angements must have been beneficial to Billey, because several years later he turned up in the Madison correspondence as William Gardener, a merchant in Philadelphia handling much of the Madison family's business. Gardener continued to assist the Madison family in this capacity until he died in a storm on a trip to New Orleans.Back in Virginia, Carter H. Harrison made a motion, in the 1785 session of the Virginia House of Delegates, to repeal a 1782 act that allowed slave owners to voluntarily manumit their slaves. Harrison thought slavery was a great blessing. Harrison's measure passed by a single vote. James Madison wrote to his brother, Ambrose, that the backward step would not only be dishonorable but would make the dreaded freeing of all slaves that much sooner. Madison dreaded the freeing of all slaves because neither he or Thomas Jefferson thought that it was the proper time to advance the proposition of total emancipation. During that same year, 1785, Madison spoke in favor of a Jefferson bill for the gradual abolition of slavery; it failed. A young French observer, who wrote about this described Madison as, "A young man [who]. . . astonishes . . . his eloquence, his wisdom,and his genius, has had the humanity and courage (for such a proposition requires no small share of courage) to propose a general emancipation of the slaves...."6James Madison's feelings about the slavery issue become even clearer as events led to the Federal Convention of 1787. In his treatise written before the convention, "Vices of the Political System of the United States," Madison wrote, "Where slavery exists the republican Theory becomes still more fallacious."7 At the convention Madison worked hard to keep direct reference to the word "slave" out of the Constitution. On June 30th, in the heat of the debate over representation in the Congress, James Madison offered what he thought was a compromise solution. Seeing that the true division was not the big ...
