scenes and the bitter partisan struggles in our country for the last century, all growing out of slavery and the awful impress which the system left upon our civilization, can realize what tremendous results may hang upon the vote of a single individual. History relates that as the British ships at Trafalgar started into battle Lord Nelson, the great commander, signaled from the flag-ship this immortal message—“England expects every man to his duty.” It may have been the inspiration of these words that brought victory to the British forces that day. If this one delegate had been present when that all important vote was taken on what is now known as the ordinance of 1784, this country would have been spared the bloody drama of the Civil War and the Negro race a half century of a cruel, degrading slavery.

A wonderful lesson there is for us all in the failure of this one man to do his duty. In this hour, I may say, of our peril, when the whole Christian world has its eyes upon him, when all of his faults are magnified and all his virtues depreciated, it becomes necessary for the humblest one among us to do his duty; to live a life that will be above suspicion and that will command the respect of all men.

Though the Continental Congress did pass a law in 1787 prohibiting slavery in the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River, the friends of the Negro were not satisfied. They turned to the Constitutional Convention. Here was an august assembly of freemen, composed of the most illustrious statesmen, warriors and patriots of the new nation, presided over by the chieftain who had led its military force to victory. Surely, it was thought the black man would get justice from men who had just won their freedom from the usurpation of the British crown. He deserved to receive it. For, from the opening to the closing of the Revolutionary War, on many fields of strife and triumph, Negroes had fought the battles of the American Nation with a valor no less distinguished than that of their white brothers with whom they passed through that desperate struggle shoulder to shoulder. This is the cold fact of history.

The ill-luck that was with the Negro in the Congress of 1784, when his future was determined by the neglect of one man, followed him to the Constitutional Convention. Unfortunately, two powerful influences for freedom, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were not present. They were abroad representing their country at European Courts. The great commoner George Mason of Virginia pleaded for the slave, but in vain. And when slavery tacitly went into the Constitution, like a man and a freeman 

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