SOME OF THE ALMOST INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTIES
WHICH EMBARRASSED EVERY PLAN OF
EMANCIPATION (Continued)
Beyond all the difficulties mentioned, there loomed the more
portentous problem of the effect upon the state's political and social
well-being of the introduction into her free population of a great
company of negroes, whether as citizens or suffragists, or mere
tenants at the will of their white brethren. What should be the
outcome of such an unparalleled experiment as universal emancipation
under the conditions existing in Virginia? The results of emancipation
in the free states furnished no assurance because there the number of
negroes was so small as to constitute a negligible quantity. What were
the voices of history which came from over-sea? In Spain, after
centuries of conflict, the whites had finally driven the remnant of
the Moors literally into the Mediterranean. In San Domingo, after the
carnival of blood had spent its force, the blacks had expelled all the
surviving whites from the island.
"It is futile," said Mr. Jefferson, "to hope to retain and
incorporate the blacks into the state. Deep-rooted prejudices of the
whites, ten thousand recollections of the blacks, of injuries
sustained, new provocations, the real distinction Nature has made,
and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and
produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the
extermination of one or the other race."[233]