Slavery, unhappily, exists within the United States. Enlightened men, in
the States where it is permitted, and everywhere out of them, regret its
existence among us, and seek for the means of limiting and of mitigating
it. The first introduction of slaves is not imputable to the present
generation, nor even to their ancestors. Before the year 1642, the trade
and ports of the colonies were open to foreigners equally as those of
the mother country; and as early as 1620, a few years only after the
planting of the colony of Virginia, and the same year in which the first
settlement was made in the old colony of Plymouth, a cargo of negroes
was brought into and sold as slaves in Virginia by a foreign ship. From
this beginning, the importation of slaves was continued for nearly
two centuries. To her honor, Virginia, while a colony, opposed the
importation of slaves, and was the first State to prohibit the same, by
a law passed for this purpose in 1778, thirty years before the general
prohibition enacted by Congress in 1808.
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