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."

---

[86]	See Record of Deeds, Vol. A., p. 230, Recorder's Office, Brown County, Ohio.

[87]	Sketch of Edward Coles, Washburne, pp. 47-52.

[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.)

[89]	See Will Book No. 1, p. 109, Clerk's Office, Pittsylvania County, Va.

[90]	See Public Ledger of Philadelphia, April 14, 1827.

[91]	Historical Collections of Ohio, History of Mercer County, Ohio, by Henry Howe, 1891, Vol. II, p. 505.

[92]	See Will Book No. 11, p. 575, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Va.

[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.

[94]	See Will Book A., p. 391, in the Clerk's Office of Cabell County, West Virginia.

[95]	See Outlook Magazine, N. Y., February 9th, 1903.

[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."

[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.