If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work?
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God."[1] Among the obstacles which seemed very serious--and many believed they would wreck the Convention--was the question of slavery.

By this time all the northern part of the country favored its abolition.

Even Virginia was on that side.

For practical planters like George Washington knew that it was the most costly and least productive form of labor.

They opposed it on economic rather than moral grounds.