  Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties which Embarrassed Every Plan of Emancipation The problems and difficulties which beset emancipation in Virginia may be summarized as follows: First: The legal rights of the slaveholders and their creditors; Second: The moral and physical well-being of the slaves; and Third: The political and social interests of the state. To these inherent difficulties should be superadded the lack of free discussion and the growth of bitterness and reactionary sentiments occasioned largely by partisan and ofttimes criminal instigations coming from beyond the state. LEGAL RIGHTS OF SLAVEHOLDERS It will not be questioned that of all men, except the slaves themselves, the slaveholders were most deeply interested in the subject of emancipation. They possessed a direct pecuniary interest in the slaves and were usually the owners of large tracts of land dependent, it was believed, for cultivation, upon their labor. Thus it was thought that emancipation without compensation involved not only the loss of their slaves, but a great depreciation in the value of their lands. In addition to these direct losses would come the burden of caring for the poor, the afflicted, and the criminal classes of the ex-slaves, not to mention the cost of educating the rising generation—the To the foregoing embarrassments must be added the rights of creditors. A great majority of the slaves in Virginia descended to their owners by the laws of inheritance, just as the plantations of which they were virtually part. With the slaves and the lands, came the debts of the ancestors, or, in the progress of time, new debts were incurred. In all such instances the debts of creditors must be provided for before any change could be made in the status of slaves bound for their payment. All these considerations convinced fair-minded men that some substantial measure of compensation must be made the slaveholders before they could be expected to absolve their slaves from service. But from what source was this great fund to be gathered? Despite the widespread sentiment favorable to emancipation, neither state nor nation gave sign of willingness to assume the burden. But beyond the financial difficulties mentioned was the attitude of that class of slaveholders who cherished no desire for emancipation and resented every such suggestion as a wanton invasion of their safety and their rights. They were satisfied with the status quo; they neither desired change nor discussion of its supposed advantages. They met every proposal with a resolute insistence upon their legal rights under the constitutions, State and Federal, and manifested an intolerance of thought and speech with respect to the institution which filled the friends of moderation and progress with mournful appreciation of the hindrances which beset their path. THE WELL-BEING OF THE SLAVES How far a conscientious regard for the moral and physical well-being of the slaves entered into the considerations From the mass of facts and medley of voices certain conclusions can be drawn. Thus it may be affirmed that the slaves in Virginia were better off as a result of their training and experience in servitude than they would have been had their ancestors never set foot upon her soil. It is equally true that theirs was but a partial development and that freedom was necessary to the complete man. As the time comes in the life of a child when the privileges and dangers of self-expression and self-control must supplant the restraints of the home and the school-room, so in the life of these children of larger growth, freedom with its awesome dangers and soul-inspiring possibilities was essential to any well-rounded and continuous advance. Again, freedom was a help in the development of those who had made a certain measure of progress in their moral, intellectual and physical being; yet for those who were not thus prepared, its untimely coming might prove the dawn of a darker day, unless accompanied by wise nurture and sympathetic guidance of the feet, trained only for the paths of dependence. Mr. Jefferson doubtless expressed the sentiments of a large class of thinkers when he said: "As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather to abandon, persons whose habits have been formed in slavery, is like abandoning children." Experience with respect to emancipations made prior to the Civil War strongly tended to confirm these views. CONDITION OF FREE NEGROES, 1830-1860 The results of emancipation where the slaves had been carried to free states, were, on the whole, not much more encouraging. Professor MacMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania, referring to the condition of the free negroes in those states at the time of the Missouri Compromise, writes: "In spite of their freedom they were a despised, proscribed, and poverty-stricken class." Mr. Clay, speaking December 17, 1829, said: "Of all the descriptions of our population and of either portion of the African race, the free people of color are by far, as a class, the most corrupt, depraved and abandoned. There are many honourable exceptions among them, and I take pleasure in bearing testimony to some I know. It is not so much their fault as the consequence of their anomalous condition." Dr. Leonard Bacon, in a sermon before his congregation in New Haven, Conn., July 4, 1830, said: "Who are the free people of color in the United States, and what are they? In this city there are from eight hundred to one thousand. Of these, a few families are honest, sober, industrious, pious and in many points of view, respectable. But what are the remainder? Every one knows their condition to be a condition of deep and dreadful degradation, but few have formed any conception of the reality. The fact is, that as a class, they are branded with ignominy.... There are in this country three hundred thousand freedmen, who are free men only in name, degraded to the dust and forming The biographers of William Lloyd Garrison have recorded that at the North, prior to the Civil War: "The free colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse, and their lot worse than that of the slaves, with this difference, that while the latter were to be kept in bondage 'for their own good' it would have been very wicked to enslave the former for their good." OUTLAY NECESSARY TO EMANCIPATION We need not pause to consider the causes which reduced the free negroes of the Northern States to the conditions here described. That the free negroes of Virginia should have made little or no progress is easily accounted for by the abnormal conditions amid which they lived. There was confessedly scant chance for free negroes in communities densely populated with negro slaves. Many of the friends of emancipation, however, observing this same phenomenon in both slave and free states, came to the conclusion that freedom under existing conditions was hurtful rather than helpful. Others concluded that it was not freedom, but the lack of freedom with all its normal privileges, which had fettered the feet of these newly manumitted slaves. Let the state pay the owners and emancipate the whole body of slaves; let education and training for freedom go hand in hand with opportunity for achieving, and then emancipation would be justified of her children. For this immense outlay Virginia was confessedly not ready, and so the earnest believer in emancipation looked to colonization as the only door through which the slave might enter upon liberty with a man's chance for progress and self-respecting independence.
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