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.[146]
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.[147] 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 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.
-----
Footnote 138:
See _Proceedings of Sixteenth Annual Meeting of American
Colonization Society_, January, 1833, p. XVII.
Footnote 139:
_Congressional Debates_, Vol. XIII, part I, p. 717.
Footnote 140:
_An Exposition of the Weakness and Inefficiency of the Government of
the United States_, p. 167.
Footnote 141:
_History of Virginia_, Howison, Vol. II, p. 519.
Footnote 142:
_The Ruffner Pamphlet_, Lexington, 1847.
Footnote 143:
_Life of Matthew F. Maury_, Corbin, p. 131.
Footnote 144:
_Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia_, Vol. I, pp.
89-90, note.
Footnote 145:
_Life of R. E. Lee_, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 64.
Footnote 146:
_Will Book No. 4_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Alexandria County,
Virginia.
Footnote 147:
_History of Slavery in Virginia_, Ballagh, p. 144.