Congress abolished the slave trade by David Barton
The God of heaven and earth is the same yesterday and today and forever Hebrews 13:8. He has seen the affliction of our countrymen with an eye of pity. He has seen the anguish which has taken place when parents have been torn from their Rev. Jones’s sermon children and children from their parents, and conveyed with their hands and feet bound in fetters on board of ships prepared to receive them. He has seen them exposed for sale, like horses and cattle upon the wharves. He has seen the pangs of separation between members of the same family.
Though masters and mistresses have been deaf to their cries and shrieks, they have been heard in Heaven. The ears of Jehovah have been constantly open to them: He has heard the prayers that have ascended from the hearts of His people and He has as in the case of his ancient and chosen people the Jews come down to deliver our suffering countrymen from the hands of their oppressors. He came down into the Congress of the United States last winter when they passed a law, the operation of which commences on this happy day.
In behalf of our brethren, it becomes us this day to offer our united thanks. Let the song of angels, which was first heard in the air at the birth of our Savior Luke 2:13-14, are heard this day in our assembly. Let us sing psalms unto Him and talk of all His wondrous works. Let the first of January the day of the abolition of the slave trade in our country be set apart in every year as a day of public thanksgiving. And when our children shall ask in time to come, saying, and “What mean the lessons, the psalms, the prayers, and the praises in the worship of this day?” let us answer them by saying, “The Lord on the day of which this is the anniversary abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country and sold them as bondmen in America.”
Very few today know that in 1808 Congress abolished the slave trade, or that Bishop Absalom Jones delivered such a compelling sermon. Although slavery still had not been abolished in all the States, things definitely were moving in the right direction. Yet a major reversal was about to occur.
By 1820, most of the Founding Fathers were dead and Thomas Jefferson’s party the Democratic Party had become the majority party in Congress. With this new party in charge, a change in congressional policy emerged. Recall that the 1789 law prohibited slavery in a federal territory. In 1820, the Democratic Congress passed the Missouri Compromise and reversed that earlier policy, permitting slavery in almost half of the federal territories. Several States were subsequently admitted as slave States; and for the first time since the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, slavery was being officially promoted by congressional policy. Yet, the only way for the Democratic Congress to promote slavery was to ignore the principles in the founding documents. As Founding Father and President John Quincy Adams explained:
The first step of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar institutions of slavery is to deny the self-evident truths of John Quincy Adams the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that they have inalienable rights.