Against the charge, however, that the abolition of the foreign slave
trade in 1808 and the contemporaneous invention of the cotton gin so
enhanced the market value of slaves as to destroy the sentiment
previously existing in Virginia for their emancipation, we place the
well-attested fact that anti-slavery sentiment did not die at the time
and for the causes specified. The truth is just to the contrary.
Anti-slavery sentiments among the people grew steadily during the next
quarter of a century. The setback which occurred in 1832-33 arose, as
we have seen, from other causes. The existence of the strongest
anti-slavery sentiment at the latter date cannot be questioned. Said
Charles James Faulkner in the great debate in the Virginia Legislature
of 1832: "Sir, I am gratified to perceive that no gentleman has yet
arisen in this hall, the avowed advocate of slavery. The day has gone
by when such a voice could be listened to with patience or even
forbearance."[205]
George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing a half century later, says:
"It may be asserted as positively as anything in history that in the
year 1832 there was nowhere in the world a more enlightened sense of
the wrong and evil of slavery than there was among the public men and
people of Virginia."[206]
Was the anti-slavery sentiment of 1833 a reminiscence or a growth? Had
it simply survived with diminishing strength the fervor of the
Revolution or was it an increasing power which had its origin at that
period? The Rev. Dr. Philip Slaughter writes: "That (1831) was the
culminating point—the flood-tide of anti-slavery feeling which had
been gradually rising for more than a century in Virginia."[207]
Thomas Jefferson Randolph in his speech before the Legislature of 1832
deplored the fact that Mr. Jefferson had not lived: "to see the
revolution of the public mind of Virginia. He has not lived to see a
majority of the House of Delegates in favor of abolition in the
abstract."[208]
Washington and Jefferson have both left on record the fact that the
people of Virginia of the Revolutionary period would not tolerate any
proposal of emancipation. Mr. Randolph in his speech just quoted from
said: "Sixty-two years ago when a proposition was made in the
Legislature of Virginia by one of the oldest, ablest and most
respected members ... to ameliorate the condition of the slaves he was
... denounced as an enemy of his country."
The constitutions of the ante and post-Revolutionary periods in
Virginia all required property qualification as a prerequisite to the
suffrage, and apportioned representation in the General Assembly to
the several cities and counties on the basis of property and white
population, rather than on the latter alone. Under this system, the
slaves being taxed as property, the slaveholders and their counties
exercised a power far in excess of that enjoyed by their brethren in
the non-slaveholding sections. The General Assembly elected every
state official, including the Governor and the judges of the higher
courts, and thus in the hands of that body was lodged complete control
of every department of the state government.