King George Orders That Slavery NOT be Abolished in the Colonies

The King in council, on Dec. 10, 1770, issued an instruction, under his own hand, commanding the governor of Virginia, " upon pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed.

" In 1772 the Virginia Assembly earnestly discussed the question, " How shall we get rid of the great evil?" Jefferson, Henry, Lee, and other leading men anxiously desired to rid the colony of it. " The interest of the country," it was said, " manifestly requires the total expulsion of them.

" The Assembly finally resolved to address the King himself on the subject, who, in council, had compelled the toleration of the traffic, They pleaded with him to remove all restraints upon their efforts to stop the importation of slaves, which they called " a very pernicious commerce.

" In this matter Virginia represented the sentiments of all the colonies, and the King knew it; but the monarch " stood in the path of humanity and made himself the pillar of the colonial slave-trade." Ashamed to reject the earnest and solemn appeal of the Virginians, he evaded a reply.

The conduct of the King caused Jefferson to write as follows in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence: "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death in their transportation thither.

This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce." This paragraph was stricken out of the Declaration of Independence before the committee submitted it to a vote of the Congress.