THE NORTHERN ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR REACTIONARY
INFLUENCE UPON ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT
IN VIRGINIA
Thomas Jefferson Randolph was the foremost advocate of gradual
emancipation in the Virginia Legislature of 1832. In a pamphlet
printed in 1870 reviewing political conditions in Virginia he makes
the following statement with reference to the subject of emancipation
and the influences which hindered its accomplishment after the year
1833:
"After the adjournment of the Legislature in 1833, the question was
discussed before the people fairly and squarely, as one of the
abolition of slavery. I was re-elected on that ground in my county.
The feeling extended rapidly from that time in Virginia, Kentucky
and Missouri until Northern abolitionism reared its head. Southern
abolition was reform and an appeal to the master; Northern abolition
was revolution and an appeal to the slave. One was peaceful and the
other mutually destructive of both races by a servile insurrection.
The Southern people feared to trust to the intervention of persons
themselves exempt by position from the imagined dangers of the
transition."[66]