Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession

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Title: Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession

Author: Beverley B. Munford

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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY AND SECESSION ***

VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY AND SECESSION

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VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE

TOWARD

SLAVERY AND SECESSION

BEVERLEY B. MUNFORD

HUMANITATEM AMOREMQUE PATRIAE COLITE

NEGRO UNIVERSITIES PRESS
NEW YORK

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally published in 1909
by Longmans, Green, and Co.

Reprinted 1969 by
Negro Universities Press
A DIVISION OF GREENWOOD PUBLISHING CORP.
NEW YORK

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 69-16579

PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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_TO_

MY WIFE

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PREFACE

This work is designed as a contribution to the volume of information
from which the historian of the future will be able to prepare an
impartial and comprehensive narrative of the American Civil War, or to
speak more accurately—The American War of Secession.

No attempt has been made to present the causes which precipitated the
secession of the Cotton States, nor the states which subsequently
adopted the same policy, except Virginia. Even in regard to that
commonwealth the effort has been limited to the consideration of two
features prominent in the public mind as constituting the most potent
factors in determining her action—namely, devotion to slavery and
hostility to the Union. That the people of Virginia were moved to
secession by a selfish desire to extend or maintain the institution of
slavery, or from hostility to the Union, are propositions seemingly at
variance with their whole history and the interests which might
naturally have controlled them in the hour of separation. Yet how
widespread the impression and how frequent the suggestion from the pen
of historian and publicist that the great and compelling motives which
led Virginia to secede were a desire to extend slavery into the
territories and to safeguard the institution within her own borders,
coupled with a spirit of hostility to the Union and the ideals of
liberty proclaimed by its founders. To present the true attitude of the
dominant element of the Virginia people with respect to these subjects
is the work which the author has taken in hand.

As cognate to this purpose the effort has been made to show what was the
proximate cause which influenced the great body of the Virginia people
in the hour of final decision. There were unquestionably many and widely
severed causes—some remote in origin and some immediate to the hour,
yet it may be safely asserted that but for the adoption by the Federal
Government of the policy of coercion towards the Cotton States, Virginia
would not have seceded. That was the crucial and determining factor,
which impelled her secession. She denied the right of the Federal
Government to defeat by force of arms the aspiration of a people as
numerous and united as those of the Cotton States to achieve in peace
their independence. She believed that such a course and the exercise of
such a power on the part of the Federal Government, if not actually
beyond the scope of its powers as fixed in the constitution, were
clearly repugnant to the ideals of the Republic, and subversive of the
principles for which their Fathers had fought and won the battles of the
Revolution. Upon the question, shall the Cotton States be permitted to
withdraw in peace, or shall their aspirations be defeated by force of
arms, Virginia assumed no new position. She simply in the hour of danger
and sacrifice held faithful to the principles which she had ofttimes
declared and which have ever found sturdy defenders in every part of the
Republic.

In the preparation of this volume the author has been the grateful
recipient of the labors of many historians and publicists, accredited
citations from whose works will be found throughout its pages.

In addition, he desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to the following
gentlemen:

First and foremost, to Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce of Virginia, for his
generous sympathy and invaluable assistance, with respect to every
feature of the book; also to Edward M. Shepard, Esquire, and Reverend
Samuel H. Bishop of New York and to Colonel Archer Anderson and Henry W.
Anderson, Esquire, of Richmond, for their kindness in reading his
manuscript and making many helpful suggestions.

For none of the errors of the book, nor for any expression of opinion,
are these gentlemen responsible.

Thanks are due and tendered to Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of
Congress, Dr. H. R. McIlwaine, State Librarian of Virginia, and Mr. W.
G. Stanard, Corresponding Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society,
and to their courteous assistants, for the generous use accorded the
author of the wealth of historical data in the custody of those
institutions.

In addition to the foregoing, acknowledgments are gratefully made to a
great company of librarians, lawyers, antiquarians, clerks of courts,
custodians of private manuscripts and others who have assisted the
author in collecting from widely separated sections of the Union the
mass of information from which he has drawn, in the preparation of this
work. In many instances, the facts so kindly furnished do not appear,
but have been of service to the author, in enabling him to form more
accurate conclusions. The willingness exhibited by citizens of states,
other than Virginia, to furnish information with respect to the subject
under consideration, is indicative of a growing desire throughout the
Union to know the facts and appreciate the viewpoint of our once
separated but now united people. If this book, in presenting the
attitude of Virginia, shall contribute to this result, it will afford
the author the sincerest gratification.

Richmond, Virginia, June, 1909

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ERRATA

Page 142, line 8, for "stately," read "noble."

Page 142, line 10, for "over," read "above."

Page 162, line 7, for "MacMaster," read "McMaster."

Page 162, footnote, for "MacMaster," read "McMaster."

Page 214, line 12, for "_Cathargo,_" read "_Carthago._"

Page 242, footnote, for "Vol. IV." read "Vol. VI."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

_Part I_

VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY
AND SECESSION DEFINED

I. Introduction 1
II. Virginia—Slavery and Secession 10

_Part II_

VIRGINIA DID NOT SECEDE IN ORDER TO EXTEND SLAVERY
INTO THE TERRITORIES, OR TO PREVENT ITS THREATENED
DESTRUCTION WITHIN HER OWN BORDERS

III. Virginia's Colonial Record with Respect to Slavery 15

IV. Virginia's Statute Abolishing the African Slave Trade
and Her Part in Enacting the Ordinance of 1787 25

V. Slavery and the Federal Constitution—
Virginia's Position 29

VI. The Foreign Slave Trade—
Virginia's Efforts to Abolish It 33

VII. Some Virginia Statutes with Respect to Slavery 41

VIII. The Movement in the Virginia Legislature of 1832
to Abolish Slavery in the State 45

IX. The Northern Abolitionists and Their Reactionary
Influence upon Anti-Slavery Sentiment in Virginia 51

X. Negro Colonization—State and National 60

XI. Instances of Colonization by Individual Slaveholders 66

XII. Emancipation and Colonization—Views of
Jefferson, Clay and Lincoln 75

XIII. Anti-Slavery Sentiments of Prominent Virginians 82

XIV. Anti-Slavery Sentiments of Prominent Virginians.
Continued 91

XV. Anti-Slavery Sentiments of Prominent Virginians.
Concluded 96

XVI. Specimens of Deeds and Wills Emancipating Slaves 104

XVII. Specimens of Deeds and Wills Emancipating Slaves.
Concluded 114

XVIII. The Small Number of Slaveholders in Virginia,
as Compared with Her Whole White Population 125

XIX. The Injurious Effects of Slavery upon the
Prosperity of Virginia 128

XX. The Custom of Buying and Selling Slaves—
Virginia's Attitude 139

XXI. The Custom of Buying and Selling Slaves—
Virginia's Attitude. Concluded 147

XXII. Small Proportion of Slaveholders among Virginia
Soldiers 154

XXIII. Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties which
Embarrassed Every Plan of Emancipation 159

XXIV. Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties which
Embarrassed Every Plan of Emancipation. Continued 164

XXV. Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties which
Embarrassed Every Plan of Emancipation. Concluded 175

XXVI. The Status of the Controversy Regarding Slavery at
the Time Virginia Seceded from the Union 185

XXVII. The Status of the Controversy Regarding Slavery at
the Time Virginia Seceded from the Union. Concluded 193

XXVIII. The Attitude of Certain Northern States 201

XXIX. The Attitude of Certain Northern States. Concluded 206

XXX. The Abolitionists 214

XXXI. The Abolitionists and Disunion 217

XXXII. The Abolitionists and Disunion. Concluded 225

XXXIII. The Emancipation Proclamations and the Virginia
People 230

_Part III_

VIRGINIA DID NOT SECEDE FROM A WANTON DESIRE TO
DESTROY THE UNION, OR FROM HOSTILITY TO THE
IDEALS OF ITS FOUNDERS

XXXIV. Virginia's Part in the Revolution 237

XXXV. Virginia's Part in Making the Union under the
Constitution 242

XXXVI. Virginia's Efforts to Promote Reconciliation
and Union in 1861 248

XXXVII. The People of Virginia Declare for Union 255

_Part IV_

THE ATTEMPT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO COERCE
THE COTTON STATES—THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF
VIRGINIA'S SECESSION

XXXVIII. The Coercion of the Cotton States—
Virginia's Position 263

XXXIX. The Contest in the Virginia Convention for and
against Secession 269

XL. The Contest in the Virginia Convention for and
against Secession. Concluded 277

XLI. The Attempted Reinforcement of Fort Sumter and
its Significance 284

XLII. The Attempt to Coerce the Cotton States Impels
Virginia to Secede 290

XLIII. Conclusion 301

Bibliography 305

Index 313

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_PART I_

VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY
AND SECESSION DEFINED

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION

The story of the American Civil War presents a subject fraught with
interest, not destined to die with the passing years. Even the finality
of the verdict then rendered on the issues joined will not abate the
desire of men to fix with precision the political and ethical questions
involved and the motives which impelled the participants in that
deplorable tragedy. The sword may determine the boundaries of empire or
the political destinies of a people, but the great assize of the world's
thought and conscience tries again and again the merits of controversies
and brings victor and vanquished to the bar of its increasingly fair and
discriminating judgment.

CHARACTER OF WAR

What was the character of the War? Though one of the greatest wars of
modern times, having its rise and fall before the eyes of all the world,
yet men are to-day in doubt as to the true term by which to describe it.

Was it a Civil War? Such a conception omits the claim of the North that
the Federal Government as such fought to maintain its constitutional
supremacy, and the claim of the South that the seceding states but
exercised their constitutional rights in seceding, and as states fought
to maintain that principle. A civil war betokens one people, in the same
country, subjects of the same power, at war among themselves. Here,
though afore-time countrymen, when the battle was joined, there were two
rival governments, and the territories of the contending parties were
distinguished, not by shibboleths and banners, but by rivers and
mountain ranges. It was a sectional rather than a community war, a
conflict between governments rather than between citizens of the same
government.

Was it a Rebellion? Such a conflict indicates a revolt of citizens or
subjects against their acknowledged sovereign. Whether in the United
States the citizen owed allegiance to the Federal Government as against
his State Government was a question upon which men had divided since the
birth of the Republic. The men of the North responded to the call of the
sovereign to whose allegiance they acknowledged fealty—the men of the
South did the same. It was a battle between rival conceptions of
sovereignty rather than one between a sovereign and its acknowledged
citizens.

Was it a Revolution? A revolution is a successful movement of citizens
or subjects against their sovereign. Here the identity of the Sovereign
was in dispute, and the effort, though of unexampled magnitude, was
unsuccessful. In addition the parties to the conflict held
irreconcilable conceptions as to what constituted the right of
revolution—one insisting that it was a God-given right inherent in any
people sufficiently numerous to maintain a National existence; the
other, that it was a mere power to strike, dependent upon success to
prove the legitimacy of the claim.

PARTIES TO CONFLICT

The parties to the Conflict were not rival nations, but compatriots of
the same flag; joint inheritors of the English Common Law and the ideals
of liberty consecrated by centuries of heroic struggle; descendants of
an ancestry knit in political sympathy by their successful battle for
independence from the Mother Country, and the achievements by which they
made their new-born nation great; children of Puritan and Cavalier,
Quaker and Huguenot; Dutchman and Catholic-Frenchman; men of strong
individual and community traits, accustomed to rule and untutored in the
art of surrender.

CAUSES OF WAR

The causes of the War were deep-seated and complex. They were Old-World
antagonisms, religious and political, antedating, and yet surviving, the
settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, New Amsterdam, and New
Orleans;—

The early development in the two great divisions of the country, of
diverse economic conditions—a land of small farms and multiplied
industrial activities confronting one of large plantations and
agricultural supremacy;—

The Protective Tariff, at first enacted to secure for American
manufactures a chance to compete successfully with those of the Old
World, but, in its results, a burdensome system, under which the
agriculturists of the South paid onerous tribute to the manufacturers of
the North;—

Slavery—an institution which specialized more and more the interests of
the South in the great exporting staples of cotton, rice and tobacco,
driving manufactures and mining into the more hospitable regions of the
North;—an institution whose life or death was within the exclusive
power of the separate states where it was legalized, and yet the
manifold incidents of whose existence were the subject of frequent
National legislation, and hence ever recurring occasions of sectional
strife;—an institution which quickened in time among the people of the
non-slaveholding states the conviction that it was a sin, with the
consequent charge that all responsible for its existence were parties to
a crime, thus arousing the bitter resentment of devout men in the
slaveholding states, who, protesting their innocence of wrong,
challenged the right of their Northern brethren to sit in judgment upon
them;—

The Annexation of Texas: A new cause and occasion for sectional
jealousy, precipitating the war with Mexico, and bringing additional
territory into the Union with fresh disputes over the powers of Congress
in regard thereto;—

The Immense Foreign Immigration into the North and West;—thus
developing in those sections the strongest sentiments of Nationalism,
while the South, unaffected by any such forces, adhered to the early
ideals of state pride and state supremacy;—

State Sovereignty versus National Supremacy;—the first, the shield
behind which aggrieved minorities sought to curb arrogant majorities and
safeguard the rights and interests of community life; the second, the
ideal by which the preservation of the Union was to be assured and its
dignity and power at home and abroad vindicated;—

The Missouri Compromise—its enactment and repeal, the controversies as
to the power of Congress to prohibit slaveholders from migrating with
their slaves into the territories, the enactment by Congress of the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the attitude of certain Northern States
in attempting to defeat its execution, the Underground Railroad, the
decision in the Dred Scott case, the armed conflicts in Kansas, the John
Brown Raid and the sympathy evinced at the North for the man and his
venture; and finally:

The asserted right of the Cotton States to withdraw from the Union, and
the declared purpose of the Federal Government to defeat their
aspiration by force of arms.

Add to all the foregoing the vision of mighty armies struggling for
mastery, the terrors and miseries of war—contrasted with the heroism
and devotion which it aroused, and there results a combination of causes
which will continue to make their compelling appeal to the hearts and
imaginations of men.

THE ISSUES INVOLVED

If the causes of the war were manifold and perplexing, the exact object
for which each of the contending parties did battle is only less
difficult of precise definition. A brief consideration of some of the
many forms in which the popular voice has sought to express the
conception will serve to illustrate the truth of this suggestion.

"The North fought to preserve the Union—the South, to destroy it."

That one great element of the Northern people took up arms at the call
of the Federal Government to prevent a dismemberment of the Union is
undoubtedly true. That another element regarded the maintenance of the
Union under the existing constitution as unworthy of effort is equally
true. The first went forth at the earliest call to preserve the Union
under the old constitution; the second came later to the battle to fight
for a Union with a constitution which should decree the abolition of
slavery. That the Southern people sought to establish the independence
of their new Confederacy and to that extent a dismemberment of the Union
is true, but that they desired the destruction of the Union and the
principles of liberty and law which its establishment was designed to
assure are conclusions not easily deducible from their aspirations or
necessities.

"The North fought for empire, the South for independence."

That the North fought to keep within the limits of the Union the domain
stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande is true, but that the
great mass of her people were actuated by a desire to hold the land as
tributary and its people as subjects is not true. The splendid ideal of
a Republic, stretching from ocean to ocean, and securing to its growing
millions the dual blessings which spring from National integrity and
home rule, we may well believe was ever before them. That one great
element of the Southern people fought for independence and all the
inspiring ideals which the term implies is true, though it is equally
true that joined with them in the battle were states the dominant
elements of whose people cherished no primal desire for separation from
the Union, but resisted the authorities of the latter because of their
convictions that its policy of coercion was illegal and destructive of
the principle upon which the Republic had been founded.

"The North fought to destroy slavery; the South, to extend and maintain
it."

That slavery was the most potent factor in developing the conditions
which finally precipitated war is true. That the two parties to the
conflict joined battle upon the issue of its maintenance or destruction
seems inconsistent with their solemnly declared purposes and promises,
made at the time. President Lincoln at his inauguration proclaimed: "I
have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution
of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful
right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." This pledge of the
President was but a reaffirmation of the platform of his party, and both
were, in turn, confirmed by the declaration of Congress that the war was
fought, "to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution and to
preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the
several states unimpaired."

President Davis presented the attitude of his people and government when
he declared: "All we ask is to be let alone—that those who never held
power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." And after
three years of desperate war, he declared to the representatives of
President Lincoln:—

"We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for
independence.... Say to Mr. Lincoln for me that I shall at any
time be pleased to receive proposals for peace, on the basis of
our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any
other."[1]

That the people of America in the nineteenth century of the Christian
era should have resorted to war in order to settle questions of
constitutional and moral right must forever constitute an impeachment of
the capacity for self-government and the ethical standards of the men
responsible for its occurrence.

The charge that the people of twenty-three states in four of which
slavery was legalized arose in arms against their fellow-citizens of the
remaining eleven and, despite the constitutional safeguards with which
the institution in the latter states was confessedly surrounded, invaded
their land, burnt thousands of their homes and killed tens of thousands
of their citizens in a desperate determination to destroy slavery, is as
compromising to American character as the counter accusation that the
people of eleven states, with no existing menace to their constitutional
rights in regard to slavery, resorted to secession and aggressive war in
order to secure new guarantees for the safety of the institution.
Charges so dishonoring to the American people should not be made and
above all should not be accepted as true—unless compelled by the
inexorable facts of history.

STATE RIGHTS vs. FEDERAL RIGHTS

"The South fought for States' Rights—Home Rule; the North, for Federal
rights—National Supremacy."

In the large measure of truth contained in this declaration lay the
profound tragedy of the Civil War—a battle for the supremacy of one of
two ideals, thus brought into antagonism, upon the maintenance of both
of which, in their true proportions, depended so largely the success of
the unique experiment in government established by the Fathers. In this
union of states how were the rights of personal liberty and community
life to be harmonized with the National ideals and powers essential to
its preservation? Liberty and law—the consent of the governed and the
integrity of the Government—how were these great ends to be assured?
From the birth of the Republic, there were views radically divergent as
to the character and powers of the government then created; and there
were aspirations of devoutest patriotism alike yearning for the triumphs
of liberty and law, though seeking these ideals by policies almost
irreconcilable. Thus, upon the fair prospect of the new Republic, there
lowered from its natal hour forebodings of strife and separation. With
these warring ideals, intensified by divergent economic and political
interests, there arose the forces which drove the shuttle of discord
back and forth through the web and woof of the nation's life, and
wrought the forbidding pattern of sectionalism, division and hate. What
were the causes—what the issues—of that "strange and most unnatural"
war? What were the motives which impelled the people of the South,
utterly unprepared for battle, to risk the unequal contest, and never to
desist until the hand of destruction had paralyzed the very heart of
effort? What were the motives which impelled the people of the North to
give without stint their wealth of blood and treasure; to marshal armies
more numerous than those with which Napoleon confronted a world in arms,
and, for four years, to hurl them against the homes of their brethren?

Analysis is the foe of confusion and the friend of the light. Motives
and methods, grouped and commingled, present difficulties of right
appreciation which ofttimes vanish if separated into their component
parts.

The commonwealth of Virginia bore a not inconspicuous part in the Civil
War. It will subserve the cause of truth and assist to a clearer
understanding of the complex conditions referred to, if we endeavor to
portray the motives which impelled the people of this one state during
those fateful days of 1860-61.

-----

Footnote 1:

_History of the United States_, Rhodes, Vol. IV, p. 515.

VIRGINIA: SLAVERY AND SECESSION

It is not questioned that among the people of Virginia were men of
widely divergent views; Secessionists of the most ultra type, insisting
on the state's right to secede, and demanding her immediate withdrawal
from the Union; anti-secessionists of the strongest mould, denying the
right of secession and protesting against its attempted exercise;
Unionists who admitted the right in the state, as a desperate measure of
relief, but denying that any such occasion had arisen; advocates of
slavery who regarded the institution as approved of Heaven,—a blessing
to the blacks, and essential to the safety of the whites; apostles of
emancipation who denounced slavery and called for its abolition; men who
would make Virginia "neutral territory" between the hostile sections,
and those who would fight for her rights, but "fight within the Union."

VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE

None of these elements, separately, spoke the sentiments of the
majority, nor represented the controlling force in her citizenship. We
shall accept as the true expression of the dominant element the returns
from the ballot box, the enactments of her legislative and
constitutional assemblies, and the deliverances of her great sons. Tried
by these criteria, it may be truthfully declared that the institution of
slavery was regarded with disfavor by a majority of her people; that
they tolerated its existence as a _modus vivendi_ to meet the dangers
and difficulties of the hour, but looking forward to the time when the
increase of her white population from within and without, and the
decrease of her blacks by emigration and colonization would render
feasible its abolition, with a maximum of benefit to the slaves and
their owners, and a minimum of danger to society and the state; that
while cherishing an almost romantic love for their commonwealth, they
felt genuine loyalty to the Union, and contemplated with profound sorrow
the suggested withdrawal therefrom of any group of states; and, finally,
that they carried their state out of the Union and into the Southern
Confederacy because the authorities of the former sought by force of
arms to defeat the latter in their efforts to achieve independence, and
demanded of Virginia her quota of men to accomplish the deed.

SLAVERY AND SECESSION

Secession they deplored because it broke the married calm of a union
which its makers fondly hoped would endure forever, but war upon the
states seeking independence they also deplored, because subversive of
the principles upon which the Union was founded. Could the Federal
Government deny to six millions of people the boon of independence which
they were seeking by orderly and peaceful methods, and still remain true
to the principles of the great Declaration, to maintain which the
Fathers of the Republic had fought and won the battles of the
Revolution? Have people the right to determine for themselves their
political destiny? Are the just powers of governments to be measured by
the consent of the governed? These were the questions which, carrying
their own answers, impelled the Virginian opponents of coercion in 1861
to stand, as they believed, for the political and ethical principles
which the Flag symbolized, rather than for the Flag itself.

That Virginia revered the institution of slavery, and from selfish
motives fought to make more sure the muniments of its existence; that
she desired the destruction of the Union, and the degenerate abandonment
of the inspiring dreams of liberty and progress, which it was designed
to assure,—are propositions unthinkable to men acquainted with her
history and the genius and aspirations of her people. It was for no such
cause that she gave her sons to the sword, and her bosom as the
battleground for the fiercest war of modern times. Her people fought
because they felt the occasion made its imperious demand upon their duty
and their honor. Virginia had persistently declared that the right
asserted by the Cotton States was God-given and inalienable. Thus her
sense of honor, as well as the imperilled right of self-government,
impelled her to battle.

Twenty years after the surrender at Appomattox Lord Wolseley wrote: "The
Right of Self-Government which Washington won, and for which Lee fought,
was no longer to be a watchword to stir men's blood in the United
States."[2]

We need not accept the conclusion of this distinguished soldier that the
cause of self-government no longer commands the allegiance of the
American people, in order to believe that amid the trials and conflicts
of the Civil War Virginia stood faithful for the vindication of that
great principle.

-----

Footnote 2:

_R. E. Lee_, Wolseley, p. 51.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_PART II_

VIRGINIA DID NOT SECEDE IN ORDER TO EXTEND
SLAVERY INTO THE TERRITORIES,
OR TO PREVENT ITS THREATENED
DESTRUCTION WITHIN HER
OWN BORDERS

------------------------------------------------------------------------

III

VIRGINIA'S COLONIAL RECORD WITH RESPECT TO SLAVERY

President Lincoln in his inaugural address declared:—"One section of
our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while
the other believes slavery is wrong and ought not to be extended. This
is the only substantial dispute."

Other voices proclaimed that there existed an "irrepressible conflict"
between the North and the South in which the abolition or maintenance of
slavery was the gage of battle. The two assertions may be combined and
the question considered whether Virginia seceded either to extend
slavery into the territories or to perpetuate the institution within her
borders.

SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA

In considering these questions it will be well to review Virginia's
record with respect to slavery both during the period of her existence
as a colony and her career as a state;

To collate the sentiments of her great sons antagonistic to the
institution;

To show the small number of her citizens holding slaves as compared with
the great company of those who possessed no such interest;

To note the injurious effects upon her prosperity resulting from the
presence of the institution;

To summarize what were considered the almost insuperable difficulties
which embarrassed every plan of emancipation—difficulties that were
augmented and intensified by the bitterness and partizanship with which,
during the three decades immediately preceding the Civil War, the
subject had become invested;

To present the situation with respect to the controversy at the time
Virginia seceded from the Union; and finally,

To consider the effects, if any, upon her position, of President
Lincoln's Proclamations of Emancipation issued subsequent thereto.

VIRGINIA'S COLONIAL RECORD

African slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619 by a Dutch vessel.
George W. Williams, the negro historian of his race in America, says,
"It is due to the Virginia colony to say that the slaves were forced
upon them."[3]

Though slaves were thus introduced as early as 1619, it was not until
1661 that the institution of slavery was recognized in Virginia by
statute law.[4]

For a long period after their first introduction, very few slaves were
imported. At the end of the first half-century there were only some two
thousand, and as late as the year 1715 they numbered only about
twenty-five thousand. In the sixty years, however, immediately preceding
the Revolution, they came in ever-increasing numbers, so that at the
latter date they almost equalled the white population of the colony.[5]

EFFORTS TO EXCLUDE SLAVES

With the great increase of this element in the population, the colonists
were quick to realize their danger[6] and numerous acts were passed by
the Colonial Legislature designed to lessen, if not actually to stop,
further importations. Alluding to these efforts of the Virginia people,
Mr. Bancroft says:

"Again and again they had passed laws restraining the importation of
negroes from Africa, but their laws were disallowed. How to prevent
them from protecting themselves against the increase of the
overwhelming evil was debated by the King in Council; and on the 10th
of December, 1770, he issued an instruction under his own hand
commanding the Governor 'upon pain of the highest displeasure, to
assent to no laws by which the importation of slaves should be in any
respect prohibited or obstructed.'"[7]

Edmund Burke, in his speech on conciliating America, in response to the
suggestion that the slaves might be freed and used against the colonies,
said,

"Dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the
offer of freedom from the very nation which had sold them to their
present masters—from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with
those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman
traffic. An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly,
shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into
the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred
Angola Negroes."[8]

In addition to legislative enactments, appeals were addressed directly
to the throne. But the great personages interested in the slave trade
proved more influential with the King than the prayers of his imperilled
people. There is something at once pathetic and prophetic in the appeals
made by these Virginians to their sovereign against the slave trade. The
petition presented by the House of Burgesses in 1772 recites:

"We implore your Majesty's paternal assistance in averting a calamity
of a most alarming nature. The importation of slaves into the colonies
from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great
inhumanity, and under its present encouragement we have too much
reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your Majesty's
American dominions. We are sensible that some of your Majesty's
subjects may reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, but when we
consider that it greatly retards the settlement of the colonies with
more useful inhabitants and may in time have the most destructive
influence, we presume to hope that the interests of a few will be
disregarded when placed in competition with the security and happiness
of such numbers of your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects. We,
therefore, beseech your Majesty to remove all these restraints on your
Majesty's Governor in this colony which inhibits their assenting to
such laws as might check so pernicious a consequence."[9]

This petition was reported from a Committee of the House which included
Edmund Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison and others of
equal prominence.[10]

But the King and Ministers continued to turn deaf ears and except with
respect to more moderate measures the Royal Veto was interposed to annul
all anti-slavery laws.

ORIGINAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Chief among the causes which aroused the opposition of the Virginia
colonists and placed them in the forefront of the Revolution was the
course of the King with respect to this momentous subject. When Thomas
Jefferson came to write the Declaration of Independence and to epitomize
the grounds of indictment which the colonists presented against the
British King, it was the latter's veto of the laws passed by Virginia to
suppress the slave trade, and the active aid lent by his Government to
force the captives of Africa upon his defenseless subjects, that evoked
the fiercest arraignment in that historic document. Mr. Jefferson
declared:

"George the Third has waged cruel war against humanity itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons
of a distant people who never offended him; captivating and carrying
them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death
in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of
Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be
bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit, or to restrain, this execrable
commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in
arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
them, by murdering the people on whom he obtruded them; thus paying
off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with
crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of
another."[11]

"These words," says Mr. Bancroft, "expressed precisely what had happened
in Virginia."

REASONS FOR AMENDING DECLARATION

That this portion of the Declaration was stricken out by Congress before
its formal presentation to the world does not negative the fact that, in
thus declaring, Mr. Jefferson proclaimed the sentiments of his native
state. It was ominous of her future experience with respect to this
baneful subject, that the voice of Virginia was then silenced in
deference to the states of the far South and certain of their Northern
sisters. Mr. Jefferson has left upon record that this clause in the
Declaration of Independence was stricken out:

"In compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted
to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still
wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a
little tender under these censures, for though their people had very
few slaves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to
others."[12]

The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, say:

"The objections of South Carolina and Georgia sufficed to cause the
erasure and suppression of the obnoxious paragraph. Nor were the
Northern States guiltless; Newport was yet a great slave mart, and the
commerce of New England drew more advantages from the traffic than did
the agriculture of the South."[13]

VIRGINIA'S ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS, 1774

But the position of Virginia with respect to slavery and the vetoes of
George III and the slave trade was not left to be determined by
unofficial utterances though coming from one of her greatest sons. As
early as 1774 her people registered their sentiments in the most
varied and emphatic forms. Mass meetings in many of the counties
adopted resolutions, the purport and tenor of which may be gathered
from those of Fairfax County,—"We take the opportunity of declaring
our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop forever put to such a
wicked, cruel and unnatural trade."[14]

VIRGINIA'S FIRST CONSTITUTION

In August, 1774, the Virginia Colonial Convention resolved: "We will
neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by
any other person, after the first day of November, next, either from
Africa, the West Indies or any other place."[15]

On the fifth of September, 1774, when the Continental Congress
assembled for the first time, her delegates in that body submitted the
memorial known in history as, "A Summary View of the Rights of British
America," in which the course of George III was arraigned and the
sentiments of Virginia in regard to the slave trade declared as
follows:

"For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable
reason at all, His Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary
tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of
desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in
their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the
slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations
from Africa. Yet, our repeated requests to effect this by
prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a
prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by His Majesty's negative;
thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British Corsairs to
the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of
human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."[16]

The representatives from Virginia in the Continental Congress were
active in their efforts to secure the adoption of the Non-Importation
Agreement which included a resolve to discontinue the slave trade and
a pledge neither to hire "our vessels nor sell our commodities or
manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[17]

W. E. B. DuBois declares: "Virginia gave the slave trade a special
prominence and was in reality the leading spirit to force her views on
the Continental Congress."[18]

Nor were these resolves of the Virginia people idle, for numerous
evidences can be cited of the activity of her vigilance committees. At
Norfolk, the committees, finding that one John Brown had purchased
slaves from Jamaica, reported that we "hold up for your just
indignation Mr. John Brown, merchant of this place ... to the end ...
that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him."[19]

VIRGINIA'S BILL OF RIGHTS

Two years later, but before the proclamation of the Declaration of
Independence, Virginia adopted a written constitution and Bill of
Rights. In the preamble to the former there are set forth the reasons
which influenced the colony to cast off her allegiance to the British
King. Among the foremost was his action in "perverting his kingly
powers," ... "into a detestable and insupportable tyranny by putting
his negative on laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public
good"; and again, for "prompting our negroes to rise in arms among
us—those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he
hath refused us permission to exclude by law."[20]

Her Bill of Rights opened with the then novel and far reaching
declaration:

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have
certain inherent rights, of which when they enter into a state of
society, they cannot, by any contract deprive or divest their
posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means
of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining
happiness and safety."[21]

With respect to this great document, Mr. Bancroft declares:

"Other colonies had framed Bills of Rights in reference to their
relations with Britain; Virginia moved from charters and customs to
primal principles; from the altercation about facts to the
contemplation of immutable truth. She summoned the eternal laws of
man's being to protest against all tyranny. The English Petition of
Right, in 1688, was historic and retrospective; the Virginia
declaration came out of the heart of nature and announced governing
principles for all peoples in all times. It was the voice of reason
going forth to speak a new political world into being. At the bar of
humanity Virginia gave the name and fame of her sons as hostages
that her public life should show a likeness to the highest ideals of
right and equal freedom among men."[22]

CANONS OF LIBERTY

This Bill of Rights was incorporated in every subsequent constitution
of Virginia and is to-day a part of her organic law. Two months after
its first adoption came the Declaration of American Independence. The
words of Mason: "That all men are by nature equally free and
independent," are re-echoed in the words of Jefferson, "That all men
are created equal," and both declare that among the inalienable rights
of man are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

To these principles, Virginia acknowledged allegiance; to the Bill of
Rights, by the unanimous vote of her Constitutional Convention; and to
the Declaration of Independence by the united voices of her delegates
in the Continental Congress. The institution of slavery could not
square with these great canons. Henceforth its existence in Virginia
could be justified only by the difficulties and dangers attending its
abolition.

These recitals bring us down to the close of Virginia's life as a
colony, and the assumption by her people of the rights and obligations
of statehood. In the more than one hundred and fifty years of her
colonial existence—despite protests, appeals and statutes—the
inflowing tide from Africa had continued, so that out of a population
of some six hundred thousand souls, over two-fifths were negro slaves.
It was amid such conditions that Virginia met the problems incident to
her birth into statehood, bore her part in founding the Republic,
furnished her quota of soldiers to resist the armies of Great Britain,
and held with fixed determination her ever advancing border line
against the craft and courage of the Red Men.

-----

Footnote 3:

_History of the Negro Race in America_, Williams, Vol. 1, p. 119.

Footnote 4:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 34.

Footnote 5:

_History of the Negro Race in America_, Williams, Vol. 1, p. 133.

Footnote 6:

A letter from the celebrated Colonel William Byrd of "Westover" to
Lord Egmont, under date of July 12, 1736, will serve to illustrate
this fact. Colonel Byrd writes, "Your Lord's opinion concerning Rum
and Negroes is certainly very just, and your excluding both of them
from your colony of Georgia will be very happy....

I wish, my Lord, we could be blessed with the same prohibition. They
import so many negroes here that I fear this colony will some time
or other be confirmed by the name of New Guinea. I am sensible of
the many bad consequences of multiplying the Ethiopians amongst us.
They blow up the pride and ruin the Industry of our White People,
who seeing a Rank of poor creatures below them, detest work for fear
it should make them look like slaves. Then that poverty which will
ever attend upon Idleness disposes them as much to pilfer as it does
the Portuguese....

But these private mischiefs are nothing if compared to the publick
danger. It were therefore worth the consideration of a British
Parliament, my Lord, to put an end to this unchristian traffick of
making merchandise of our Fellow Creatures. At least, the further
importation of them into our Colony should be prohibited lest they
prove as troublesome and dangerous elsewhere as they have been
lately in Jamaica.... All these matters duly considered, I wonder
the Legislature will Indulge a few ravenous traders to the danger of
the Publick Safety." (From Unpublished Byrd Manuscripts at Lower
Brandon, Va.)

Footnote 7:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. III, p. 410.

Footnote 8:

_Burke's Works_, Little, Brown & Co.'s. Ed., Vol. II, p. 135.

Footnote 9:

_Journal of House of Burgesses_, p. 131, and _Tucker's Blackstone_,
appendix, note H. Vol. II, p. 351.

Footnote 10:

_Defense of Virginia_, Dabney, p. 48.

Footnote 11:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. IV, p. 445.

Footnote 12:

_Writings of Thomas Jefferson_, P. L. Ford, 1892, p. 28.

Footnote 13:

_Abraham Lincoln, A History_, Nicolay & Hay, Vol. I, p. 314.

Footnote 14:

_Suppression of the Slave Trade_, DuBois, p. 43.

Footnote 15:

_Idem_, p. 43.

Footnote 16:

_Writings of Thomas Jefferson_, Ford, 1892, Vol. I, p. 440.

Footnote 17:

_Suppression of the Slave Trade_, DuBois, p. 45.

Footnote 18:

_Idem_, p. 43.

Footnote 19:

_Idem_, p. 47.

Footnote 20:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. IX, pp. 112-113.

Footnote 21:

_Idem_, p. 109.

Footnote 22:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. IV, p. 419.

VIRGINIA'S STATUTE ABOLISHING THE AFRICAN SLAVE
TRADE AND HER PART IN ENACTING THE
ORDINANCE OF 1787

Foremost among the laws enacted by her General Assembly after
Virginia's declaration of independence from British rule was her
celebrated statute prohibiting the slave trade. This act was passed in
1778—thus antedating by thirty years the like action of Great
Britain. By this law, it was provided, "that from and after the
passing of this act no slaves shall hereafter be imported into this
commonwealth by sea or land, nor shall any slaves so imported be sold
or bought by any person whatsoever." The statute imposed a fine of one
thousand pounds upon the person importing them for each slave
imported, and also a fine of five hundred pounds upon any person
buying or selling any such slave for each slave so bought or sold. The
crime of bringing in slaves is still further guarded against by a
provision which declares that every slave "shall upon such importation
become free."[23] Of this act, Mr. Ballagh, in his _History of Slavery
in Virginia_, says, "Virginia thus had the honor of being the first
political community in the civilized modern world to prohibit the
pernicious traffic."[24]

VIRGINIA'S CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST

Next in the sequence of great events linked with this subject was the
work of her sons in the preparation and adoption of the ordinance for
the government of the northwest territory. This imperial domain from
which have been created the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin had been conquered by her soldiers, led by her
son, George Rogers Clark, acting under a commission of her Governor,
Patrick Henry, and her Council.[25] "Virginians," says Mr. Bancroft,
"in the service of Virginia." Virginia claimed the country as
comprised within the limits fixed by her colonial charter.
Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York also asserted claims, but, as
John Fiske declares, "It was Virginia that had actually conquered the
disputed territory."[26] And again he writes, "Virginia gave up a
magnificent and princely territory of which she was actually in
possession."[27] When, by the valor of her sons, Virginia had won the
land from the English and the Indians, she silenced the murmurings of
sister states and consummated the efforts for union by formally
relinquishing the great domain to the common weal.

The day that Virginia's deed of cession, March the first, 1784, was
accepted by the Continental Congress, Mr. Jefferson reported his
bill—the Ordinance of 1784. This measure was one of far reaching
importance in that it provided not only for many of the governmental
needs of this great territory, but declared that after the year 1800,
slavery should never exist in any portion of the vast domain west of a
line drawn north and south between Lake Erie and the Spanish dominions
of Florida. Had this clause been retained in the ordinance, slavery
would have been excluded not only from the five states created out of
the northwest territory but from the country south of it and from
which were subsequently formed the states of Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama and Mississippi.

This provision of the ordinance, however, failed of adoption—the
votes of six states being recorded in its favor, one less than the
requisite majority. Mr. Jefferson's colleagues present, Hardy and
Mercer, refused to join him in voting for this novel enactment. Its
failure was a matter of profound regret to its author. In a letter to
M. de Munier, Mr. Jefferson wrote:

"The voice of a single individual of the state which was divided, or
one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this
abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we
see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man and
Heaven was silent in that awful moment."[28]

ORDINANCE OF 1787

This ambition of Mr. Jefferson was not destined to complete defeat.
Three years later, the now celebrated Ordinance of 1787 was enacted
into law. "No one was more active," says Mr. Fiske, "in bringing about
this result than William Grayson of Virginia, who was earnestly
supported by Lee."[29]

Mr. Bancroft says:

"Thomas Jefferson first summoned Congress to prohibit slavery in all
the territory of the United States; Rufus King lifted up the measure
when it lay almost lifeless on the ground, and suggested the
immediate instead of the prospective prohibition; a Congress
composed of five Southern States to one from New England and two
from the Middle States, headed by William Grayson, supported by
Richard Henry Lee, and using Nathan Dane as scribe, carried the
measure to the goal in the amended form in which King had caused it
to be referred to a committee; and, as Jefferson had proposed,
placed it under the sanction of an irrevocable compact."[30]

VIRGINIA CONFIRMS ORDINANCE OF 1787

The ordinance as passed contained many provisions in addition to those
set out in Virginia's deed of cession. It was necessary, therefore,
that Virginia should by proper enactment reaffirm her deed. The
General Assembly of Virginia at its next session accordingly passed an
act fixing for all time the validity of both deed and ordinance.[31]
Mr. Bancroft says:

"A powerful committee on which were Carrington, Monroe, Edmund
Randolph and Grayson, successfully brought forward the bill by which
Virginia confirmed the ordinance for the colonization of all the
territory then in the possession of the United States, by freemen
alone."[32]

Thus the old commonwealth which had won the land from England and the
Indians bore a foremost part in the legislative work by which slavery
was forever excluded from the empire north of the Ohio River.

-----

Footnote 23:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. IX, p. 471.

Footnote 24:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 23.

Footnote 25:

_Life of Patrick Henry_, W. W. Henry, Vol. I, p. 583.

Footnote 26:

_Critical Period of American History_, Fiske, p. 191.

Footnote 27:

_Idem_, p. 195.

Footnote 28:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. IV, p. 181.

Footnote 29:

_Critical Period of American History_, Fiske, p. 205.

Footnote 30:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. VI, p. 290.

Footnote 31:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. XII, p. 780.

Footnote 32:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. VI, p. 291.

FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE AND THE CONSTITUTION:
VIRGINIA'S POSITION

The supreme opportunity for suppressing the importation of slaves and
thus hastening the day of emancipation came with the adoption of the
Federal Constitution. As we have seen, with every increase in the
number of slaves the difficulties and dangers of emancipation were
multiplied. The hope of emancipation rested in stopping their further
importation and dispersing throughout the land those who had already
found a home in our midst. To put an end to "this pernicious traffic"
was therefore the supreme duty of the hour, but despite Virginia's
protests and appeals the foreign slave trade was legalized by the
Federal Constitution for an additional period of twenty years. The
nation knew not the day of its visitation—with blinded eyes and
reckless hand it sowed the dragon's teeth from which have sprung the
conditions and problems which even to-day tax the thought and
conscience of the American people.

This action of the convention is declared by Mr. Fiske, to have been
"a bargain between New England and the far South."

"New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut," he adds, "consented to
the prolonging of the foreign slave trade for twenty years, or until
1808; and in return South Carolina and Georgia consented to the clause
empowering Congress to pass Navigation Acts and otherwise regulate
commerce by a simple majority of votes."[33]

OPPOSITION TO FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE

George W. Williams, the negro historian, avers that,

"Thus, by an understanding or, as Gouverneur Morris called it, 'a
bargain' between the commercial representatives of the Northern
States and the delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, and in spite
of the opposition of Maryland and Virginia, the unrestricted power
of Congress to enact Navigation Laws was conceded to the Northern
merchants; and to the Carolina rice planters, as an equivalent,
twenty years' continuance of the African slave trade."[34]

Continuing, Mr. Fiske says, "This compromise was carried against the
sturdy opposition of Virginia." George Mason spoke the sentiments of
the Mother-Commonwealth when in a speech against this provision of the
constitution, which reads like prophecy and judgment, he said:

"This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British
merchants. The British Government constantly checked the attempts of
Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns, not the
importing states alone, but the whole Union.... Maryland and
Virginia, he said, had already prohibited the importation of slaves
expressly. North Carolina had done the same in substance. All this
would be in vain if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to
import. The Western people are already calling out for slaves for
their new lands; and will fill that country with slaves if they can
be got through South Carolina and Georgia. Slavery discourages arts
and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
They prevent the emigration of whites, who really enrich and
strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious effect on
manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring
the judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded
or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an
inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes National
sins by National calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern
brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious
traffic. As to the states being in possession of the right to
import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be properly
given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that the
General Government should have power to prevent the increase of
slavery."

"But these prophetic words of George Mason," adds Mr. Fiske, "were
powerless against the combination of New England and the far
South."[35]

Some seven decades later, Virginia erected under the shadow of her
Capitol a bronze statue to commemorate the fame of this illustrious
son.

Governor Randolph and Mr. Madison earnestly supported their colleague,
the former declaring that this feature rendered the constitution so
odious as to make doubtful his ability to support it; and the latter
asserting, "Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be
apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be
more dishonorable to the American character than to say nothing about
it in the constitution."[36]

FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE LEGALIZED

Thus it was by the votes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and against the
votes of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, that the
slave trade was legalized by the National Government for the period
from 1787 to 1808.

DISASTERS RESULTING THEREFROM

If it be argued that this provision of the constitution offered no
menace to Virginia or to any other state not willing to admit the
importations, the reply is obvious that this action of the National
Government was deplorable because it placed the imprimatur of its
supreme law upon the morality as well as legality of the slave trade;
and further, because with the advent from abroad of every additional
slave the difficulties and dangers of emancipating those in the
South—their natural habitat—was increased. New England and the North
were not menaced. Climatic and economic conditions, as well as their
local laws, raised a protecting barrier. Beneath the hot skies of the
South—where flourished the much sought for crops of cotton, rice and
sugar cane—was the land to which with unerring instinct the Trader
piloted his craft freighted with ignorance and woe. As long,
therefore, as one port remained open and the National Government
sanctioned the traffic, just so long would the inflowing tide
continue, each new arrival adding to the difficulties of the
situation.

Thus the nation, under its new charter, entered upon its career
handicapped by the curse of slavery and further menaced by the new
lease of life accorded the slave trade. Upon Virginia the maximum of
burden rested. She had within her borders nearly one-third of the
whole slave population of the Union. Hers was the ceaseless task of
guarding against further importations from home or abroad; of devising
some practicable plan for gradually emancipating the slaves in her
midst, and meanwhile to continue day by day the work of teaching these
children of the Dark Continent an intelligible language, the use of
tools, the necessity for labor and the rudiments of morality and
religion.

-----

Footnote 33:

_Critical Period of American History_, Fiske, p. 264.

Footnote 34:

_History of Negro Race in America_, Williams, Vol. I, p. 426.

Footnote 35:

_Critical Period of American History_, Fiske, p. 264.

Footnote 36:

_Life and Times of Madison_, Rives, Vol. II, p. 446.

THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE
VIRGINIA'S EFFORTS TO ABOLISH IT

Despite Virginia's failure to secure the immediate suppression of the
foreign slave trade, her sons were active in their efforts to restrict
its growth and at the earliest possible moment to drive the slave
ships from the seas.

In the first Congress under the constitution, April, 1789, Josiah
Parker of Virginia sought to amend the Tariff Bill under discussion by
inserting a clause levying an import tax of ten dollars upon every
slave brought into the country.

"He was sorry the constitution prevented Congress from prohibiting
the importation altogether. It was contrary to Revolution principles
and ought not to be permitted.... He hoped Congress would do all in
their power to restore to human nature its inherent privileges; to
wipe off, if possible, the stigma under which America labored; to do
away with the inconsistence in our principles justly charged upon
us; and to show by our actions, the pure beneficence of the doctrine
held out to the world in our Declaration of Independence."

Mr. Parker was supported by two other Virginians, Theodoric Bland and
James Madison, the latter declaring:

"The clause in the constitution allowing a tax to be imposed though
the traffic could not be prohibited for twenty years, was inserted,
he believed, for the very purpose of enabling Congress to give some
testimony of the sense of America with respect to the African trade.
By expressing a national disapprobation of that trade it is to be
hoped we may destroy it, and so save ourselves from reproaches and
our posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled
with slaves."[37]

But notwithstanding these appeals the movement was defeated, though
the discussion was evidently fruitful in bringing to the attention of
the country that under the constitution, Congress had authority not
only to levy a tax of ten dollars per capita on slaves imported, but
to prohibit citizens of the United States from engaging in the traffic
with foreign countries. These latter conclusions were formally
embodied in a report made to Congress on the 23rd of March, 1790, by a
committee of which Josiah Parker of Virginia was one of the leading
members. The adoption of this report stirred the opponents of the
slave trade to greater activity and numerous petitions were presented
at the next session of Congress from Maryland and Virginia and almost
every one of the Northern States. In the Virginia petition, the slave
trade was denounced as "an outrageous violation of one of the most
essential rights of human nature."[38]

In his message to Congress, at its session, 1806-7, Mr. Jefferson,
then President, brought to the attention of that body the fact that
under the constitution the time was at hand when the African slave
trade could be abolished, and urged the speedy enactment of such a
law. He said:

"I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of a period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all further participation in
those violations of human rights which have so long been continued
on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality,
the reputation and the best interests of our country have long been
eager to proscribe."

An act was accordingly passed prohibiting the slave trade and imposing
forfeitures and fines upon ships and ships' crews engaged in the
traffic. The law also forfeited slaves so illegally imported and
provided that the disposition of such slaves should be left to the
states wherein they were found.

The African slave trade had flourished so long under the patronage and
support of the leading nations of Christendom and with the
acquiescence, at least, of the United States during the previous
twenty years, that it was difficult by simple statutory enactment to
put an end to the nefarious traffic. It will be seen, therefore, that
the trade continued from time to time between the coast of Africa, the
United States, West Indies and Brazil, despite the efforts of the
Federal authorities to enforce the laws made for its suppression. In
all these efforts Virginians, holding official places, were most
earnest and energetic in their warfare against the trade.

In his message to Congress, December 5, 1810, President Madison
declares:

"Among the commercial abuses still committed under the American flag
... it appears that American citizens are instrumental in carrying
on the traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the
laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country,"

and urges Congress to devise further means for suppressing the evil.

Again, in his message to Congress of December 3, 1816, President
Madison brings the subject to the attention of Congress and urges the
enactment of such amendments as will suppress violations of the
statute.

In the progress of time, certain slaves brought into the country in
violation of the act were captured and sold, thus in effect defeating
one of the prime objects of the law, which was to prevent any increase
in the slave population. Thereupon, at the session of Congress, 1819,
under the leadership of Charles Fenton Mercer and John Floyd of
Virginia a bill was passed amending the existing statute, requiring
the President to use armed cruisers off the coasts of Africa and
America to suppress the trade, providing for the immediate return to
Africa of any imported slaves, directing the President to appoint
agents to receive and care for them on their return and appropriating
One Hundred Thousand Dollars to carry out the general purposes of the
law.[39]

In the House, on motion of Hugh Nelson, of Virginia, the death penalty
was fixed as the punishment for violating the law, but this provision
was stricken out by the Senate.[40]

In February, 1823, Charles Fenton Mercer, a representative from
Virginia, in the House, secured the adoption of the following joint
resolution:

"RESOLVED, That the President of the United States be requested to
enter upon and to prosecute from time to time such negotiations with
the maritime powers of Europe and America as he may deem expedient
for the effectual abolition of the African slave trade and its
ultimate denunciation as Piracy under the laws of Nations by the
consent of the civilized world."[41]

Mr. Mercer, in urging the adoption of this resolution, denounced the
African slave trade "as a crime begun on a barbarous shore, claimed by
no civilized state, and subject to no moral law; a remnant of ancient
barbarism, a curse extended to the New World by the colonial policy of
the Old."[42]

Mr. Mercer supplemented his congressional action by visits made at his
own expense to the Governments of the Old World to urge upon them the
adoption of the policy set forth in his resolution.'[43]

It was early appreciated that unless at least a qualified "right of
search" was accorded the war vessels of the leading nations engaged in
the effort to suppress the slave trade, these efforts would be
seriously hindered. Accordingly the lower house of Congress, in May,
1821, under the leadership of Charles Fenton Mercer, from whose
committee the resolution was reported, adopted the recommendation that
a "right of search" be accorded the British Government in return for a
like privilege accorded the United States.[44] This resolution,
however, was defeated in the Senate.

Subsequently President Monroe submitted to Congress the draft of a
treaty with England embodying this provision. In a special message,
under date of May 21, 1824, he gave at length his reasons for
approving the treaty—saying:

"Should this convention be adopted there is every reason to believe
that it will be the commencement of a system destined to accomplish
the entire abolition of the slave trade."

Unfortunately, the ratification of this treaty was defeated in the
Senate, and not until 1862 was the "right of search" between Great
Britain and America established.

In his message to Congress June 1, 1841, President Tyler writes:

"I shall also at the proper season invite your attention to the
statutory enactments for the suppression of the slave trade which
may require to be rendered more effective in their provisions. There
is reason to believe that the traffic is on the increase.... The
highest consideration of public honor as well as the strongest
promptings of humanity require a resort to the most vigorous efforts
to suppress the trade."

Again, in his message of December 7, 1841, President Tyler writes:

"I invite your attention to existing laws for the suppression of the
African slave trade, and recommend all such alterations as may give
to them greater force and efficiency. That the American flag is
grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations is
but too probable."

In 1842, in the preparation of the Ashburton Treaty President Tyler
secured the insertion of a clause providing for the maintenance and
co-operation of squadrons of the United States and Great Britain off
the coast of Africa for the suppression of the trade.[45]

The ratification of this treaty was urged upon the Senate by the
President in his message of August 11, 1842, as conducive to the
abolition of what he termed the "unlawful and inhuman traffic."

Though Brazil, by statute, prohibited the African slave trade in 1831,
yet the traffic continued and in this trade citizens of the United
States as ship owners, or crew, were engaged despite the Federal
statutes against such a practice. Henry A. Wise of Virginia, Consul at
Rio Janeiro, made frequent and earnest reports to the State Department
calling the attention of the authorities to these violations. Under
date of February 18th, 1845, he writes to the Secretary of State at
Washington:

"I beseech, I implore the President of the United States to take a
decided stand on this subject. You have no conception of the bold
effrontery and the flagrant outrages of the African slave trade, and
of the shameless manner in which its worst crimes are licensed here,
and every patriot in our land would blush for our country did he
know and see, as I do, how our citizens sail and sell our flag to
the uses and abuses of that accursed practice."[46]

In his message to Congress, under date of December 4th, 1849,
President Taylor writes:

"Your attention is earnestly invited to an amendment of our existing
laws relating to the African slave trade with a view to the
effectual suppression of that barbarous traffic. It is not to be
denied that this trade is still in part carried on by means of
vessels built in the United States and owned or navigated by some of
our citizens."

The foregoing recitals will serve to illustrate the uncompromising
attitude of hostility on the part of leading Virginians toward the
African slave trade. They sought by Federal statutes and concerted
action with foreign nations to drive the pernicious traffic from the
seas. They denounced the trade as inhuman, because it stimulated men
to reduce free men to slavery and then entailed upon slaves the
horrors and dangers of the "middle passage." They resolutely opposed
any addition to the slave population of America because profoundly
convinced that every such importation was fraught with menace to the
social, economic and moral well-being of the nation and rendered more
difficult the emancipation of those who had already been brought to
her shores. As we have seen, her representatives at the first meeting
of the Continental Congress had defined Virginia's position in the
notable memorial which declared:

"The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in
those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant
state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have,
it is necessary to exclude all further importations from
Africa."[47]

This was the philosophy of the situation as defined by the great
statesmen of the Revolutionary period and to their views their ablest
successors in Virginia adhered down to the outbreak of the Civil War.

-----

Footnote 37:

_Annals of Congress_, Vol. I, col. 336.

Footnote 38:

_Suppression of the Slave Trade_, DuBois, p. 80.

Footnote 39:

_Annals of Congress_, 15th Congress, 2nd section, part I, pp. 442-3.

Footnote 40:

_Suppression of the Slave Trade_, DuBois, p. 120, Note 3.

Footnote 41:

_Annals of Congress_, 17th Congress, second session, pp. 435 and
928.

Footnote 42:

_Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Wilson, Vol. I, p.
106.

Footnote 43:

_The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States_,
McGuire and Christian, p. 17.

Footnote 44:

_Suppression of Slave Trade_, DuBois, p. 137.

Footnote 45:

_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. II, p. 219.

Footnote 46:

_American Slave Trade_, Spear, p. 81.

Footnote 47:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. I, p. 440.

VII

SOME VIRGINIA STATUTES WITH RESPECT TO SLAVERY

Having by her act of 1778, prohibiting the importation of slaves,
provided against any increase in their number from without, Virginia
at the close of the Revolution proceeded to legislate with respect to
those already in her midst, permitting and encouraging their gradual
emancipation.

STATUTE PERMITTING EMANCIPATIONS

Under British rule, slaveholders were forbidden to manumit their
slaves, except with the permission of the Council.[48] In 1782, the
General Assembly of Virginia enacted a law, under which slaveholders
were authorized to emancipate their slaves by deed or will duly made
and recorded.[49]

By an act passed in 1785, it was provided that slaves brought into the
state and remaining twelve months should be free.[50]

In 1787, acts were passed validating certain manumissions made by
wills prior to 1782, the General Assembly declaring that it was "just
and proper" that "the benevolent intentions" of the testators should
be carried into effect.[51]

In 1788, an act was passed making the enslaving of the child of free
blacks a crime punishable by death upon the scaffold.[52]

In 1795, an act was passed allowing a slave to sue _in forma pauperis_
in any court proceedings affecting his freedom. He might make
complaint to the nearest magistrate or court and the owner was then
required to give bond to permit the slave to attend the next term of
the court and maintain his cause. If the owner failed or refused to
comply, the slave was taken into the custody of the state, counsel was
assigned to defend his cause and every process of the law allowed him
without cost.[53] Following the adoption of the foregoing laws, the
General Assembly, in 1803, passed an act to still further safeguard
the rights of negroes who had secured their freedom. By this last act
the authorities were required to keep registers in each county in
which were to be recorded the names of all the free negroes and also
the names of slaves whose right to manumission would accrue upon the
death of the person having only an estate for life in such slaves.

STATUTE RESTRICTING EMANCIPATION

The effect of these acts facilitating and encouraging manumissions at
length began to appear. At the close of the Revolution there were less
than three thousand free negroes in Virginia.[54] In the ten years
next succeeding, they reached thirteen thousand, and the census of
1810 records their number at thirty thousand, five hundred and
seventy. Here was a new problem—the presence in a state dominated by
white men of a considerable body of negroes possessing neither the
privileges of the whites nor amenable to the restrictions imposed upon
the great mass of the blacks. As a result of these conditions, acts
were passed in 1806 providing that no slaves thereafter manumitted
should remain in Virginia. In 1819 an act was passed authorizing the
County Courts to permit such as were "sober, peaceful, orderly and
industrious to remain in the state."[55] Later, it was provided by
statute that all slaves thereafter manumitted should leave the state
within twelve months from the date of their emancipation.
Thenceforward slaveholders were accorded the right to manumit their
slaves, subject to the claims of their creditors and to the obligation
upon the former slaves of going beyond the state within twelve months
following their manumission.

While these last mentioned statutes embarrassed the work of
emancipation, they stimulated the sentiment in favor of colonization.
However, despite the difficulties which confronted them, slaveholders
still continued to emancipate their slaves and hostility to the
institution of slavery—the conviction that it was a burden upon the
commonwealth—became more and more widespread among the people. The
growth of these sentiments continued until the year 1832. The Rev.
Philip Slaughter, a writer with pro-slavery sympathies, records:

"That was the culminating point—the flood tide of anti-slavery
feeling which had been gradually rising for more than a century in
Virginia was then precipitated upon us before its time by the
Southampton convulsion."[56]

To the disastrous effects upon public sentiment of this tragic event
which occurred in August, 1831, must be added the reactionary
influence of the Abolitionists, who now began their work of agitation
and their arraignment, not simply of slavery nor of slaveholders, but
of the morality and civilization of every community in which the
institution existed. The failure, too, of the General Assembly of
Virginia at its session of 1832 to adopt any plan for the gradual
abolition of slavery or for the removal beyond the state of the free
negroes then within her borders was also strongly reactionary. Despite
the ability and influence of the anti-slavery leaders in that body no
remedial legislation was adopted and thousands of the people accepted
the result as proof of the fact that the practical difficulties in the
way of emancipation were such as to shut out the hope of its
accomplishment.

-----

Footnote 48:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. IV, p. 132.

Footnote 49:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. XI, p. 39.

Footnote 50:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. XII, p. 182.

Footnote 51:

_Hening's Statutes_, Vol. XII, pp. 611 and 613.

Footnote 52:

_Idem_, p. 531.

Footnote 53:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 123.

Footnote 54:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 121.

Footnote 55:

_Idem_, p. 125.

Footnote 56:

_The Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, p. 55.

VIII

THE MOVEMENT IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE OF 1832
TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN THE STATE

The Southampton Insurrection, which occurred in August, 1831, was one
of those untoward incidents which so often marked the history of
slavery. Under the leadership of one Nat Turner, a negro preacher, of
some education, who felt that he had been called of God to deliver his
race from bondage, the negroes attacked the whites at night and before
the assault could be suppressed fifty-seven whites, principally women
and children, had been killed. This deplorable event assumed an even
more portentous aspect when it was realized that the leader was a
slave to whom the privilege of education had been accorded and that
one of his lieutenants was a free negro. In addition there existed a
widespread belief among the whites that influences and instigations
from without the state were responsible for the insurrection.

The General Assembly of Virginia met in regular session in December,
1831, and the effect upon the popular mind of this tragic occurrence
was evidenced in the numerous petitions presented praying for the
removal beyond the state of all free negroes, or the enactment of such
laws as should provide for the abolition of slavery. The institution
itself, the feasibility of its abolition, the status of the free
negroes, the danger to the state from their presence, were thus
brought before the Legislature. It was a body containing many able men
but elected without reference to this great subject, and with no
previous interchange of views or formulation of plans among the
advocates of reform. The discussions which followed were more notable
for the fierce arraignment of the institution than for the
presentation of practical plans for its abolition.

Henry Wilson, in his _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_,
says of this discussion:

"It was one of the ablest, most eloquent and brilliant debates that
ever took place in the Legislature of any of the states. Most of
those who participated in it were young and rising men who afterward
achieved high positions and commanding influence."[57]

Mr. Ballagh records that:

"Day after day multitudes thronged the Capitol to hear the speeches.
The Assembly in its zeal for the discussion set aside all prudential
considerations, such as the possible effect of incendiary utterances
that might make the slave believe his lot one of injustice and
cruelty, and so give him the excuse of a revolt, or might encourage
further aggressions by Northern Abolitionists."[58]

LEADERS OF THE MOVEMENT

Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Mr. Jefferson's grandson; Thomas Marshall,
son of the Chief Justice; James McDowell, afterward Congressman and
Governor; Charles J. Faulkner, afterward Congressman and Minister to
France, and William Ballard Preston, afterward Congressman and
Secretary of the Navy in President Taylor's Cabinet, were among the
leaders of the anti-slavery men, and some idea may be formed of the
character of their speeches from the extracts hereinafter cited.

The principal discussion revolved around the report of a committee
which declared "that it is inexpedient for the present Legislature to
make any legislative enactment for the abolition of slavery," to which
Mr. Preston moved the substitution of the word "expedient" for
"inexpedient," and Mr. Bryce moved, as a substitute for both, that the
commonwealth should provide for the immediate removal of the negroes
now free and those who may hereafter become free "believing that this
will absorb all of our present means." By a vote of 58 to 73 Mr.
Preston's amendment was defeated,[59] and Mr. Bryce's substitute
adopted by a vote of 65 to 58.[60] In line with this declaration, the
House thereupon passed a bill which provided by a comprehensive and
continuous system for the deportation and colonization of the free
negroes of the commonwealth, and such as thereafter might become free.
The measure carried an appropriation of Thirty-five Thousand Dollars
for the first year (1832) and Ninety Thousand Dollars for the year
1833 and was adopted by a vote of 79 to 41.[61] In urging its passage,
William H. Broadnax insisted that many owners "would manumit their
slaves if means for their removal were furnished by the state, but who
could not if the additional burden of removal were placed upon
them."[62] This bill, so fraught with far-reaching consequences, was
subsequently defeated in the Senate by one vote.

PLANS PROPOSED

Several plans for the gradual emancipation and deportation of the
slaves were brought forward and discussed, but all failed of
enactment. Thomas R. Dew declares that, "no enlarged, wise or
practical plan of operations was proposed by the Abolitionists."[63]
And Mr. Ballagh says, that "will was not wanting but method unhappily
was."[64]

THE EFFECTS OF FAILURE

The failure of this General Assembly to adopt any plan of emancipation
or any comprehensive scheme for the deportation of the free negroes
already in the state had a disastrous effect upon the attitude of
thousands of Virginians towards slavery. Despairing of relief from
either of these sources and yet facing the peril of which the Nat
Turner Insurrection was the warning sign, her lawmakers sought in
repressive legislation to nullify the dangers of slave insurrection.
Many accepted the institution as permanent and busied themselves
marshalling arguments in vindication of its rightfulness and in
refuting with growing bitterness the assaults of its opponents.

ABOLITIONISTS AND PRO-SLAVERY MEN

But in addition to the Southampton Massacre, and the failure of the
Legislature to enact any effective legislation, the contemporary rise
of the Abolitionists in the North came as an even more powerful factor
to embarrass the efforts of the Virginia emancipators. Unlike the
anti-slavery men of former years, this new school not only attacked
the institution of slavery but the morality of slaveholders and their
sympathizers. In their fierce arraignment, not only were the humane
and considerate linked in infamy with the cruel and intolerant, but
the whole population of the slave-owning states, their civilization
and their morals were the object of unrelenting and incessant
assaults. Thus thousands sincerely desiring the abolition of slavery
were driven to silence or into the ranks of its apologists in the
widespread and indignant determination of Virginians to resent these
libels upon their character and defeat these attempts to excite
servile insurrections.

"What have we done to her," said the Rev. Nehemiah Adams of Boston,
"but admonish, threaten and indict her before God, excommunicate her,
stir up insurrection among her slaves, endanger her homes, make her
Christians and ministers odious in other lands."[65]

From this period, too, may be noticed the gradual increase in the
number of pro-slavery men in Virginia. This element did not justify
slavery simply because of the difficulties and dangers attending
emancipation, but they asserted that the institution was good in
itself, sanctioned by religion, a blessing to the blacks and essential
to the well-being of the whites. The growth of this new school in its
aggressiveness and the extreme character of its utterances kept pace
with the like development of the Abolitionists. As the latter
denounced slavery as "man-stealing"—and slaveholders—as "thieves,"
the former marshalled Bible texts to show the divine origin and
Heaven-approved character of the institution. As the Abolitionists
portrayed the "degrading" and "brutalizing" effects of slavery upon
the character of slaveholding communities, the pro-slavery men pointed
to the moral and civic virtues which undoubtedly existed in such
communities, and claimed that these very virtues were attributable to
the institution of slavery. As Abolitionists, relying upon the
insistence that slavery was a "monstrous oppression," justified slave
insurrections to effect freedom, the pro-slavery men sought to drive
into silence their fellow Virginians of anti-slavery sentiments
because any acknowledgment that it was illegal and that the condition
of the slave was at war with the laws of natural right warranted the
slave in killing his master to secure his freedom.

THE GROWTH OF PRO-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS

Thus, from 1833 on to the time of the war, the pro-slavery advocates
grew in influence and aggressiveness, though what proportion of the
population of Virginia they represented it is impossible to determine.
Their extreme utterances undoubtedly gave them great prominence, as
the march of events, in like manner, augmented their power. The
sentiments of the anti-slavery men found little place in the turmoil
of the times. Their position was strongly analogous to that of the
majority of the Northern people, who, in the midst of the war cries of
the Abolitionists, continued in silence their business pursuits.

-----

Footnote 57:

_Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Wilson, Vol. I, p.
195.

Footnote 58:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 138.

Footnote 59:

_Journal of House of Delegates_, 1832, p. 109.

Footnote 60:

_Idem_, p. 110.

Footnote 61:

_Idem_, p. 158.

Footnote 62:

_Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, p. 48.

Footnote 63:

_An Essay on Slavery_, Thomas R. Dew, 1849, p. 6.

Footnote 64:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 138.

Footnote 65:

_South Side View of Slavery_, Adams, p. 127.

THE NORTHERN ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR REACTIONARY
INFLUENCE UPON ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT
IN VIRGINIA

Thomas Jefferson Randolph was the foremost advocate of gradual
emancipation in the Virginia Legislature of 1832. In a pamphlet
printed in 1870 reviewing political conditions in Virginia he makes
the following statement with reference to the subject of emancipation
and the influences which hindered its accomplishment after the year
1833:

"After the adjournment of the Legislature in 1833, the question was
discussed before the people fairly and squarely, as one of the
abolition of slavery. I was re-elected on that ground in my county.
The feeling extended rapidly from that time in Virginia, Kentucky
and Missouri until Northern abolitionism reared its head. Southern
abolition was reform and an appeal to the master; Northern abolition
was revolution and an appeal to the slave. One was peaceful and the
other mutually destructive of both races by a servile insurrection.
The Southern people feared to trust to the intervention of persons
themselves exempt by position from the imagined dangers of the
transition."[66]

VIEWS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS

George Tucker, Professor of Political Economy, in the University of
Virginia, in his work, _The Progress of the United States in
Population and Wealth_, published in 1843, referring to the subject,
writes:

"This is not the place for assailing or defending slavery; but it
may be confidently asserted that the efforts of Abolitionists have
hitherto made the people in the slaveholding states cling to it more
tenaciously. Those efforts are viewed by them as an intermeddling in
their domestic concerns that is equally unwarranted by the comity
due to sister states, and to the solemn pledges of the Federal
compact. In the general indignation which is thus excited, the
arguments in favor of negro emancipation, once open and urgent, have
been completely silenced, and its advocates among the slaveholders,
who have not changed their sentiments, find it prudent to conceal
them.... Such have been the fruits of the zeal of Northern
Abolitionists in those states in which slavery prevails; and the
fable of the Wind and the Sun never more forcibly illustrated the
difference between gentle and violent means in influencing men's
wills."[67]

In 1847, Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College, delivered
an address upon the subject of slavery in Virginia which attracted
widespread attention. In this speech, made in the midst of the growing
controversy, he refers to the reactionary influence of the
Abolitionists as follows:

"But this unfavorable change of sentiment is due chiefly to the
fanatical violence of those Northern anti-slavery men usually called
Abolitionists.... They have not, by honourable means, liberated a
single slave, and they never will by such a course of procedure as
they have pursued. On the contrary they have created new
difficulties in the way of all judicious schemes of emancipation by
prejudicing the minds of slaveholders, and by compelling us to
combat their false principles and rash schemes in our rear; whilst
we are facing the opposition of men and the natural difficulties of
the case in our front."[68]

If it be thought, that Mr. Randolph, Professor Tucker, and Dr. Ruffner
were influenced by their environment and a desire to shift from the
people of Virginia to the Abolitionists responsibility for the growth
in the state of reactionary sentiments, with regard to slavery, it may
be well to quote the contemporary views of prominent anti-slavery men
of the North.

VIEWS OF CHANNING

Dr. William Ellery Channing, writing in 1835, said:

"The adoption of the common system of agitation by the Abolitionists
has not been justified by success. From the beginning it created
alarm in the considerate and strengthened the sympathies of the free
states with the slaveholder. It made converts of a few individuals
but alienated multitudes.

"Its influence at the South has been almost wholly evil. It has
stirred up bitter passions and a fierce fanaticism which have shut
every ear and every heart against its arguments and persuasions.
These effects are more to be deplored because the hope of freedom to
the slaves lies chiefly in the disposition of his master. The
Abolitionist proposed indeed to convert the slaveholders; and for
this reason he approached them with vituperation and exhausted upon
them the vocabulary of reproach. And he has reaped as he sowed....
Thus, with good purpose, nothing seems to have been gained. Perhaps
(though I am anxious to repel the thought) something has been lost
to the cause of freedom and humanity."[69]

VIEWS OF LINCOLN

In 1837, the Legislature of Illinois adopted a series of resolutions
of a pro-slavery character reprobating the methods of the
Abolitionists. Against the resolutions as adopted, Abraham Lincoln
prepared a memorandum and, together with Daniel Stone, a fellow member
of the body, had the same spread upon its journal as a more accurate
expression of their views. After referring to the resolutions, the
paper declares:

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition
doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."[70]

This declaration of Mr. Lincoln was at once a protest and a prophecy.

It is sometimes urged that because of Mr. Lincoln's youth, at this
time, his estimate of the injuries wrought by the "promulgation of
abolition doctrines" is not entitled to much weight. It is true that
he was then in his twenty-ninth year. A quotation from an even more
notable deliverance, made fifteen years later, will show that
reflection and observation served to confirm his convictions of the
earlier date. In his eulogy on Henry Clay, delivered in the State
House, at Springfield, Illinois, July 16th, 1852, he said:

"Cast into life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply
seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived,
how it could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil
even to the cause of human liberty itself. His feeling and his
judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of opinion
on the subject. Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of
these states, tear to tatters its now venerated constitution, and
even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than slavery should
continue a single hour, together with all their more halting
sympathizers, have received, and are receiving their just
execration; and the name and opinion and influence of Mr. Clay are
fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against
them."[71]

VIEWS OF WEBSTER

This estimate of Mr. Lincoln had already been anticipated by that of
Mr. Webster who, in his speech of March 7th, 1850, in the United
States Senate made a special reference to the disastrous influence
exerted by the Abolitionists upon the cause of emancipation in
Virginia.

"Public opinion," he said, "which in Virginia had begun to be
exhibited against slavery and was opening out for the discussion of
the question, drew back and shut itself up in its castle. I would
like to know whether anybody in Virginia can now talk openly as Mr.
Randolph, Governor McDowell and others talked in 1832, and sent
their remarks to the press? We all know the facts and we all know
the cause; and everything that these agitating people have done has
been not to enlarge but to restrain, not to set free, but to bind
the faster the slave population of the South."[72]

VIEWS OF DOUGLAS

Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1859,
said:

"There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and
that is by leaving the state according to the principle of the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its
institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this
Republic was founded.... Under its operations slavery disappeared
from ... six of the twelve original slaveholding states; and this
gradual system of emancipation went on quietly, peacefully and
steadily so long as we in the free states minded our own business
and left our neighbors alone. But the moment the abolition societies
were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent crusade
against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily
caused a counter-combination in the South, and a sectional line was
drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation. Bear in mind
that emancipation has not taken place in any one state since the
Free-soil Party was organized as a political party in this
country.... The moment the North proclaimed itself the determined
master of the South, that moment the South combined to resist the
attack, and thus sectional parties were formed and gradual
emancipation ceased in all the Northern slaveholding states."[73]

In this speech, Mr. Douglas not only points out the methods by which
slavery had been abolished in six of the twelve original slaveholding
states, but he bears testimony, like his great contemporaries, to the
reactionary influence resulting from the attitude of the Northern
Abolitionists.

This estimate of Senator Douglas was reaffirmed in the frank
declaration of Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, who, speaking in the Peace
Conference, at Washington, February, 1861, declared: "The North has
taken the business of abolition into its own hands and from the day
she did so we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the
natural effect of the cause."[74]

VIEWS OF LUNT AND CURTIS

If it be urged that the views of Channing, Lincoln, Webster, Douglas
and Ewing were unfair in their estimate of the reactionary influence
of the Abolitionists, because of the temper of the times in which they
lived, it may be well to quote the conclusions of publicists not so
situated. Mr. George Lunt, of Boston, writing in December, 1865, says:

"After the years of 1820-21, during which that great struggle which
resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active
and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the
gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until
it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists upon their
voluntary action."[75]

Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing in 1883, after
describing the discussions in the General Assembly of Virginia in
1831-32, and stating that Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the leader of the
movement for the abolition of slavery, was re-elected in 1833 from
Albemarle, one of the largest slaveholding counties in the state,
because of his position, declares:

"But in the meantime came suddenly the intelligence of what was
doing at the North. It came in an alarming aspect for the peace and
security for the whole South; since it could not be possible that
strangers should combine together to assail the slaveholder as a
sinner and to demand his instant admission of guilt, without
arousing fears of the most dangerous consequences for the safety of
Southern homes, as well as intense indignation against such an
unwarrantable interference. From that time forth emancipation
whether immediate or gradual could not be considered in Virginia or
anywhere else in the South."[76]

VIEWS OF ROOSEVELT AND SMITH

As representative of a later generation and voicing sentiments of one
more removed from the period of controversy, the views of Theodore
Roosevelt are of value. Writing in 1898, he says:

"In 1833 the abolition societies of the North came into prominence;
they had been started a couple of years previously. Black slavery
was such a grossly anachronistic and un-American form of evil that
it is difficult to discuss calmly the efforts to abolish it and to
remember that many of these efforts were calculated to do and
actually did more harm than good.... The cause of the Abolitionists
has had such a halo shed around it by the course of events, which
they themselves in reality did very little to shape, that it has
been usual to speak of them with absurdly exaggerated praise. Their
courage and, for the most part, their sincerity, cannot be too
highly spoken of, but their share in abolishing slavery was far less
than has commonly been represented; any single, non-abolitionist
politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more than all the
professional Abolitionists combined really to bring about its
destruction."[77]

Writing still later, Mr. William Henry Smith, of Ohio, in his book, _A
Political History of Slavery_, alluding to the work of the
Abolitionists, says:

"What befell is what has always been the experience, which must
needs be ever the experience of society when men 'encounter with
such bitter tongues,' when full play is given to passion, prejudice
and all uncharitableness.... After fifteen years of this commotion,
the testimony of the judicious was 'that the tendency to general
emancipation in the Border States had been checked, and that the
Abolitionists had done more to rivet the chains of the slave and to
fasten the curse of slavery upon the country than all the
pro-slavery men in the world had done or could do in half a
century.'"[78]

EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION

Despite, however, the growing embarrassments of the situation, there
remained with the people of Virginia the conviction that in the
dispersion or colonization beyond her borders, of a substantial part
of her negro population, lay the surest road to ultimate emancipation
and relief from the racial problems incident to slavery. The practice,
therefore, of emancipation by deeds and wills continued, and
individually and by concerted action, the various schemes for
colonization were fostered and encouraged. The Legislature at its
session, 1833, passed a bill appropriating $18,000.00 per annum, for a
period of five years to assist in transporting and subsisting "free
persons of color who may desire to migrate from Virginia to
Liberia."[79]

This appropriation, as we shall see, was followed by others of larger
amounts to further colonization; and, in no state of the Union, with
the possible exception of Maryland, did the cause receive greater
assistance, in money and sympathy, than in Virginia.

-----

Footnote 66:

See printed pamphlet T. J. Randolph, September 25th, 1870, on file
with Virginia Historical Society.

Footnote 67:

_Progress of Population and Wealth_, Tucker, p. 108. Note—The
author concludes his review of slavery in Virginia by saying: "As
the same decline in the value of labor once liberated the villeins,
or slaves, of western Europe, and will liberate the serfs of Russia,
so must it put an end to slavery in the United States, should it be
terminated in no other way."

Footnote 68:

_The Ruffner Pamphlet_, Lexington, 1847.

Footnote 69:

_The Works of William E. Channing_, 1889, American Unitarian
Society, p. 735.

Footnote 70:

The following is a full text of the paper:

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both
branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the
undersigned hereby protest against the passing of the same.

They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition
doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power
under the constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery
in the different states.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power
under the constitution to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the
request of the people of the District.

The difference between these opinions and those contained in the
above resolutions, is their reason for entering this protest.

(Signed) DAN STONE,
A. LINCOLN."

Representatives from the County of Sangamon. (_Abraham Lincoln, A
History_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 140.)

Footnote 71:

_Abraham Lincoln, Speeches, Letters and State Papers_, N. & H, Vol.
I, p. 174.

Footnote 72:

_Webster's Great Speeches_, Whipple, p. 619.

Footnote 73:

_Lincoln-Douglas Debates_, Columbus, 1860, p. 31.

Footnote 74:

_Proceedings of Peace Convention_, Crittenden, p. 142.

Footnote 75:

_The Origin of the Late War_, Lunt, 1865, p. 33.

Footnote 76:

_Life of James Buchanan_, Curtis, 1883, p. 278.

Footnote 77:

_Thomas H. Benton_, Roosevelt, p. 141.

Footnote 78:

_A Political History of Slavery_, William Henry Smith, 1903, Vol. I,
pp. 40-41.

Footnote 79:

_Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, p. 67.

NEGRO COLONIZATION—STATE AND NATIONAL

The idea of colonization seems to have originated with Mr. Jefferson,
who, in 1777, submitted a plan to a committee of the General Assembly
of Virginia.

In 1787, Dr. William Thornton published an address to the free negroes
of the whole country offering to lead them in person back to Africa.

In December, 1800, the General Assembly passed a resolution requesting
the Governor to communicate with the President of the United States
with the view of purchasing lands beyond the limits of Virginia for
colonization purposes. A considerable correspondence ensued between
Mr. Monroe, the Governor, and Mr. Jefferson, the President.

Nothing practical, however, resulted from these negotiations, though
on the 27th of December, 1804, Mr. Jefferson wrote Governor Page: "I
beg you to be assured that, having the object of the House of
Delegates sincerely at heart, I will keep it under my constant
attention, and omit no occasion which may occur of giving it
effect."[80]

EARLY SCHEMES OF COLONIZATION

In January, 1805, the Legislature passed another resolution requesting
Virginia's representatives in Congress to use every effort to secure a
portion of the territory of Louisiana for the colonization "of such
people of color as have been or shall be emancipated in Virginia."

The difficulties with France and England at this time prevented
further prosecution of the subject, but, after the termination of the
war between the United States and England, a resolution was passed by
the General Assembly of Virginia, in December, 1816, requesting the
Governor to correspond with the President with a view of acquiring
upon the coast of Africa, or at some point in the United States, an
asylum "for such persons of color as are now free and desire the
same," or "that may hereafter be emancipated in Virginia."

AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

About the time of this action of the Virginia Legislature there
assembled at Washington on the 21st of December 1816, a body of
prominent citizens from various states, who effected a tentative
organization, from which resulted the American Colonization Society.
Over this meeting Henry Clay presided, and among the notable persons
present were Daniel Webster, Bushrod Washington and John Randolph of
Roanoke. The Rev. Robert Finley, of New Jersey, and Mr. E. B.
Caldwell, at that time Clerk of the Supreme Court at Washington, were
especially active in bringing about the assemblage. Charles Fenton
Mercer, of Virginia, and Francis Scott Key, of Maryland, were also
among the most zealous friends of the enterprise. In addition to
Randolph and Washington, Bishop William Meade, Rev. William H. Wilmer,
John Taylor, Edmund I. Lee and other Virginians were also present. Mr.
Clay has left upon record that "the original conception of the project
is to be traced to a date long anterior," to the meeting and that "the
State of Virginia, always prominent in works of benevolence, prior to
the formation of the American Colonization Society ... had expressed
her approbation of the plan of colonization."[81]

On the first of January, 1817, the permanent organization of the
society was effected by the selection of Mr. Justice Bushrod
Washington, of Virginia, as President, a position which he held for
thirteen years. Judge Washington was succeeded by Charles Carroll, of
Carrollton, James Madison, Henry Clay and John H. B. Latrobe, the last
named holding office until after the Civil War.

FOUNDING OF COLONY OF LIBERIA

The Society having been organized, immediate steps were taken to
acquire land upon the coast of Africa upon which to establish the
colony. For this purpose Samuel J. Mills, so well known and venerated
for his missionary labors, and Ebenezer Burgess were sent to Africa,
the money to defray their expenses being raised by Charles Fenton
Mercer and Bishop Meade, of Virginia.[82] The report of these
commissioners established the practicability of securing the necessary
land on the coast of Africa and establishing the emigrants in their
new home. The Society, however, was without sufficient means for the
successful initiation of its great work and possessed no relation to
the government, state or National. By a fortuitous train of
circumstances and the zeal of certain of its members, among whom
Virginians bore an active part, all of these objects were in a measure
attained.

Under the terms of the Federal statute prohibiting the foreign slave
trade it was provided that any slave whose importation was attempted
in violation of the act should be seized by the authorities of the
state where the importation occurred, and disposed of at its pleasure.
The State of Georgia had, accordingly, acquired possession of a number
of imported negroes and had advertised them for sale at Milledgeville,
May 4, 1819. Such an event and such a policy would have defeated the
statute, one of whose objects was to prevent the increase of the slave
population. Learning of these facts, Bishop Meade, of Virginia, was
sent as the representative of the Colonization Society, to Georgia,
where he secured the release of the negroes advertised to be sold,
upon condition that the Society would reimburse the state for the
costs incurred in their maintenance.[83] George Washington Parke
Custis, of Virginia, offered an island near Cape Charles, Virginia, as
a place of refuge until they could be transported to Africa.[84]
Knowledge of the foregoing facts induced Charles Fenton Mercer and
John Floyd, of Virginia, to present to Congress, of which they were
members, a bill which became a law in 1819, whereby all negroes
imported since the passage of the act should be returned to their own
country, appointing agents upon the coast of Africa to receive them;
and appropriating $100,000.00 to carry this law into effect. President
Monroe was zealous in enforcing the provisions of this law, and acted
in cordial co-operation with the Colonization Society to effectuate
its purposes. Under the provisions of the act, territory was acquired
upon the coast of Africa, and there the colony of Liberia was
established. In 1824, in recognition of Mr. Monroe's services, the
inhabitants of the colony named their capital Monrovia.

VIRGINIA'S EFFORTS AT COLONIZATION

In the great work of the American Colonization Society, the leading
people of Virginia took a most active and sympathetic interest. This
was evinced in the organization of Auxiliary Societies at Richmond,
Norfolk, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Alexandria, Lynchburg, Wheeling,
Charlestown, Shepherdstown, Hampton and Harper's Ferry and in the
Counties of Isle of Wight, Sussex, Albemarle, King William, Dinwiddie,
Amherst, Berkeley, Nansemond, Buckingham, Nelson, Fluvanna, Frederick,
Augusta, Kanawha, Powhatan, Loudoun, Rockingham, Mecklenburg,
Campbell, and others. The officials of these Societies numbered many
of the most prominent men of Virginia; John Marshall, then Chief
Justice of the United States, was President of the Richmond branch.

The Virginia Auxiliary Societies collected money by private
subscription, and facilitated in every way the transportation of such
free negroes as desired to emigrate. In 1826, upon the petition of the
Societies, the Legislature of Virginia made its first appropriation to
assist in their work. In addition to those in Virginia, Auxiliary
Societies were organized in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Kentucky.

In 1828 the Colonization Society of Virginia was established and
thereafter Virginians directed their energies largely through this
Virginia organization. John Marshall was elected President of the
Virginia Society, and James Madison, James Monroe, John Tyler and
William H. Broadnax, were among its Vice-Presidents.

By an act passed in 1850 the General Assembly of Virginia appropriated
the sum of $30,000.00 per annum for five years for the transportation
and sustenance of free negroes who desired to emigrate. Certain
qualifications of the measure limited its effectiveness, and in 1853,
the Virginia Colonization Society secured its repeal and the enactment
of a new law appropriating $30,000.00 per annum for five years, with
much more liberal provisions as to the method of its expenditure.
Private benevolence supplemented the state. The reports of the Society
show that during the years 1850-51-52 private contributions from the
people of Virginia aggregated over $21,000.00.[85]

The work of the Society was endorsed by the churches and more and more
it assumed the character of a Christian enterprise. It was commended
because it brought relief to Virginia, blessings to the ex-slaves,
greater hope of freedom to those still in bondage, and carried
Christianity and civilization to Africa. Among the first of many white
men who gave their lives to the cause of colonization was Samuel J.
Mills, who died at sea on his way home from Africa. Mills was the
leader in the band of students at Williams College, Massachusetts, so
well known for their missionary zeal and labours, and hence has a
double claim upon our gratitude.

ABOLITIONISTS AND PRO-SLAVERY MEN

The problems and difficulties of colonization, admittedly great, were
seriously augmented by the active opposition of the extreme
pro-slavery men at the South and the Abolitionists at the North. Each
of these two antagonistic forces strenuously opposed the work of
colonization, the first because it facilitated eventual emancipation,
the second, among other reasons, because it rendered conditions more
tolerable and thus postponed the day of the universal and immediate
abolition of slavery.

In addition to the colonizations made through the aid of the
colonization societies, many Virginia slaveholders emancipated their
slaves and at their own expense colonized them in some of the free
states. A few instances will illustrate the custom and the
difficulties often encountered by these emancipators and their
ex-slaves.

-----

Footnote 80:

_Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, pp. 1-6.

Footnote 81:

_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_—Vol. VI, No. 1, p.
13.

Footnote 82:

_Liberia Bulletin. No. 16_—February, 1900, p. 21.

Footnote 83:

_Memoir of Bishop Meade_, Johns, 1867, p. 120.

Footnote 84:

_History of United States_, McMaster, Vol. IV, p. 65.

Footnote 85:

_Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, p. 100.

INSTANCES OF COLONIZATIONS BY INDIVIDUAL SLAVEHOLDERS

By the will of Samuel Gist, his slaves were emancipated and William F.
Wickham and Carter B. Page, of Richmond, appointed trustees to acquire
land in some one of the free states on which to provide homes for the
newly manumitted freedmen. Accordingly, these trustees purchased two
tracts of land in Brown County, Ohio, one containing one thousand and
the other twelve hundred acres at a cost of $4400.00.[86]

In 1819, the freedmen, consisting of one hundred and thirteen from
Hanover County and one hundred and fifty from Goochland and Amherst
Counties, were transported to Ohio and settled on the lands purchased,
as above indicated, by the trustees.

The facts are meagre with respect to the reception accorded these
negroes and the measure of success which attended the colonization.
From the best information obtainable, it seems that they were treated
in no very friendly manner and that, in time, the negroes lost most of
the lands provided for them by their former owner.

Edward Coles, of Albemarle County, inherited from his father a large
number of slaves. Determining to give them their freedom, he conducted
them in April, 1819, to Illinois, where he established them in their
own homes near the town of Edwardsville, giving to each head of a
family a tract of one hundred and sixty acres of land.[87] Mr. Coles,
like many other Virginians, who attempted a like emancipation, not
only incurred the great pecuniary loss resulting from the liberation
of his slaves and the expenses of their removal and establishment, but
he incurred the ill will and opposition of the inhabitants of the
state in which they settled.

The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, referring to the
attitude of the people of Illinois towards free negroes, record:

"Even Governor Coles, the public-spirited and popular politician,
was indicted and severely fined for having brought his own freedmen
into this state and having assisted them in establishing themselves
around him upon farms of their own."[88]

Mr. Coles was a neighbor and friend of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.
He was Madison's private secretary and was appointed by President
Monroe Registrar of the Land Office at Edwardsville, Ill., in March,
1819, a position of influence and importance. Three years later he was
elected Governor of the state and his career as such was notable for
the great part he bore in defeating the movement to change the state
constitution of Illinois so as to permit the introduction and
maintenance of slavery within that state. In 1832 Governor Coles
removed to Philadelphia where he lived until his death. When Virginia
seceded, his son, Roberts Coles, volunteered in her service and was
killed at the Battle of Roanoke Island.

By his will, admitted to probate on the 20th of November, 1826, John
Ward, Sr., of Pittsylvania, emancipated all of his slaves, giving to
each of them over fifteen years of age twenty dollars, except to
certain enumerated ones, to whom the sum of one hundred and fifty
dollars each was bequeathed.[89] In April, 1827, these freedmen,
emancipated under the will of Ward (seventy in number), were
transported to Ohio and settled in Lawrence County.[90]

By his will, John Randolph of Roanoke, who died in 1833, emancipated
all of his slaves and directed his executor, Judge William Leigh, to
transport them to some one of the free states and settle them upon
lands which he was directed to purchase for the purpose. The will
bequeathed the sum of thirteen thousand dollars to defray the expenses
incident to their colonization and to pay for the land.

Howe in his _Historical Collections of Ohio_ (Edition of 1891) says:

"In 1846 Judge Leigh, of Virginia, purchased 3200 acres of land in
this settlement for the freed slaves of John Randolph of Roanoke.
These arrived in the Summer of 1846 to the number of about four
hundred but were forcibly prevented from making a settlement by a
portion of the inhabitants of the county. Since then acts of
hostility have been commenced against the people of this settlement
and threats of greater held out if they do not abandon their lands
and homes."

"From a statement in the county history issued in 1882 we see that a
part of the Randolph negroes succeeded in effecting a settlement at
Montezuma, Franklin Township, just south of the reservoir."[91]

By his will which was probated March 23, 1848, John Warwick, of
Amherst County, Virginia, emancipated all his slaves, and in like
manner bequeathed his whole estate to create a fund for removing them
to one of the free states, purchasing farms, and establishing them in
their new homes. The testator indicated that he preferred Indiana as
the place of residence for his slaves.[92] Dr. David Patteson, of
Buckingham County, was appointed executor and charged with the duties
of settling the estate and removing the freedmen to their new homes.
Before arrangements for their removal to Indiana could be perfected,
that state adopted its constitution of 1851, whereby free negroes and
mulattoes were inhibited from coming into the state. Accordingly Dr.
Patteson purchased for the ex-slaves a large tract of land in Ohio,
near Kenton, and thither they were transported and settled in their
new homes. The inventory of Mr. Warwick's estate shows that at the
time of his death he owned seventy-four slaves.[93]

By his will, admitted to probate July 9th, 1849, Sampson Sanders, of
Cabell County, emancipated all of his slaves and directed his
executors to provide for their colonization "in the State of Indiana,
or some one of the free states of the United States."[94] The testator
bequeathed to these slaves the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, out of
which fund should be paid the amount necessary for the purchase of
land for their homes, the balance to be distributed among them. Before
the intentions of the testator could be carried into effect, Indiana
enacted a law denying to freed negroes the privileges of settling in
that state. Accordingly these freedmen were carried to Cass County,
Mich., where they were settled in homes purchased for them under the
provisions of the will of their former owner. This colony seems to
have succeeded, and many of the descendants of the former slaves of
Sanders are to-day living upon the lands purchased by his bounty.[95]

SENTIMENTAL DIFFICULTIES

In addition to the many difficulties already enumerated, that invested
colonization, there were other deterrent causes only less real. Was it
right to send these newly manumitted slaves off, upon the hazard of
maintaining themselves in the face of difficulties for which they had
had so little training? This was the question for the master. What of
their future in the far away and unknown land? That was the question
for the slave. Then too, there came to both a genuine reluctance to
meet the pain of separation. Of the fact of the existence of a strong
affection between masters and slaves, in a great majority of the homes
in Virginia where the institution of slavery existed, there can be no
question. From the great number of instances illustrating the sorrows
of masters and servants in the hour of separation, we select two.

INSTANCES ILLUSTRATING DIFFICULTIES

David W. Barton, of Winchester, Virginia, emancipated many of his
slaves a short time prior to the Civil War. Some of these were sent to
Liberia, and others, who from age or youth were not regarded as equal
to the trials of the trip, were settled in this country. Robert T.
Barton, Esq., a son of the emancipator, in a letter to the author
bears testimony to the fact of the affection which subsisted between
the members of his father's family and these freedmen. "I was quite a
small boy at the time," he writes, "but I remember the incident
perfectly. I recall the weeping family that parted with these
servants, who were very dear to us."[96]

Traverse Herndon, of Fauquier, who died in 1854, by his last will
emancipated his slaves, some fifty in number, and made provision for
their transportation to Liberia. Two years later his brother, Thaddeus
Herndon, emancipated his slaves, some twenty in number, and the two
groups of freedmen, except such as were too old to bear the dangers of
the voyage and life in the new country, were sent to Liberia in the
fall of 1857, under the care of an agent of the American Colonization
Society.

The Rev. Charles T. Herndon, of Salem, Virginia, has furnished the
author with an account of the parting between these freedmen and his
father, Thaddeus Herndon, which occurred on board of the ship
"Euphrasia," written by the Rev. John Seys,[97] a former missionary to
Liberia, who was present on the occasion. The subjoined extract from
Mr. Seys' account of the separation, which was published soon
afterwards in the _Maryland Colonization Journal_, presents in the
most vivid manner the sorrow attending the parting of Thaddeus Herndon
and his former slaves, and the reverence and affection with which the
slaves of Traverse Herndon regarded their dead master.

OPPOSITION OF FREEDMEN TO COLONIZATION

Not infrequently the many difficulties which embarrassed the efforts
of Virginia slaveholders to colonize their ex-slaves at points beyond
the state were increased by the attitude of the slaves themselves. The
experience of John Thom, of Berry Hill, Culpeper County, as related in
a letter to the author under date of July 15th, 1908, by his son
Cameron E. Thom, of Los Angeles, Cal., will serve as an illustration.
Mr. Cameron Thom is at present a man of venerable years who seems to
retain a vivid impression of the scenes incident to the attempt at
colonization made by his father in the later thirties. Mr. Thom, after
narrating that his father was a soldier in the War of 1812, where he
gained his title as commander of a Virginia regiment, and was for
thirty years a member of the State Senate, proceeds to write with
reference to his father's attitude towards slavery as follows:

"He was not satisfied with it, and was restive under it. In his
discussions of the subject he often quoted as expressive of his
views Mr. Jefferson, who declared that 'We have the wolf by the
ears, and it is as dangerous to let go as it is to hold on.' I
believe they were both gradual emancipationists. The idea of
practical and immediate emancipation through the medium of
colonization seems to have crystallized in his mind and stimulated
him to action. He sent my eldest brother, Catesby Thom, to
Pennsylvania to spy out the land and to make definite arrangements
for the location, settlement and comfort of the proposed colony.
After an absence of several weeks, he returned and reported that he
had selected an ideal location for the experiment. Every desideratum
seems to have been taken into consideration, climate, wood, water,
fertility of the soil, products, neighbors, etc.

"To carry out my father's plan, the next step was to call for
eighteen volunteers to make up the colony. Here came a great
disappointment. Of the number called for only one suitable man
responded.... The volunteer idea was abandoned and conscription was
resorted to. When the names of the eighteen chosen ones were
announced the plantation was indeed a house of mourning. Prayers,
protests and petitions came up, but were of no avail. A complete
outfit was made up of three wagons, twelve oxen, three cows, tools,
farming utensils, provisions, clothing, &c. The expedition got off
all right, my brother Catesby being chief in command, and Uncle
Billy Guinn, the only volunteer, a full second. Before the
expiration of a week from the time of departure, two of the
colonists had deserted and were back at Berry Hill, and in less than
a year nearly all the others had found their way back. My brother,
after some two months' absence, got back and reported that he would
not go through with his experience again for all the negroes in
Virginia.

"I left Virginia for the South in 1848; returning in a few weeks, I
took my final departure from the state in the early Spring of 1849
for California where I have resided ever since, never having seen my
father again. I believe he manumitted all or nearly all of the
servants by deed or will."

-----

Footnote 86:

See _Record of Deeds_, Vol. A., p. 230, Recorder's Office, Brown
County, Ohio.

Footnote 87:

_Sketch of Edward Coles_, Washburne, pp. 47-52.

Footnote 88:

_Abraham Lincoln, A History_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 145.

(Note. The fine imposed upon Governor Coles was subsequently
remitted by an act of the Legislature because the law under which he
was fined had not been published at the date of his offense.)

Footnote 89:

See _Will Book No. 1_, p. 109, Clerk's Office, Pittsylvania County,
Va.

Footnote 90:

See _Public Ledger of Philadelphia_, April 14, 1827.

Footnote 91:

_Historical Collections of Ohio, History of Mercer County, Ohio_, by
Henry Howe, 1891, Vol. II, p. 505.

Footnote 92:

See _Will Book No. 11_, p. 575, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Va.

Footnote 93:

John Warwick was the great-uncle of the Hon. John Warwick Daniel,
now (1908) and for many years past a member from Virginia in the
United States Senate.

Footnote 94:

See _Will Book A._, p. 391, in the Clerk's Office of Cabell County,
West Virginia.

Footnote 95:

See _Outlook Magazine_, N. Y., February 9th, 1903.

Footnote 96:

Under date of March 19, 1907, Mr. Barton writes the author: "My
father manumitted his slaves, or rather, certain of them, before the
war. Under the law as I remember it, it was not necessary to put on
record a deed of manumission of a slave who was sent out of the
state.... I was quite a small boy at the time, but I remember the
incident perfectly. I recall the weeping family that parted with
these servants, who were very dear to us.... Many years after that I
received a visit from one of the women who had been the assistant in
the nursery, and to whom, as a child, I remember I was very devoted.
I do not believe that two near relations could have had a more
affecting greeting. She stayed in Winchester for nearly a week,
coming to my house every day, and finally went away without bidding
us good bye, writing back from her home that she had done so because
she could not stand the parting. The other servants who went away
also kept up with our family the most affectionate relations for
many years, and the old ones, who could not get away, were supported
by my brothers and myself after the war until they died."

Footnote 97:

Mr. Seys records that his experience as a missionary in Liberia
prompted him to visit these emigrants on board ship, just
preparatory to their departure, and at the request of Mr. Herndon,
make them a short address. He then writes: "I closed my remarks and
Mr. Herndon followed me." The latter said: "I may not see you again,
I may as well say all I have to say now." And then he became so
choked for utterance, and tears fell so fast that a silence ensued
only broken by sighs and sobs of the entire party. Again he
continued:

"My heart is too full. I can hardly speak. You know how we have
lived together. Servants, hear me, we have been brothers and
sisters, we have grown up together. We have done the best for you.
For two or three years this has been contemplated and you are now on
the point of starting for the land of your ancestors. Besides your
freedom, we have spent $2,000.00 in procuring everything we could
think of to make you comfortable—clothing, bedding, implements of
husbandry, mechanics' tools, books for the children, Bibles, a
family Bible for each family, all these have been provided, and when
you have been there some few months, we will send you out another
supply of provisions and will continue to do so. And now, you three
brethren, who formed the committee appointed by the church to watch
over your brethren, a word to you. You are chosen to admonish,
guide, counsel the others, not to lord it over them, but gently and
kindly to watch over their souls; and now, may God bless you. I can
never forget you. Write to me, Washington, you can write; I have
provided you with paper. Keep a journal, put all of your names down,
even the children, and write opposite to each one everything that
happens concerning you. I shall feel much interested in hearing from
you—especially will your Miss Frances. (Here the bare mention of
their almost adored mistress started their grief afresh.) Now, as we
may never meet again, let us part with prayer, let all kneel down,
and Brother Seys will lead in prayer to Almighty God for you all."
We knelt there, and under feelings words but poorly express, engaged
in prayer as best we could amid cries and sobs and tears.

XII

EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION:
VIEWS OF JEFFERSON, CLAY AND LINCOLN

If it be urged that Virginia had reached the conclusion that without
the dispersion or colonization of the whole or a large portion of her
slave population emancipation was impracticable, it may be
acknowledged that to a qualified extent this was true. The position,
however, did not involve an abandonment of the principle of
emancipation, but rather the insistence that with emancipation should
go the work of solving the race problem by a method which gave some
assurance of complete success.

That this attitude of Virginia cannot be regarded as wholly
unreasonable or reactionary will appear when we consider the views of
some of the leading friends of negro emancipation. From the number of
those whose sanity kept pace with their zeal, we select Thomas
Jefferson, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln.

VIEWS OF JEFFERSON AND CLAY

Mr. Jefferson in 1820 wrote:

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that
these people are to be free; nor is it less certain than that the
two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature,
habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between
them."[98]

Writing to Jared Sparks, President of Harvard College, in 1824, he
said:

"In the disposition of these unfortunate people there are two
rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First, the
establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may
introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life and the
blessings of liberty and science. By doing this, we may make them
some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been
committing on their population.... Second object, and the most
interesting to us, as coming home to our physical and moral
characters, to our happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to
which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that population from
among us, and establish them under our patronage and protection, as
a separate, free, and independent people, in some country and
climate friendly to human life and happiness."[99]

VIEWS OF CLAY

Mr. Clay's attitude with respect to the institution of slavery will
appear from his oft-quoted declaration:

"Those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of
the Colonization Society, they must go back to the era of our
liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its
annual joyous return—they must blot out the moral lights around
us—they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of
reason and the love of liberty."[100]

His sentiments, however, with respect to the wisdom and necessity for
colonizing the manumitted slaves were equally decided. In an address
before the Colonization Society of Kentucky at Frankfort, December 17,
1829, Mr. Clay presented at length his reasons for supporting the
movement to colonize all ex-slaves in the Republic of Liberia. In the
course of this address he said:

"If the question were submitted, whether there should be either
immediate or gradual emancipation of all the slaves in the United
States, without their removal or colonization, painful as it is to
express the opinion, I have no doubt that it would be unwise to
emancipate them. For I believe, that the aggregate of the evils
which would be engendered in society upon the supposition of such
general emancipation, and of the liberated slaves remaining
promiscuously among us, would be greater than all the evils of
slavery."[101]

Continuing, he said:

"Is there no remedy I again ask for the evils of which I have
sketched a faint and imperfect picture? Is our posterity doomed to
endure forever not only all the ills flowing from the state of
slavery, but all which arise from incongruous elements of
population, separated from each other by invincible prejudices and
by natural causes? Whatever may be the character of the remedy
proposed, we may confidently pronounce it inadequate, unless it
provides efficaciously for the total and absolute separation, by an
extensive space of water or of land, at least of the white portion
of our population from that which is free of the colored."[102]

In conclusion he said:

"If we were to invoke the greatest blessing on earth, which Heaven,
in its mercy, could now bestow on this nation, it would be the
separation of the two most numerous races of its population and
their comfortable establishment in distinct and different
countries."[103]

VIEWS OF LINCOLN

The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, declare:

"The political creed of Abraham Lincoln embraced among other tenets,
a belief in the value and promise of colonization as one means of
solving the great race problem involved in the existence of slavery
in the United States.... Without being an enthusiast, Lincoln was a
firm believer in colonization."[104]

Speaking at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, Mr. Lincoln said:

"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect
prevention of amalgamation. I have no right to say that all the
members of the Republican Party are in favor of this nor to say that
as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their
platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large
proportion of its members are for it and that the chief plank in
that platform—opposition to the spread of slavery—is most
favorable to that separation. Such separation, if ever effected at
all, must be effected by colonization.... The enterprise is a
difficult one but where there is a will there is a way; and what
colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two
elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to
believe it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or,
at least, not against our interests, to transfer the African to his
native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the
task may be."[105]

Upon his assumption of the office of President Mr. Lincoln sought to
carry into effect his colonization views. In his first annual message
to Congress—December, 1861—after alluding to the act "to confiscate
property used for insurrectionary purposes," enacted by Congress at
its extra session, under the operations of which thousands of slaves
had come into the custody of the Federal authorities and the further
fact that some of the states might adopt similar statutes with similar
results, he proceeds to say:

"In such cases I recommend that Congress provide for accepting such
persons from such states according to some mode of valuation in lieu
_pro tanto_ of direct taxes, or upon some other plan to be agreed on
with such states respectively; that such persons, on such
acceptance, by the General Government, be at once deemed free, and
that in any event steps be taken for colonizing both classes (or the
first mentioned if the other shall not be brought into existence) at
some place or places in a climate congenial to them. It might be
well to consider too whether the free colored people already in the
United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be
included in such colonization.

"To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring of
territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be
expended in the territorial acquisition. Having practised the
acquisition of territory for nearly sixty years the question of
constitutional power to do so is no longer an open one with us....

"If it be said that the only legitimate object of acquiring
territory is to furnish homes for white men this measure effects
their object, for the emigration of colored men leaves additional
room for white men remaining or coming here. Mr. Jefferson however
placed the importance of procuring Louisiana more on political and
commercial grounds than on providing room for population. On this
whole proposition, including the appropriation of money with the
acquisition of territory, does not expediency amount to absolute
necessity—that without which the government itself cannot be
perpetuated."[106]

As a result of these urgent representations Congress, at its session
of 1862, placed at the disposal of the President the sum of
$600,000.00 to be expended at his discretion in colonizing with their
consent free persons of African descent in some country adapted to
their condition and necessities.[107]

Mr. Lincoln, with a view of carrying out this act of Congress, invited
a number of prominent colored men to meet him at the White House on
the 14th of August, 1862, and then and there urged upon them the
wisdom of availing themselves of the opportunity thus offered to make
for themselves a home beyond the borders of this country. Mr. Lincoln
said that the action of Congress in placing at his disposal a sum of
money for the purpose of aiding the colonization of the people of
African descent made it his duty, as it had for a long time been his
inclination, to favor that cause. Continuing, he said:

"And why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why
should you leave this country? This is perhaps the first question
for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have
between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other
two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this
physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both as I think.
Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us,
while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each
side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we
should be separated.

"The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free,
but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made
the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the
best, and the ban is still upon you. I do not propose to discuss
this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I
cannot alter it if I would."

In conclusion he said:

"I ask you then to consider seriously not pertaining to yourselves
merely, nor for your race and ours for the present time but as one
of the things if successfully managed, for the good of mankind—not
confined to the present generation."[108]

In his special message to Congress April 16th, 1862, after alluding to
the passage of the bill abolishing slavery in the District of
Columbia, he approves the same and declares: "I am grateful that the
principles of compensation and colonization are both recognized and
practically applied in this act."[109]

-----

Footnote 98:

_Jefferson Manuscript_, Raynor, p. 64.

Footnote 99:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. X, p. 290

Footnote 100:

_Lincoln and Slavery_, Arnold, p. 124.

Footnote 101:

_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_, Vol. II, No. 1, p. 5.

Footnote 102:

_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_, Vol. II, p. 12.

Footnote 103:

_Idem_, p. 23.

Footnote 104:

_Abraham Lincoln, A History_, N. & H., Vol. VI, p. 355.

Footnote 105:

_Abraham Lincoln, Speeches, Letters and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol.
I, p. 235.

Footnote 106:

_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Vol. VI, p. 64.

Footnote 107:

_The Life, Public Services and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln_,
Raymond, p. 504.

Footnote 108:

_The Life, Public Services and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln_,
Raymond, p. 504.

Footnote 109:

_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Vol. VI, p. 73.

XIII

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS

No account of Virginia's record in regard to slavery would be complete
which failed to set forth the position of her foremost men with
respect to the institution. From a mass of data we have selected the
following declarations as fairly expressive of their sentiments. We
have not recorded the views of Virginians, however worthy, who were
not by birth, training and sympathies, representative of the dominant
element of her people.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS PRIOR TO 1810

Richard Henry Lee, speaking in the Virginia House of Burgesses 1772,
in support of a bill prohibiting the slave trade, said:

"Nor, sir, are these the only reasons to be urged against the
importation. In my opinion not the cruelties practised in the
conquest of South America, not the savage barbarity of a Saracen,
can be more big with atrocity than our cruel trade to Africa. There
we encourage those poor ignorant people to wage eternal war against
each other; ... that by war, stealth or surprise, we Christians may
be furnished with our fellow-creatures, who are no longer to be
considered as created in the image of God as well as ourselves and
equally entitled to liberty and freedom by the great law of Nature,
but they are to be deprived forever of all the comforts of life and
to be made the most wretched of the human kind."[110]

Patrick Henry, writing on the 18th day of January, 1773, said:

"Is it not a little surprising that Christianity, whose chief
excellency consists in softening the human heart, cherishing and
improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally
repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong? What adds to
the wonder is that this abominable practice has been introduced in
the most enlightened ages....

"Would any one believe I am the master of slaves of my own purchase!
I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without
them. I will not, I cannot justify it.... I believe the time will
come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable
evil. Everything we can do is to improve it, if it happens in our
day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our
slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence for
slavery."[111]

At another time he wrote: "Our country will be peopled. The question
is, shall it be with Europeans, or Africans?... Is there a man so
degenerate as to wish to see his country the gloomy retreat of
slavery?"[112]

George Washington, writing in 1786, to Robert Morris, of Philadelphia,
after alluding to an Anti-slavery Society of Quakers in that city and
suggesting that unless their practices were discontinued, "None of
those whose misfortune it is to have slaves as attendants will visit
the city if they can possibly avoid it," continues:

"I hope it will not be conceived from these observations that it is
my wish to hold the unhappy people, who are the subjects of this
letter, in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living
who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the
abolition of it. But there is only one proper and effectual mode by
which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority;
and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."

Writing in the same year to John F. Mercer, he said:

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstance shall compel me
to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first
wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may
be abolished by law."[113]

George Mason, speaking in the Virginia Convention of 1788 having the
adoption of the Federal Constitution under consideration, said:

"Mr. Chairman, this is a fatal section (Article 1, Section 9) which
has created more dangers than any other. The first clause allows the
importation of slaves for twenty years. Under the royal government
this evil was looked upon as a great oppression, and many attempts
were made to prevent it; but the interest of the African merchants
prevented its prohibition. No sooner did the Revolution take place
than it was thought of. It was one of the great causes of our
separation from Great Britain. Its exclusion has been a principal
object of this state, and most of the states in the Union. The
augmentation of slaves weakens the state; and such a trade is
diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind; yet by this
constitution, it is continued for twenty years. I have ever looked
upon this as a most disgraceful thing to America. I cannot express
my detestation of it."[114]

John Tyler, Sr., speaking in the same Convention in condemnation of
the clause permitting the slave trade:

"Warmly enlarged on the impolicy, iniquity and disgracefulness of
this wicked traffic. He thought the reasons urged by gentlemen in
defense of it were inconclusive and ill-founded. It was one cause of
the complaints against British tyranny that this trade was
permitted. The Revolution had put a period to it; but now it was to
be revived. He thought nothing could justify it.... His earnest
desire was that it should be handed down to posterity that he had
opposed this wicked cause."[115]

Edmund Randolph, in 1789, wrote to Madison that he desired to go to
Philadelphia to practise law, saying, "For if I found that I could
live there I could emancipate my slaves, and thus end my days without
undergoing any anxiety about the injustice of holding them."[116]

St. George Tucker,[117] in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries,
reviewing the origin of slavery in Virginia, and the status of the
institution at the time he writes, 1803, declares:

"Among the blessings which the Almighty hath showered on these
states, there is a large portion of the bitterest draught that ever
flowed from the cup of affliction. Whilst America hath been the land
of promise to Europeans and their descendants, it hath been the vale
of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa.... Whilst we
adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free, or
die; and imprecated curses on their heads who refused to unite with
us in establishing the empire of freedom, we were imposing upon our
fellowmen who differ in complexion from us, a slavery ten thousand
times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and
oppressions of which we complained."[118]

At the conclusion of his carefully prepared article showing the
efforts made by the people of Virginia during the period of British
rule to suppress the slave trade, their prompt prohibition of the
traffic immediately upon the assertion of their independence, and the
various statutes enacted to mitigate the hardships of the institution,
he uses these earnest yet almost pathetic words:

"Tedious and unentertaining as this detail may appear to all others,
a citizen of Virginia will feel some satisfaction in reading a
vindication of his country from the opprobrium, but too lavishly
bestowed upon her, of fostering slavery in her bosom, whilst she
boasts a sacred regard for the liberty of her citizens, and of
mankind in general."[119]

The foregoing quotations express the sentiments of the leading
Virginians of the Revolutionary period with respect to slavery.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS FROM 1810-1831

The following quotations, taken from speeches and letters of the
period between 1810 and 1831, express the sentiments of men, many of
whom, though contemporaries of Washington and Mason and Henry, yet
survived them by a quarter of a century.

Jefferson, in his _Notes on Virginia_, wrote:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the
people that these liberties are of the gift of God; that they are
not violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep
forever."[120]

Writing in 1820 to John Holmes, he said:

"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who
would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy
reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of
property—for so it is misnamed—is a bagatelle which would not cost
me a second thought if, in that way, a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due
sacrifice, I think it might be; but as it is, we have the wolf by
the ears and can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is
in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[121]

John Tyler, in February, 1820, speaking in Congress as a
Representative from Virginia when the bill for the admission of
Missouri was under discussion, together with the amendment prohibiting
the admission of slaves into the territories, said:

"Slavery has been represented on all hands as a dark cloud and the
candor of the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Whitman, drove him
to the admission that it would be well to disperse this cloud. In
this sentiment I entirely concur with him. How can you otherwise
disarm it? Will you suffer it to increase in its darkness over one
particular portion of this land till its horrors shall burst upon
it?... How is the North interested in pursuing such a course? The
man of the North is far removed from its influence; he may smile and
experience no disquietude. But exclude this property from Missouri
by the exercise of an arbitrary power; shut it out from the
territories; and I maintain that you do not consult the interests of
this Union.

"The gentleman from Massachusetts also conceded that for which we
contend—that by diffusing this population extensively you increase
the prospects of emancipation. What enabled New York, Pennsylvania
and other states to adopt the language of universal emancipation?
Rely on it, nothing but the paucity of the number of their slaves.
That which would have been criminal in those states not to have done
would be an act of political suicide in Georgia or South Carolina to
do. By this dispersion you also ameliorate the condition of the
black man."[122]

John Randolph of Roanoke, speaking in Congress, March 2, 1826, said:

"My feelings and instincts were in opposition to slavery in every
shape; to the subjugation of one man's will to that of another; and,
from the time I read Clarkson's celebrated pamphlet, I was, I am
afraid, as mad as Clarkson himself. I read myself into this madness,
as I have read myself into some agricultural improvements; but, as
with these last, I worked myself out of them.... The disease will
run its course. It has run its course in the Northern States; it is
beginning to run its course in Maryland. The natural death of
slavery is the unprofitableness of its most expensive labor."[123]

Replying to a Northern member in Congress, in 1826, he said: "Sir, I
envy neither the head nor the heart of the man from the North who
arises here to defend slavery upon principle."[124]

Francis W. Gilmer, writing to William Wirt, from England in July,
1824, said:

"I begin to be impatient to see Virginia once more. It's more like
England than any other part of the United States—slavery _non
obstanti_. Remove the stain—blacker than the Ethiopian's skin, and
annihilate our political schemers and it would be the fairest realm
on which the sun ever shone."[125]

John Marshall, writing in 1826, said:

"I concur with you that nothing portends more calamity and mischief
to the Southern States than their slave population. Yet, they seem
to cherish the evil, and to view with immovable prejudice and
dislike everything which may tend to diminish it. I do not wonder
that they should resent any attempt, should one be made, to
interfere with the rights of property, but they have a feverish
jealousy of measures which may do good without the hazard of harm,
that I think very unwise."[126]

James Monroe, speaking in the Virginia Constitutional Convention on
the 2nd of November, 1829, said:

"What has been the leading spirit of this state ever since our
independence was attained? She has always declared herself in favor
of the equal rights of man. The Revolution was conducted on that
principle. Yet there was at that time a slavish population in
Virginia. We hold it in the condition in which the Revolution found
it, and what can be done with this population?... As to the
practicability of emancipating them, it can never be done by the
state itself, nor without the aid of the Union....

"Sir, what brought us together in the Revolutionary War? It was the
doctrine of equal rights. Each part of the country encouraged and
supported every other part. None took advantage of the other's
distresses. And if we find that this evil has preyed upon the vitals
of the Union and has been prejudicial to all the states where it has
existed, and is likewise repugnant to their several state
constitutions and Bills of Rights, why may we not expect that they
will unite with us in accomplishing its removal?"[127]

Benjamin Watkins Leigh, speaking in the Virginia Constitutional
Convention of 1829-30, said:

"I wish indeed that I had been born in a land where domestic and
negro slavery is unknown—no, sir,—I misrepresent myself—I do not
wish so. I shall never wish that I had been born out of
Virginia—but I wish that Providence had spared my country this
moral and political evil. It is supposed that our slave labor
enables us to live in luxury and ease, without industry, without
care. Sir, the evil of slavery is greater to the master than to the
slave. He is interested in all their wants, all their distresses,
bound to provide for them, to care for them, to labor for them,
while they labor for him, and his labor is by no means the less
severe of the two. The relation between master and slave imposes on
the master a heavy and painful responsibility."[128]

James Madison, in 1831 wrote concerning slavery and the American
Colonization Society:

"Many circumstances of the present moment seem to concur in
brightening the prospects of the Society and cherishing the hope
that the time will come when the dreadful calamity which has so long
afflicted our country and filled so many with despair, will be
gradually removed, and by means consistent with justice, peace, and
general satisfaction; thus giving to our country the full enjoyment
of the blessings of liberty, and to the world the full benefit of
its great example."[129]

-----

Footnote 110:

_Life of R. H. Lee_, Lee, Vol. I, p. 18.

Footnote 111:

_The True Patrick Henry_, Morgan, p. 246.

Footnote 112:

_Life of Patrick Henry_, William Wirt Henry, Vol. I, p. 114.

Footnote 113:

_The Writings of Washington_, Marshall, Vol. II, p. 159.

Footnote 114:

_Madison Papers_, Vol. II, p. 1391.

Footnote 115:

_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 154.

Footnote 116:

_Life of Edmund Randolph_, Conway, p. 125.

Footnote 117:

Judge Tucker, who was professor of law at William & Mary College,
made it a part of his course of lectures to demonstrate the moral
and economic objections to slavery.

Mr. Roosevelt points out that Thomas H. Benton acquired his
deep-rooted antagonism to the institution while studying Blackstone
"as edited by the learned Virginian Judge Tucker who in an appendix
treated of and totally condemned black slavery in the United
States." (_Thomas H. Benton_, Roosevelt, p. 297).

Footnote 118:

_Tucker's Blackstone_, Vol. II, Appendix, note H., p. 31.

Footnote 119:

_Idem_, p. 53.

Footnote 120:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. III, p. 267.

Footnote 121:

_Idem_, Vol. VII, p. 157.

Footnote 122:

_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 312.

Footnote 123:

_Abridgment of Debates in Congress 1789-1856_, Vol. VIII, p. 40.

Footnote 124:

_American Conflict_, Greeley, Vol. I, p. 109.

Footnote 125:

_Kennedy's Life of Wirt_, Kennedy, Vol. II, p. 188.

Footnote 126:

_John Marshall, Life, Character and Judicial Services_, Dillon, Vol.
I, p. 216.

Footnote 127:

_Debates of Virginia Convention of 1829-30_, p. 149.

Footnote 128:

_Idem_, p. 173.

Footnote 129:

_Life of James Madison_, Hunt, p. 369.

XIV

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS (Continued)

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS, 1832

The anti-slavery sentiments of prominent Virginians, expressed in the
speeches delivered in the notable debate which occurred in the
Virginia Legislature of 1832, may well be considered in a group by
themselves. The speakers were all young men and represented a later
generation than those from whom quotations have already been given.
Many of them were destined to fill important roles in the political
life of the state and some of them, with undiminished influence,
survived the period of the Civil War. McDowell became Governor of the
state and a member of Congress; Preston was a member of Congress, a
member of President Taylor's Cabinet, and one of the leading spirits
in the Virginia Convention of 1861; Randolph was repeatedly returned
to the Legislature and was a prominent member of the Reform Convention
of 1850-51, and Faulkner was for years a member of Congress and also
Minister to France.

The position of these Virginians was significant as representative of
the widespread anti-slavery sentiments which pervaded the state.
Chandler, of Norfolk County, represented the largest slaveholding
county in Tide-water Virginia; Broadnax and Bolling, two large
slaveholding counties in the Black Belt; Randolph and Marshall,
counties in the Piedmont section; Preston, the Southwest; McDowell,
the Upper Valley, and Berry and Faulkner, the two counties in the
extreme lower end of the valley.

Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier County, speaking in the Virginia House of
Delegates, January 14th, 1832, when the subject of the gradual
abolition of slavery was under discussion, said:

"Wherefore, then, object to slavery? Because it is ruinous to the
whites, retards improvements, roots out an industrious
population—banishes the yeomanry of the country—deprives the
spinner, the weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of
employment and support. The evil admits of no remedy, and it is
increasing and will continue to increase until the whole country
will be inundated by one black wave covering its whole extent, with
a few white faces here and there floating on the surface."[130]

John A. Chandler, a representative from Norfolk County, speaking on
the 17th of January in the same debate, said:

"It will be recollected, sir, that when the memorial from Charles
City was presented by the gentleman from Hanover, and when its
reference was opposed, I took occasion to observe that I believed
the people of Norfolk County would rejoice could they even in the
vista of time see some scheme for the general removal of this
_curse_ from our land. I should have voted, sir, for its rejection
because I was desirous to see a report from the committee declaring
the slave population an evil and recommending to the people of this
commonwealth the adoption of some plan for its riddance."[131]

William H. Broadnax, speaking as a representative from the County of
Dinwiddie, on the 19th of January, in the same debate, said:

"That slavery in Virginia is an evil and a transcendent evil it
would be idle and worse than idle for any human being to doubt or
deny. It is a mildew which has blighted in its course every region
it has touched from the creation of the world. Illustrations from
the history of other countries and other times might be instructive
and profitable had we time to review them, but we have evidence
tending to the same conviction nearer at hand in the short histories
of the different states of this great confederacy which are
impressive in their admonitions and conclusive in their
character."[132]

Henry Berry, speaking as a representative from Jefferson County, on
the 20th of January, in the same debate, said:

"Sir, I believe that no cancer on the physical body was ever more
certain, steady and fatal in its progress than is this cancer on the
political body of the State of Virginia. It is eating into her very
vitals. And shall we act the part of a puny patient, suffering under
the ravages of a fatal disease, who would say the remedy is too
painful, the dose is too nauseous, I cannot bear it; who would close
his eyes in despair and give himself up to death? No, sir, I would
bear the knife and the cautery, for the sake of health. I would
never despair of the Republic. For myself, I would abandon hope on
this subject and the state together."[133]

Charles James Faulkner, speaking as a representative from Berkeley
County, on the 20th of January, in the same debate, said:

"Wherever the voice of your people has been heard since the
agitation of this question, it has sustained your determination and
called for the present enquiry. I have heard of county meetings,
county petitions, and county memorials; I have heard from the North,
the East, and the South. They are all, with one voice, against the
continuance of slavery. None for it. The press, too, that mirror of
public sentiment, that concentrated will of a whole community, has
been heard from one extremity of the state to the other. Its power
is with us, its moral force is united, efficient and encouraging. In
this city, the capital of the Old Dominion, the heart of the
commonwealth, which by one ventricle receives and through the other
discharges the life blood of intelligence and public spirit
throughout your empire, aye, and from a quarter and from many
quarters where such a voice was least expected its tones have been
firm, manly, and intrepid. Honor, sir, to those who dare speak the
truth in the worst of times."

In conclusion he said:

"In the language of the wise and prophetic Jefferson, 'you must
approach it, you must bear it, you must adopt some plan of
emancipation, or worse will follow.'"[134]

James McDowell, speaking as a representative from Rockbridge County,
on the 21st of January, in the same debate, said:

"Sir, you may place the slave where you please—you may dry up to
your uttermost the fountains of his feelings, the springs of his
thought—you may close upon his mind every avenue of knowledge and
cloud it over with artificial night—you may yoke him to your labors
as the ox which liveth only to work and worketh only to live—you
may put him under any process, which, without destroying his value
as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being—you may
do this and the idea that he was born to be free will survive it
all. It is allied to his hope of immortality—it is the ethereal
part of his nature which oppression cannot reach; it is a torch lit
up in his soul by the hand of the Deity and never meant to be
extinguished by the hand of man."[135]

Thomas Jefferson Randolph, speaking as a representative from Albemarle
County, on the 21st of January, in the same debate, said:

"Does slavery exist in any part of civilized Europe? No, sir, in no
part of it. America is the only civilized Christian nation that
bears the opprobrium. In every other country where civilization and
Christianity have existed together they have erased it from their
codes."[136]

Philip A. Bolling, speaking as a representative from Buckingham
County, on the 25th of January, in the same debate, said:

"Mr. Speaker, it is vain for gentlemen to deny the fact that the
feelings of society are fast becoming adverse to slavery. Moral
causes which produce that feeling are on the march and will on until
the groans of slavery are heard no more in this else happy country.
Look over this world's wide page—see the rapid progress of liberal
feelings—see the shackles falling from nations who have long
writhed under the galling yoke of slavery. Liberty is going over the
whole earth, hand in hand with Christianity."[137]

-----

Footnote 130:

_Virginia Slavery Debate_, 1832, White, Speech of Thomas Marshall,
p. 6.

Footnote 131:

_Idem_, Speech of J. A. Chandler, p. 3.

Footnote 132:

_Idem_, Speech of William H. Broadnax, p. 10.

Footnote 133:

_Idem_, Speech of Henry Berry, p. 2.

Footnote 134:

_Idem_, Speech of C. J. Faulkner, p. 5 and p. 22.

Footnote 135:

_Idem_, Speech of James McDowell, p. 20.

Footnote 136:

_Idem_, Speech of T. J. Randolph, p. 15.

Footnote 137:

_Idem_, Speech of Philip A. Bolling, p. 15.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS (Concluded)

The period from 1833-1860 witnessed, as we have seen, the rise and
progress of the abolition movement at the North and the growth of
pro-slavery sentiment in Virginia and the South. These conditions are
reflected in the deliverances of many prominent anti-slavery
Virginians, and by a growing indisposition on the part of others of
this element to publicly declare their sentiments or to take part in
the discussions, which, with growing bitterness, marked the times.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS FROM 1833-1860

George Washington Parke Custis, speaking on the 21st of January, 1833,
before the American Colonization Society, said:

"Some alarmists tell us that the slave population is to be freed.
And, sir, does any one regret that the hope is held out, that with
our own consent, we shall one day see an end of slavery? Should this
Society be, as I doubt not it will, the happy means of producing
this result, it will be renowned as having done one of the greatest
and best deeds that have blessed the world."[138]

The following extract from a speech of William C. Rives serves not
only to illustrate his anti-slavery sentiments, but the rise of the
two antagonistic parties—the Abolitionists in the North and the
Pro-slavery men in the South. The speech of Dr. Ruffner, delivered ten
years later, also indicates the same condition and the fresh
difficulties with which the cause of gradual emancipation in Virginia
was thus confronted.

William C. Rives, speaking in the United States Senate on the 6th day
of February, 1837, after deprecating the action of Mr. Webster in
presenting abolition petitions as precipitating controversy over a
subject with respect to which Congress had no jurisdiction, then
replied to the position of Mr. Calhoun, that slavery was a beneficent
institution, as follows:

"But, sir, while I have been thus prepared and determined to defend
the constitutional rights of the South at every hazard, I have not
felt myself bound to conform my understanding and conscience to the
standard of faith that has recently been set up by some gentlemen in
regard to the general question of slavery. I have not considered it
a part of my duty as a representative from the South, to deny, as
has been done by this new school, the natural freedom and equality
of man; to contend that slavery is a positive good; that it is
inseparable from the condition of man; that it must exist in some
form or other in every political community; and that it is even an
essential ingredient in Republican government. No, sir, I have not
thought it necessary, in order to defend the rights and institutions
of the South, to attack the great principles which lie at the
foundation of our political system, and to revert to the dogmas of
Sir Robert Filmer, exploded a century and a half ago by the immortal
works of Sidney and Locke....

"In pursuing this course I have the satisfaction of reflecting that
I follow the example of the greatest men and purest patriots who
have illustrated the annals of our country—of the Fathers of the
Republic itself.

"It never entered into their minds, while laying the foundation of
the great and glorious fabric of our free government, to contend
that domestic slavery was a positive good—a great good. Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, the brightest names of my own state,
are known to have lamented the existence of slavery as a misfortune
and an evil to the country, and their thoughts were often anxiously,
however unavailingly, exercised in devising some scheme of safe and
practical relief, proceeding always, however, from the states which
suffered the evil....

"In following such lights as these, I feel that I sin against no
principle of republicanism, and against no safeguard of Southern
rights and Southern policy when I frankly say in answer to the
interrogatory of the gentleman from South Carolina, that I do regard
slavery as an evil—an evil not uncompensated, I know, by collateral
effects of high value on the social and intellectual character of my
countrymen; but still in the eye of religion, philanthropy and
reason, an evil."[139]

Charles Fenton Mercer, in his work, _An Exposition of the Weakness and
Inefficiency of the Government of the United States_, published in
1845, said:

"How shall we approach the horrid subject of slavery, the blackest
of all blots, the foulest of all deformities? Here are a people
descended from the very centre of civilization and free institutions
of Europe, bearing with them the full tide of liberal principles,
and the very cap and essence of liberty, and boasting not only of
their descent, but that they are more than worthy of their
ancestors, that have sanctioned slavery in its most abject form, and
now, by actual enumeration, have upwards of three millions of
them."[140]

R. R. Howison, the Virginia historian, in his _History of Virginia_,
published in 1848, alluding to slavery in the state, said:

"We apprehend that in general, the people of Virginia hold slavery
to be an enormous evil, bearing with fatal power upon their
prosperity. This sentiment has been gaining ground during many
years.... Under these circumstances, we hail with pleasure any
indications that this part of our population (the slave portion) is
decreasing in number and that the time shall come when Virginia
shall be a free state."[141]

Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College, delivered in 1847
an address which was printed in pamphlet form and widely distributed,
dealing with the subject of slavery and emancipation. Referring to the
attitude and efforts of the Abolitionists and the effect upon
anti-slavery sentiment in the state, he said:

"But, fellow-citizens, shall we suffer this meddlesome sect of
Abolitionists to blind our eyes to the evils of slavery and to tie
up our hands when the condition of the country, and the welfare of
ourselves and our children, summon us to immediate action?...

"Having failed in their first mode of action by denunciatory
pamphlets and newspapers, and by petitions to Congress, the most
violent class of Abolitionists have now formed themselves into a
political party aiming to subvert the Federal Constitution which
guarantees the rights of slaveholders, and to destroy the Federal
Union which is the glory and safeguard of us all. Thus they have
armed against themselves every American patriot; and what is most
remarkable, they have met from the opposite extreme those Southern
politicians and ultra pro-slavery men—called 'Chivalry' and
'Nullifiers,' who so often predict and threaten a dissolution of the
Union."[142]

Matthew F. Maury, writing in 1851, said:

"I am sure you would rejoice to see the people of Virginia rise up
to-morrow and say, 'From and after a future day, say January 1st,
1855, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
Virginia.' Although this would not strike the shackle from off a
single arm nor command a single slave to go free, yet it would
relieve our own loved Virginia of that curse."[143]

Bishop William Meade in 1854, writing of slavery, said:

"While we must acknowledge that the advantage of the African trade
notwithstanding the cruelties accompanying it has been on the side
of that people both temporally and spiritually; yet we can never be
brought to believe that the introduction into, and the
multiplication of slavery in Virginia has advanced either her
religious, political, or agricultural interests. On the contrary we
are confident that it has injured all."

In 1857, alluding to the foregoing statement, he wrote:

"I have been for the last fifty years, and more especially for the
last thirty, travelling much the length and breadth of Virginia,
making observations for myself, conversing with intelligent farmers,
politicians, ministers of the gospel, and other Christians on the
subjects referred to above. ... I have not only reconsidered them
myself, but freely conversed with many sound-minded persons
concerning the views there presented; and the result has been an
increased conviction that they are correct and have been in time
past, and still are held by the great body of our citizens,
Christians, and statesmen."[144]

The statement of Howison, made in 1848—that, "in general, the people
of Virginia hold slavery to be an enormous evil, bearing with fatal
power upon their prosperity," is confirmed by these conclusions of
Bishop Meade, expressed ten years later.

Robert E. Lee writing in December, 1856, said:

"In this enlightened age, there are few, I believe, but will
acknowledge that as an institution slavery is a moral and political
evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its
disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than
to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in
behalf of the latter, my sympathies are strongly for the former...."

"While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is
onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable
means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result
in His hands, who sees the end and chooses to work by slow
influences."[145]

RESULTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS

If it be urged that despite the foregoing anti-slavery sentiments the
institution remained intrenched in the laws of Virginia, and supported
by a strong body of public opinion, it may be replied that the views
of these Virginians, and others of like mind, were nevertheless
productive of far-reaching and beneficent results. They were effective
in robbing slavery of many of its most abhorrent and oppressive
incidents. Under the public opinion thus generated the institution in
Virginia assumed, as a rule, the patriarchal character—master and
slave being bound by ties of mutual obligation and affection. Many of
the legal hardships inseparable from the system were reduced to a
minimum. Thus the breaking up of families, by sale of their members,
was confined as nearly as possible to the distribution of estates and
the collection of debts by process of law. In all the category of
disreputable callings, there were none so despised as the
slave-trader. The odium descended upon his children and his children's
children. Against the legal right to buy and sell slaves for profit,
this public sentiment lifted a strong arm, and rendered forever odious
the name of "Negro-trader." The good results of these conditions were
evidenced in the higher measure of character, courtesy and capacity,
which, as a whole, distinguished the negroes of Virginia.

NUMBER OF EMANCIPATIONS IN VIRGINIA

The position of these Virginians was also of great importance in
keeping before the mind of the people the conception that slavery was
an abnormal institution, and that with her growth in wealth and white
population, Virginia could and would free herself from what Robert E.
Lee described as "a moral and political evil." Furthermore these
sentiments were productive of an actual emancipation, the character
and extent of which has been little appreciated. If devotion to the
cause is to be measured by the actual manumissions effected, then
Virginia's emancipators could contemplate with pride their record.
George Wythe liberated his slaves at the close of the Revolution.
Robert E. Lee, executor of George Washington Parke Custis, left his
place at the front with the Army of Northern Virginia to emancipate
the slaves of his testator as directed by the latter in his will.[146]
Between these two there stretches a long line of emancipators, who,
without compensation, liberated thousands of slaves. Mr. Ballagh
estimates this number as high as one hundred thousand.[147] These
slaveholders incurred not only the pecuniary loss of this great
emancipation, but in many instances the expense of colonization. When,
too, it is remembered that their communities were often thus further
burdened by the problems incident to the presence of an increasing
body of freedmen, the full import of the beneficence is better
appreciated. That many of these ex-slaves, despite statutes and the
efforts of masters and others to settle them at points beyond the
state, remained in Virginia is attested by the Federal census, from
which it appears that in 1860 there were still fifty-eight thousand
and forty-two free negroes within her borders.

-----

Footnote 138:

See _Proceedings of Sixteenth Annual Meeting of American
Colonization Society_, January, 1833, p. XVII.

Footnote 139:

_Congressional Debates_, Vol. XIII, part I, p. 717.

Footnote 140:

_An Exposition of the Weakness and Inefficiency of the Government of
the United States_, p. 167.

Footnote 141:

_History of Virginia_, Howison, Vol. II, p. 519.

Footnote 142:

_The Ruffner Pamphlet_, Lexington, 1847.

Footnote 143:

_Life of Matthew F. Maury_, Corbin, p. 131.

Footnote 144:

_Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia_, Vol. I, pp.
89-90, note.

Footnote 145:

_Life of R. E. Lee_, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 64.

Footnote 146:

_Will Book No. 4_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Alexandria County,
Virginia.

Footnote 147:

_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 144.

XVI

SPECIMENS OF DEEDS AND WILLS EMANCIPATING SLAVES

An examination of a few of the great number of deeds and wills which
are to be found on record throughout Virginia will serve to illustrate
the motives of her emancipators and the many difficulties which
confronted them. These emancipations may be grouped in three
periods,—from 1782 to 1806, from 1806 to 1833, and from 1833 to the
outbreak of the Civil War. Each of these periods had its peculiar
characteristics with reference to the problem of emancipation in
Virginia. From 1782 to 1806 the law permitted emancipation without
qualification, and public opinion, in the state, while deploring the
existence of slavery was willing to permit the slaveholders to
control, in large measure, the times and methods of its abolition. The
period from 1806 to 1833 marked the years when anti-slavery sentiment
showed increasing strength. The antipathy, however, to the presence of
the free negro was equally pronounced and resulted in the laws which
required his removal from the state within a year after his
emancipation. This requirement invested emancipation with new,
practical, as well as ethical difficulties. This period opened with
the act which denied to slaveholders the unqualified right of
emancipation—and it ended with the Nat Turner Insurrection and the
futile attempts of the General Assembly to successfully meet the
difficulties of the situation. The years from 1833 to 1860 were
burdened with all the difficulties of the previous periods, as well as
with the embarrassments growing out of the efforts of the
Abolitionists beyond the state and of the pro-slavery advocates within
her borders.

An examination of the following extracts from the deeds and wills of
emancipators will serve to illustrate the truth of these views.

SPECIMENS OF DEEDS AND WILLS, 1782-1806

Extract from deed of Joseph Hill, of Isle of Wight County, dated March
6th, 1783:

"I, Joseph Hill, of Isle of Wight County in Virginia, after full and
deliberate consideration, and agreeable to our Bill of Rights, am
fully persuaded that freedom is the natural life of all mankind, and
that no law, moral or divine, hath given me a just right or property
in the persons of any of my fellow-creatures, and desirous to fulfil
the injunction of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, by doing to
all others as I would be done by in a like situation ... do hereby
emancipate and set free all and every of the above named slaves,
&c."[148]

Extract from deed of Charles Moorman, of Campbell County, dated
September 1st, 1789:

"I, Charles Moorman, from mature consideration and the conviction of
my own mind, being fully persuaded that freedom is the natural right
of all mankind, and that no law, moral or divine, has given me a
right to or property in the persons of any of my fellow-creatures,
and being desirous to fulfil the injunction of our Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ, by doing to others as I would be done by—do therefore
declare that having under my care twenty-eight slaves, (naming
them), I do for myself, my heirs, executors and administrators,
hereby release unto them the said slaves all my rights, interest,
claims or pretensions of claims whatsoever to their persons or any
estate they may acquire, &c."[149]

Extracts from deeds of Robert Carter, of Westmoreland County, each
dated the 1st day of January, 1793:

"Whereas the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia did in
the year seventeen hundred and eighty-two enact a law entitled 'An
Act to Authorize the Manumission of Slaves,' know all men by these
presents that I, Robert Carter, of Nomony Hall, in the County of
Westmoreland, do under the said act for myself, my heirs, executors
and administrators, emancipate and forever set free from slavery the
following slaves." (Here follow the names of the slaves,
twenty-seven in number.)[150]

And on the same day a similar deed emancipating thirty slaves.[151]

Extract from deed of Francis Preston, of Washington County, dated the
20th day of September, 1793:

"Whereas my negro man, John (alias) John Broady, claims a promise of
freedom from his former master, General William Campbell, for his
faithful attendance on him at all times, and more particularly while
he was in the army in the last war, and I who claim the said negro,
in right of my wife, daughter of said General William Campbell,
feeling a desire to emancipate the said negro man John as well for
the fulfilment of the above mentioned promise as the gratification
of being instrumental of promoting a participation of liberty to a
fellow-creature, who by nature is entitled thereto, do by these
presents, for myself, my heirs, executors and administrators, fully
emancipate and make free, to all intents and purposes, the said
negro man John (alias) John Brody from me and my heirs
forever."[152]

Extract from the will of Richard Randolph, Jr., admitted to record in
Clerk's Office of Prince Edward County, April 8th, 1797:

"In the first place—to make retribution as far as I am able to an
unfortunate race of bondsmen over whom my ancestors have usurped and
exercised the most lawless and monstrous tyranny, and in whom my
countrymen by their iniquitous laws in contradiction of their own
Declaration of Rights ... have vested me with absolute property; ...
to exculpate myself to those who may perchance think or hear of me
after death from the black crime which otherwise would be imputed to
me of voluntarily holding the above mentioned miserable beings in
the same state of abject slavery in which I found them on receiving
my patrimony at lawful age; to impress my children with just horror
at a crime so enormous and indelible, and to adjure them in the last
words of a fond father never to participate in it ... I do declare
that it is my will and desire, nay, most anxious wish, that my
negroes, all of them, be liberated, and I do declare them by this
writing free and emancipated to all intents and purposes
whatsoever."[153]

Extract from the will of George Washington, dated July 9th, 1799,
recorded in the Clerk's Office of Fairfax County:

"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the
slaves whom I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To
emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by

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