While South Carolina did not permit the full sweep of such in her Courts,[39] holding a free person of color born of a free white woman an admissible witness yet, with such legislation in Ohio, and Indiana, it is not surprising, Fiske, of New York, six years later failed to establish his contention that “color was a mere matter of accident * * * All men were born free and equal”; and that his attempt to reject the Senate amendment to the Orleans bill, i. e. the insertion of the word “white” before the words “free male inhabitants,” in defining the electorate, should have been brushed aside by Sheffey, of Virginia, with the simple declaration that “such doctrines would prostrate the civil institutions of Virginia.”[40] It was one thing to protest as Col. Mason did against the slave trade; but, with some four hundred thousand slaves, double what any other State possessed, Virginia was prepared to contend for her property rights, and the position seems to have been met with acquiescence by Congress. FOOTNOTES: [16] Stat. S. C. Vol. 7 pp. 431-448. [17] _Charleston Courier_, December 5, 1803. [18] Ibid. December 6, 1803. [19] Ibid. December 13, 1803. [20] S. C. Hist. & Genealog. Mag. Vol. 2, p. 72. [21] Annual Report American Hist. Ass. 1896, Vol. 1, p. 870. [22] _Charleston Courier_, December 26, 1803. [23] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 148. [24] _Charleston Courier_, December 26, 1803. [25] Ibid. January 2, 1804. [26] _City Gazette and Daily Advertiser_, December 21, 1803. [27] Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Vol. 2, p. 270. [28] _Charleston Courier_, December 12, 1804. [29] Ibid. December 24, 1804. [30] _Charleston Courier_, December 2, 1805. [31] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 534. [32] Annual Report American Hist. Assn. 1896, Vol. 1, p. 868. [33] _Charleston Courier_, December 13, 1805. [34] Annual Report American Hist. Assn. Vol. 1, p. 878, 1896. [35] _Charleston Courier_, December 9, 1805. [36] Charleston Year Book, 1880, p. 263. [37] Thomas’s Reminiscences, Case Tiffany & Burnham, Vol. 2, p. 35. [38] C. L. Martzolff, Ohio University, Nov. 30, 1909. [39] S. C. Reports, Brevard, Vol. 2, p. 145. _State vs. McDowell._ [40] _Charleston Courier_, February 27, 1811. CHAPTER III Concerning free persons of color in the United States, of whom there were about 210,000, to 1,550,000 Negro slaves, in 1816, it was asserted, in the petition of the Kentucky Abolition Society to Congress, which asked that a suitable territory should be set apart as asylum for emancipated Negroes and mulattoes, “that when emancipated they were not allowed the privileges of free citizens and were prohibited from emigrating to other States and Territories.”[41]