proposed new State. Chairman Wade, of the Committee of Territories, made thereupon the following important remarks: (1) that the proposed new State had voluntarily fixed the marks of extermination of the institution of slavery; (2) that the principal men of the commonwealth had told him that the first legislature to convene would do away with the whole institution, as fast as the nature of the case would permit; (3) that he believed the efforts of West Virginia were constitutional; (4) that it was just and expedient to admit her; (5) that he did not favor the inclusion in the commonwealth of the pro-slavery counties of the Valley; (6) that he did not want a provision saying that a person born one day should be a slave forever, and that one born the next day should be free; and finally (7) that he would like to see an amendment, providing that "all children who, at the time this constitution takes effect, are fifteen or sixteen years of age, shall be free upon arriving at the age of twenty-one or thirty-five years," i.e., a provision for gradual emancipation that will enable some of those born before as well as all of those born July fourth, 1863, to obtain their freedom.[87]