Slavery was at war with the ideals upon which Virginians had founded
their commonwealth. It was a burden upon her advance along every line
of normal achievement. It was repugnant to the sensibilities of
thousands of her most devoted sons and yet, despairing of any present
remedy, they sternly deprecated discussion as a disloyal parading
before the world of this skeleton in her closet.
Slavery made its home among the great plantations spreading their
broad acres far from the centres of population, their owners living
distant one from the other. It required, therefore, some more
persuasive force than bolts and bars, to protect these isolated whites
from the fury of the blacks if ever roused to a maddened discontent
with their lot, and a consciousness of their power. Thus the daily
precepts of slavery,—obedience, submission and reverence for the
white man,—must not be dissipated by public discussions in which the
rightfulness of slavery was questioned and the glories of freedom held
up before the eyes of the wondering blacks. San Domingo sent its
warnings, the horrors of the Nat Turner Insurrection were still fresh
in the minds of men, and so the imperilled slave-holders denounced as
the enemies of their race white men who indulged in academic
discussions as to the advantages of emancipation.
The foregoing were some of the causes arising within the state which
served to discourage public discussions with respect to the abolition
of slavery, and to invest with unnatural heat and bitterness the
sentiments of those who nevertheless essayed the task.