And it is also indicative that the final document did open the way to an ending of the transatlantic slave trade after the year 1808, a move inspired by a resounding speech from George Mason of Virginia, himself a slaveholder but also a Christian who labeled the trade an “infernal traffic.” Mason feared the corrupting spread of slavery through the entire nation, which would bring “the judgment of Heaven” down severely upon any country in which bondage was widespread and blandly accepted. His own state of Virginia had been one of the first jurisdictions in the world to stop the importation of
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George mason and Jefferson
