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."[120]
Writing in 1820 to John Holmes, he said:
"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who
would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy
reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of
property—for so it is misnamed—is a bagatelle which would not cost
me a second thought if, in that way, a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due
sacrifice, I think it might be; but as it is, we have the wolf by
the ears and can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is
in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[121]
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 or South Carolina to
do. By this dispersion you also ameliorate the condition of the
black man."[122]
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."[123]
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."[124]
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."[125]
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. Yet, they seem
to cherish the evil, and to view with immovable prejudice and
dislike everything which may tend to diminish it. I do not wonder
that they should resent any attempt, should one be made, to
interfere with the rights of property, but they have a feverish
jealousy of measures which may do good without the hazard of harm,
that I think very unwise."[126]
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?"[127]
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 that I had been born out of
Virginia—but I wish that Providence had spared my country this
moral and political evil. It is supposed that our slave labor
enables us to live in luxury and ease, without industry, without
care. Sir, the evil of slavery is greater to the master than to the
slave. He is interested in all their wants, all their distresses,
bound to provide for them, to care for them, to labor for them,
while they labor for him, and his labor is by no means the less
severe of the two. The relation between master and slave imposes on
the master a heavy and painful responsibility."[128]
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."[129]
-----
Footnote 110:
_Life of R. H. Lee_, Lee, Vol. I, p. 18.
Footnote 111:
_The True Patrick Henry_, Morgan, p. 246.
Footnote 112:
_Life of Patrick Henry_, William Wirt Henry, Vol. I, p. 114.
Footnote 113:
_The Writings of Washington_, Marshall, Vol. II, p. 159.
Footnote 114:
_Madison Papers_, Vol. II, p. 1391.
Footnote 115:
_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 154.
Footnote 116:
_Life of Edmund Randolph_, Conway, p. 125.
Footnote 117:
Judge Tucker, who was professor of law at William & Mary College,
made it a part of his course of lectures to demonstrate the moral
and economic objections to slavery.
Mr. Roosevelt points out that Thomas H. Benton acquired his
deep-rooted antagonism to the institution while studying Blackstone
"as edited by the learned Virginian Judge Tucker who in an appendix
treated of and totally condemned black slavery in the United
States." (_Thomas H. Benton_, Roosevelt, p. 297).
Footnote 118:
_Tucker's Blackstone_, Vol. II, Appendix, note H., p. 31.
Footnote 119:
_Idem_, p. 53.
Footnote 120:
_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. III, p. 267.
Footnote 121:
_Idem_, Vol. VII, p. 157.
Footnote 122:
_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 312.
Footnote 123:
_Abridgment of Debates in Congress 1789-1856_, Vol. VIII, p. 40.
Footnote 124:
_American Conflict_, Greeley, Vol. I, p. 109.
Footnote 125:
_Kennedy's Life of Wirt_, Kennedy, Vol. II, p. 188.
Footnote 126:
_John Marshall, Life, Character and Judicial Services_, Dillon, Vol.
I, p. 216.
Footnote 127:
_Debates of Virginia Convention of 1829-30_, p. 149.
Footnote 128:
_Idem_, p. 173.
Footnote 129:
_Life of James Madison_, Hunt, p. 369.