Too simply honest and great they were to mean less than their solemn and deliberate words.
On political as well as on moral grounds they desired emancipation.

But there was a difficulty which at the time proved insuperable.

The nation-making principle, the idea of country, was just emerging out of the nebulous civil conditions and relations of the ante-Revolutionary epoch.

There was no existent central authority to reach the evil within the States except the local governments of the States respectively.

And States in revolt against the central authority of the mother country would hardly be disposed to divest themselves of any part of their newly asserted right to govern themselves for the purpose of conferring the same upon any other political body.