In one way and another the emancipation movement extended southward to
and including Pennsylvania in the later years of the eighteenth century.
Nearly all the statesmen of the Revolution looked upon the institution
with disfavor and desired its extinction. Thomas Jefferson favored
gradual emancipation in Virginia, to be coupled with deportation of the
emancipated blacks, because he feared trouble if the two races were
placed upon an equality in the then slaveholding states. He labored to
prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories, and he very
nearly succeeded. In the year 1784 he reported an ordinance in the
Congress of the Confederation to organize all the unoccupied territory,
both north and south of the Ohio River, in ten subdivisions, in all of
which slavery should be forever prohibited, and this ordinance failed of
adoption by only one vote. Six states voted in the affirmative. Seven
were necessary. Only one representative of New Jersey happened to be
present, whereas two was the smallest number that could cast the vote of
any state. If one other member from New Jersey had been there, the
Jeffersonian ordinance of 1784 would have passed; slavery would have
been restricted to the seaboard states which it then occupied, and would
never have drawn the sword against the Union, and the Civil War would
not have taken place.[5]
After the emancipation movement came to a pause, at the southern border
of Pennsylvania, the fact became apparent that there was a dividing line
between free states and slave states, and a feeling grew up in both
sections that neither of them ought to acquire a preponderance of power
and mastery over the other. The slavery question was not concerned with
this dispute, but a habit grew up of admitting new states to the Union
in pairs, in order to maintain a balance of power in the national
Senate. Thus Kentucky and Vermont offset each other, then Tennessee and
Ohio, then Louisiana and Indiana, then Mississippi and Illinois.
In 1819, Alabama, a new slave state, was admitted to the Union and there
was no new free state to balance it. The Territory of Missouri, in which
slavery existed, was applying for admission also. While Congress was
considering the Missouri bill, Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, with a view
of preserving the balance of power, offered an amendment providing for
the gradual emancipation of slaves in the proposed state, and
prohibiting the introduction of additional slaves. This amendment was
adopted by the House by a sectional vote, nearly all the Northern
members voting for it and the Southern ones against it, but it was
rejected by the Senate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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