Some of the high-minded Virginian statesmen were quite as vigorous as he was in their denunciation of the system. One of them, George Mason, portrayed the effect of slavery upon the people at large with bitter emphasis, and denounced the slave traffic as "infernal," and slavery as a national sin that would be punished by a national calamity,--stating therein the exact and terrible truth. In shameful contrast, many of the Northerners championed the institution; in particular, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, whose name should be branded with infamy because of the words he then uttered. He actually advocated the free importation of negroes into the South Atlantic States, because the slaves "died so fast in the sickly rice swamps" that it was necessary ever to bring fresh ones to labor and perish in the places of their predecessors; and, with a brutal cynicism, peculiarly revolting from its mercantile baseness, he brushed aside the question of morality as irrelevant, asking his hearers to pay heed only to the fact that "what enriches the part enriches the whole."
The Virginians were opposed to the slave trade: but South Carolina and Georgia made it a condition of their coming into the Union. It was accordingly agreed that it should be allowed for a limited time,--twelve years; and this was afterwards extended to twenty by a bargain made by Maryland and the three South Atlantic States with the New England States, the latter getting in return the help of the former to alter certain provisions respecting commerce. One of the main industries of the New England of that day was the manufacture of rum; and its citizens cared more for their distilleries than for all the slaves held in bondage throughout Christendom. The rum was made from molasses which they imported from the West Indies, and they carried there in return the fish taken by their great fishing fleets; they also carried the slaves into the Southern ports. Their commerce was what they especially relied on; and to gain support for it they were perfectly willing to make terms with even such a black Mammon of unrighteousness as the Southern slaveholding system. Throughout the contest, Morris and a few other stout anti-slavery men are the only ones who appear to advantage; the Virginians, who were honorably anxious to minimize the evils of slavery, come next; then the other Southerners who allowed pressing self-interest to overcome their scruples; and, last of all, the New Englanders whom a comparatively trivial self-interest made the willing allies of the extreme slaveholders. These last were the only Northerners who yielded anything to the Southern slaveholders that was not absolutely necessary; and yet they were the forefathers of the most determined and effective foes that slavery ever had.