RESULTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS

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

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"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."

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 farreaching 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 ren

'Life of R. E. Lee, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 64.

102 NUMBER OF EMANCIPATIONS IN VIRGINIA

dered 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.

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.' 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.' 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

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

"History of Slavery in Virginia, Ballagh, p. 144.

NUMBER OF EMANCIPATIONS IN VIRGINIA

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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.

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

SPECIMENS OF DEEDS AND WILLS, 1782-1806 105

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.

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."

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 bydo therefore declare that having under my care twentyeight slaves, (naming them), I do for myself, my heirs, executors and administrators, hereby release unto them

'Deed Book No. 15, p. 122, in Clerk's Office, Isle of Wight County, Virginia.