The humanitarian movement had begun before the time of William Jay and his fellow-workers. To find its beginnings, we must look back into the colonial days of the eighteenth century. There, among the first, was George Keith, of Pennsylvania, denouncing the system on grounds of both Christianity and public policy. And Samuel Sewall, Chief-Justice of Massachusetts, who, in his pamphlet, "The Selling of Joseph," quaintly testified to the truth. "These Ethiopians," he said, "as black as they are, seeing they are the sons and daughters of the first Adam and the offspring of God, they ought to be treated with respect agreeable." Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, William Burling, Anthony Benezet, the Huguenot, were men who spoke as sincerely as later abolitionists and whose words were heard. There was John Woolman, of New Jersey, who pointed out "the dark gloominess overhanging the land, the spirit of fierceness and love of dominion," resulting from this iniquity; and Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, R. I., whose eloquent exhortations banished the slave trade from a congregation growing rich on its spoils; and Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, who foretold that "future ages will be at a loss which to condemn most, our folly or our guilt in abetting this direct violation of nature and religion." The legislatures of Virginia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts in turn attempted to restrict the slave-trade; but their efforts were annulled in England, where the slave interest, through its champion, Lord Sandwich, forbade any interference with "a traffic so beneficial to the nation." The colonies had no sooner achieved their independence than they found themselves face to face with the great question, and on the threshold of their national life a great change was perceptible in the attitude of the people towards slavery. The old seventeenth century idea, that to drag a negro from his heathen wilds to labour unrequited in a Christian community tended to the benefit of his soul, had passed away. The slave-trade was generally recognized as indefensible. There were men who denounced slavery itself as an abominable evil. Even those most determined to maintain the institution took the ground that it was an unfortunate necessity, but that it must be preserved to avoid greater evils. In 1787, through the noble efforts of Thomas Jefferson, Timothy Pickering, Rufus King, Nathan Dane, William Grayson, and Richard Henry Lee, Congress passed the great ordinance which forbade slavery to cross the Ohio River into the Northwest Territory.