“All possible diligence and my best efforts have been used to carry effectually into operation the law prohibiting the importation of Negroes into the State, but it is with concern that I have here to state to you, that it has been without success; whether it must be attributed principally to the ill consequences that are apprehended would result from carrying the law into operation by emancipating the Negroes so brought in (a remedy deemed more mischievous than the evil of their introduction in servitude) or whether the interests of the citizens is so interwoven with that species of property, that it prevents their aiding the law in answering the salutary purposes, I will not presume to determine; but I am inclined to believe both causes operate as preventatives; for those people are continued to be brought into the State beyond the possibility of prevention. In all laws intended for the general benefit, they should be so calculated that their operation should be found equal in every part of the State; where this is not the case it means that there is some radical defect therein, or it is inimical to the interest of the citizens; with this law such is the situation; for in the present state of things, the citizens in the frontier and sea coast districts do accumulate this property without the possibility of being detected, while those of the interior and middle districts only experience the operation of that law from their remote situation, etc.... This indeed is a circumstance to be lamented, but such is the true state of our situation and therefore becomes a subject worthy of your consideration and one that I trust will engage your endeavors to render equally energetic in every part of the State that law which experience has proved partial in its operation and is oppressive upon such citizens in the interior districts as hold it the object of desire to augment their capital in the accumulation of such property.”[17] This expression of opinion from the Governor brought up in the House the appointment of “a committee to inquire whether any and what amendments are necessary, to the Act entitled, ‘An Act to prevent Negro slaves from being brought into or entering this State’[18]; in the Senate a bill to permit their importation.”[19] The leading opponent in the Senate of the bill to permit importation was State Senator Robert Barnwell, at that time in his forty-second year. He had served with credit in the Revolutionary war, in the course of which he had been seriously wounded; had been a delegate to the Continental Congress; and later a member of Congress from the 2nd Congressional district of South Carolina, later still he had been elected Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives.[20] He is described by Edward Hooker as “a tall, portly, well-built man of about sixty years—a man of singular gravity, and possessed of great influence in the Senate. Said to be an eminent orator and very religious character.”[21]