VIRGINIA'S ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS, 1774 21

New England drew more advantages from the traffic than did the agriculture of the South."

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.""

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."

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.

'Abraham Lincoln, A History, Nicolay & Hay, Vol. I, p. 314. 'Suppression of the Slave Trade, DuBois, p. 43.

'Idem, p. 43.

22

VIRGINIA'S FIRST CONSTITUTION

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."

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."

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."

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."

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

Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford, 1892, Vol. I, p. 440.
'Suppression of the Slave Trade, DuBois, p. 45.

3Idem, p. 43.

'Idem, p. 47.

VIRGINIA'S BILL OF RIGHTS

23

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."

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."

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

'Hening's Statutes, Vol. IX, pp. 112-113,
'Idem, p. 109.

24

CANONS OF LIBERTY

life should show a likeness to the highest ideals of right and equal freedom among men."

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 existencedespite 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.

'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." 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."

Next in the sequence of great events linked with this subject was the work of her sons in the preparation and

'Hening's Statutes, Vol. IX, p. 471.

'History of Slavery in Virginia, Ballagh, p. 23.