  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." Patrick Henry, writing on the 18th day of January, 1773, said: "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." 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?" 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." "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." 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." 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 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." St. George Tucker, "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." At the conclusion of his carefully prepared article "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." 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." Writing in 1820 to John Holmes, he said: "I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man 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 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." 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." 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." 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. 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?" 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 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."
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