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GENEALOGY EXPRESS

 

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Black History
& Genealogy

THE FREE NEGRO IN VIRGINIA
1619 - 1865

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By John Henderson Russell

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Board of University Studies
of The Johns Hopkins University in Conformity
with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
1913

Baltimore
1913

CHAPTER III.
pg. 42

MANUMISSION

     Manumission is the term which may be applied to all the various processes by which negroes in Virginia were taken from a condition of slavery and legally raised to a status of freedom, saving only that act of the nation by which slavery was abolished in all the States and to which is properly applied the term emancipation1.  There are three general methods by which slaves in Virginia were manumitted or legally set free during the life of the institution of slavery: (1) by an act of legislature, (2) by last will and testament, and (3) by deed.  A still more general classification recognizes only two kinds of manumission - public and private, the first of the three methods above being classed as public manumission and the last two of the three bearing the names of private manumission.
     According to strict legal theory and the conception of slavery maintained by the courts of Virginia in the nineteenth century, there were no private manumissions.  A so-called private manumission, that is, a manumission by will or deed, was not in fact the act of the slave-owner, but was "the conjoint act of the law and the master."2  "The question of emancipation," said the Virginia supreme court of appeals in 1830, "is a question of statutory law and can only be resolved by referring to the terms of the statute."3  In theory, a maser who freed a slave exercised a power dele-

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     1 Emancipation in Virginia came as a result of the Civil War and was an accomplished fact at its close in the spring of 1865.  Emancipation was formally accepted by the General Assembly in a joint resolution of February 6, 1866  (Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, 1865 - 1866, p. 449, cited as Acts: Richmond Whig.  August 11, 1865; J. P. McConnell, Negroes and their Treatment in Virginia from 1865 to 1867, p. 11)
     2 Wood v. Humphreys, 12 Grattan, 333 (1855)
     3 Thrift v. Hannah, 2 Leigh, 319.

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grated to him by statute.  To regulate or determine the status of individuals was a sovereign power.  By manumission, individuals who were "in truth civiliter mortuus"4 and who had the character of property rather than of persons were raised to life and personality within the State and accorded civil rights and civil liberty.  The power to do this was of such a high and sovereign character that not even the legislature could exercise it except by delegation from the constituent legislative authority.  Indeed, a practical application was made of the theory in 1849, when the constitutional convention expressly denied to the General Assembly the power to manumit a slave.5
     Viewing slavery as a legal status imposed upon persons by the laws, it is not surprising that the colonial legislature, which enacted the first slave laws and freely imposed the slave status upon certain persons, should assume that it had the power to set slaves free.  The first use in Virginia of the legislative power to break the bonds of a slave was made in 1710.  A negro slave named Will had been "signally serviceable in discovering a conspiracy of divers Negroes for levying war in this colony," and in recognition and reward of this public service an act was passed conferring freedom upon him.6  However, it was never the policy of the colonial legislature to exercise is power to manumit slaves except for some such special service or merit as that for which the slave Will received his freedom.  In 1723 it delegated to the governor and the council the power to pass upon the merit of any claim to freedom based upon meritorious service performed by a slave.7  But upon an occasion which arose out of circumstances connected with the Revolutionary War the legislature deemed it expedient to resume the exercise of its right to pass a private act of

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     4 Peter v. Hargrave, 5 Grattan, 12
     5 Constitution of Virginia, 1851, sections 19, 20, 21; Journal, Acts, and Proceedings of a General Convention, 1850, appendix, p. 8.
     6 "The said Negro Will is and shall be forever hereafter free from his slavery . . . and shall enjoy and have all the liberties, privileges, and immunities of or to a free negro belonging"  (Hening, vol. iii, p. 536).
    
7 Hening, vol. iv, p. 132.

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manumission.  The circumstances were that while Lord Dunmore, the royal governor, who had deserted his office and fled the province, was absent from the seat of government, application was made for permission to manumit the slaves of John Barr, of Northumberland County, who had in his will expressed the desire that they should be free.  In the absence of His Excellency the consent of the governor and the council obviously could not be obtained.  Fortunately for the petitioners, the Assembly considered that the peculiar circumstances, justified a special legislative dispensation.  An act was passed confirming Barr's will, but specifying that the act should establish no precedent except in cases exactly similar.8
     The act did, however, become a precedent in one respect, namely, as to the location of the power to pass upon applications for permission to manumit slaves.  The Assembly continued to perform the function, previously exercised by the council, of receiving and passing upon the merit of applications.  "Application having been made" in 1779, a special act of the legislation was passed manumitting three slaves, - John Hope, a mulatto named William Beck, and Pegg.9  Upon similar application made in 1780 the legislature set free Ned, the property of Henry Delony, and Kate, who belonged to Benjamin Bilberry.10
     As indicative of the policy of the legislature with reference to the use of this power of freeing persons from slavery, as well as in illustration of the form of such acts, we quote from the laws the following specimen of acts of manumission: -

An act for the manumission of a certain Slave

     WHEREAS a negro man slave named Kitt the property of Hichia Mabry, of the County of Brunswick, hath lately rendered meritorious service in this commonwealth, in making the first information and discovery against several persons concerned in counterfeiting money, whereby so dangerous a confederacy has been in some measure broken, and some of the offenders have been discovered and

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     8 Hening, vol. ix, p. 320
     9 Ibid., vol. x, p. 211
     10 Ibid,

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brought to trial; and it is judged expedient to mamumit him for such service; Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, The the said Kitt be, and is hereby declared to be emancipated and set free; any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.11

     From the Revolutionary War onward a more extensive  and general use was made of this form of manumission than merely to reward acts of public service.  The legislature became a sort of court of equity for granting relief to masters who were confronted with legal or other difficulties in freeing their slaves as well as for extending mercy to slaves of a deserving or piteous character.12  In more than one instance special legislative acts were obtained to give legal validity to wills of manumission recorded before the act of 1782 authorizing this procedure.13  Hundreds of colored petitioners sought special acts that they might not be deprived of freedom became of mistake or oversight or fraud in the execution of a will or of an expressed intention of a master to set them free.14  Among the acts of a private nature passed in the period of the Commonwealth down to about 1825 are to be found a large number of acts setting slaves free or granting such as were already liberated a legal right to reside in the State.15
     The method of manumission by an act of the legislature is not the method the genesis of which requires the more detailed explanation.  The colonial House of Burgesses, the sovereign legislative body in Virginia, inferred from its right to make, its right to unmake, a slave.  But what was

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     11 Hening, vol. x, p. 115 (1779).  It was further enacted that the treasurer of the Commonweath "pay to Hinchia Mabry . . . the sum of one thousand pounds [of tobacco] out of the publick treasury, as a full compensation for the said slave."  In all cases where the special act of manumission was in reward of a public service, provision was made for compensating the owner of the slave for his loss.  Cf. Hening, vol. iii, p. 619; vol. xi, p. 309.
     12 See, for example, an act of 1792 manumitting Rosetta Hailstock and her three children, who had been barred from freedom by a legal technicality (Hening, vol. viii, p. 618).  See also ibid., vol. xi, p. 363.
     13 Hening, vol. xii, pp. 611-613; vol. xiii, p. 619
     14 For example, see MS Petitions, Henrico County, 1818, A 9290.
     15 Acts of a private character, 1811 - 1812, p. 131; 1813 - 1814, p. 153; 1814 - 1815, p. 151.  The private acts of almost any year within the above-named period will afford examples.

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the origin of the right of an individual slave-owner to bestow civil rights and civil liberties upon a slave, which in the eyes of the law was a thing?  Manumission by a will or a deed cannot be regarded as merely a transfer of the property rights in the slave from the master to the slave, because in the eyes of the law there existed "no right in the slave to acquire property."16  "Manumission," said Judge Tucker, "is not strictly speaking a gift of property.  It is the exoneration of a human being from the bonds which our institutions have fastened upon him."17
     Now, the first law which could be construed as delegating to or conferring upon slave-owners any right to make free men of their slaves was enacted in 1691,18 but it appears from the records of the county courts that manumissions had been taking place several decades before this act was passed.  In fact, the act itself, which was a rigid restriction upon the right of private manumission, shows that the act did not originate the right.  The first wills of manumission in the colony were made and recorded not only prior to the statute of 1691, but also in advance of any statute in regard to slavery.  To reconcile these facts with the nineteenth century theory of manumission, Judge Brooks, speaking for the court in Thrift v. Hannah, said, "Although it had been the practice of owners of slaves to emancipate their slaves before the act of 1691, that practice gave no perfect right to owners, of their own will to emancipate their slaves."19.
     The origin of that practice has its explanation in the close relations of indented servitude and slavery in the seventeenth century.  Before slavery as an institution had fully diverged from indented servitude it borrowed from that system the practice of manumission by individual masters.  Under the system of indented servitude the time or term of service for which a servant was bound was, through the
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     16 Ruddle's Executors v. Ben, 10 Leigh, 480 (1839).
     17 Parks v. Hewlett, 9 Leigh, 511 (1838).
     18 Hening, vol. iii, p. 87
     19 2 Leigh, 319.  See also argument of council in Phoebe et al. v. Boggess, I Grattan, 129 (1844).

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servant himself was not, regarded as property.  The unexpired time of a servant could be alienated, like other property, by gift, sale, or bequest.20  The servant, unlike the slave of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was capable of contracting and of holding property.  If the master of a servant chose to sell or make a gift of the servant's unexpired time to the servant himself, the servant was capable of receiving the same and would thereafter owe service to no man.  For example, the will of Samuel Thacker, of Essex County, contained this item: "I give unto my servant, John Glary, one year of his time." 21  It has been noted in the chapter on negro servitude that evidence of the discharge of a negro servant was sometimes recorded in a written instrument.  Now, in the seventeenth century the processes by which masters set negroes free, whether they were servants for a time or for life, were more like discharges from servitude than manumissions from slavery.
     In 1655 Richard Vaughn, of Northampton County, had recorded by the county court the following declaration respecting one of his negroes: "These testify that Mr. Rich Vaughn doe hereby acquitt & discharge one negro Boye known by the name of James from all Claymes or Demands of service for myself, heyers, Exors., Adms. provided the negro do not covenant with any person but shall keepe himself free."22
     Two years later Anne Barnhouse, of York County, executed an instrument of writing which in form was quite similar to the deeds of manumission of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It reads as follows: "Mihill Gowen

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     20 As an example of the transfer of the time of servants by bequest, note the following will, of date 1657: "I Francis Jones widow of ye county of York Doe freely give unto my Loving Sonne Francis Townshend these servants and cattle...Five Servants & one child their names John Reeves, John Keech, Richard Poultry, John Swillinante & one negro woman named Sarah and his child Francis two years old." (MS Court Records of York County, 1657-1662, p. 88.  Compare Ballagh, White Servitude, pp. 43, 44).
     21 Essex County Records, 1713, abstracts printed in Virginia Magazine of History, vol. xviii, p. 329
     22 MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1655-1658, p. 3.

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negro late servant of my brother Xopher Stafford Deced, ... had his Freedom given him by his last will & Testament - 11865 - after expiration of four years service unto my Uncle Robert Stafford therefore know that I absolutely quitt & discharge the said Mihill Gowen from any service and forever set him free."23
     In a similar writing of the same date Anne Barnhouse assigned as a gift to Mihill Gowen a child of his, born of a negro woman belonging to Anne Barnhouse during Gowen's four-year term of service.  The writing binds Anne Barnhouse "never to trouble or molest the said Mihill Gowen or his said son William or demand any service of Mihill or his son."24  Even if the negroes discharged by these legal instruments were slaves prior to their discharge, it is perfectly clear that the conception which their owners had of slavery was not such as prevailed at a later time.  A slave, in the seventeenth century conception, was merely a person serving for life.  If such slave, who was then regarded as a person and not as a thing (as he later came to be), were discharged and given a pledge by his master that no further service would be demanded, he went as a free man, just as did a servant freed at the expiration of a period of contract servitude.  In the nineteenth century the gift or assignment of a slave child to its free father, as in the case of the gift by Anne Barnhouse of the child William to its father, would have rendered the child a slave to its father; but in the seventeenth century the result of such a process was the complete freedom of the child.
     Not only in such of these early writings as took the form of deeds of manumission, but also in the  earliest recorded wills bequeathing freedom we see the analogy between manumission as first practiced and the discharge from servitude of indented servants.  As was shown in a former chapter, it was the custom and later the law of indented servitude that the servant, white or colored, receive from his master

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     23 MS Court Records of York County, 1657-1662, p. 45, in Virginia State Library.
     24 Ibid

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at the time of his discharge from servitude a certain amount of property called "freedom dues."25  Nearly all of the seventeenth century wills of manumission contained grants of property to the liberated negroes.  The earliest of which we have any record is that of Richard Vaughan, written in 1645 and recorded in 1656, making bequests of a consider able amount of property to each negro set free.28  In 1657 Nicholas Martin, of York County, left a will setting free two negroes, and providing that "each of them have . . . one Cow and Three Barrells of Corne Clothes & Nayles to build them a house."27  Thomas Whitehead of the same county died about 1660, leaving a will which shows that the testator believed that he was merely releasing his negro from further obligations of service or simply shortening a servant's term.  The item of the will giving to the negro the right which the testator had had to his service reads: "I sett my negro free ... he shall be his own man from any person or persons whatsoever."
This negro was considered by his master as having the

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     25 See above, p. 34 n.
     26 "The last will and testament of Mr. Richard Vaughan planter in Ocohamocke, in Accomacke . . . .
     "And for my old Negro woman (after my decease) to remayne with her Dame, till her Dames decease; and then bee free; and to receive twoe Cowes wth calfe (or calves by their side) two suits of clothes, a bedd & a Rugge, a chest & a pott with foure Barrells of Corne & a younge breedinge Sowe; Likewise my Negro girle Temperance (after my decease) to be possessed of two Cowes and to have their increase male and female; and she to remayne with her Dame . . . to be brought up in the Fear of God & to be taught to read & make her owne clothes, and after her Dames deceased [and when] she come to twenty yeares of age . . . to receive two cows with calves (or calves by their side)  Two good suits of clothes, a good Bedd & Bowlster & a Rugg & two Blanketts & a pott and one great Brass Kettle with Four Barrells of corne & a younge breeding sowe."
     The rest of the negroes, three in number, were provided for in a similar way, and then there was appended the clause "that ye three Negro girls be possessed of the plantation of Jno Walthome beinge to his plantacon some hundred & forty & four acres of land; and he to build them a Home twenty-five feete in length and twenty feet broad, with one chimney" (MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1654-1655, pp. 102, 103).
     27 MS. Court Records of York County, 1633-1694, p. 108, in Virginia State Library.

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capacity to receive the property rights in the negro's time and also certain of the master's personal effects; for other items of the will provided as follows:  I give my negro man named John all my wearing clothes, my shirts & hatts & shoes and stockings and all that I used to weare.  I give unto my negro named John Two Cows One called gentle and the other a black heifer & I give him house & ground to plant upon as much as he shall tend himselfe & peaceably to enjoy it his life time without trouble."  A short time after this will was recorded the county court of York decided that the instrument had the effect of making the negro a free man, and that he was legally entitled to come into possession of the property bequeathed to him by his master.28
     All the instances of manumissions by individual masters above cited occurred before the institution of slavery had reached the legislative phase of its development.  The first slavery legislation, in 1662, in no way interrupted the practice of manumission.  Whether the frequency of private manumissions in the seventeenth century was a result more of a strong body of sentiment favorable to freedom than of an imperfect, immature development of the system of slavery is a question that may not be answered with certainty.  Probably the freedom of some negroes was due to the one and the freedom of others due to the other of these conditions, but the evidence points clearly to the fact that up to 1691 the class of "negroes manumitted" was becoming noticeably larger.  The tax obligations of this class formed a subject of legislation in 1670.29  In 1684 John Farrar, of Henrico County, wrote in his will the following item; "I give unto my negroe Jack his freedom after Christmas day next & in ye meantime he continue on my plantation & use his endeavors with the rest of my hands to make a Cropp."30  Daniell Parke, of York County, in 1687, "considering the time and ffaithful Service" of one of his ne-

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     28 MS. Court Records of York County, 1657-1662, p. 217, in Virginia State Library.
     29 Hening, vol. ii, p. 280
     30 MS. Court Records of Henrico County, 1677-1692, p. 299, in Virginia State Library.

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groes, will that he should be free at the time of the testator's death, and should have an annual allowance of provisions.31  The will of Nathaniel Bacon, sr., in 1691, bequeathed to "Molotto Kate her freedome, Itt being formerly promised by my deceased wife."32  The will of John Carter, proved in Lancaster, June 11, 1690, gave freedom to "several negroes."33
     By the year 1690 the free negro class had become an object of suspicion and fear.  The increasing frequency of manumissions created apprehensions as to the consequences of allowing the practice to continue, and restrictive legislation was deemed expedient.  The preamble of the restrictive act, which was passed in 1691, declared a law to be necessary to prevent manumissions, because "great inconvenience may happen to this country by setting of negroes and mulattoes free by their either entertaining negro slaves or receiving stolen goods or being grown old bringing a charge upon the country."34  Under the provisions of this act no negro or mulatto was to be set free unless the person doing so should pay the charges for transporting the manumitted negro beyond the limits of the colony.  Thus was devised a scheme which would offer three obstacles to the increase of the free negro class:  A charge of transportation would restrain the master; the prospect of banishment would restrain the desire of the slave to be free.  Should both of these  restraints fail in any case, removal would prevent addition to the free colored class.35

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     31 The will bound the executors to "allow unto the said negro fifteene Bushells of Clean shilled Corne and fifty pounds of dryed beif to be delivered him annually as long as hee shall live.  Also one Kersey Coat and Britches, two pare of yarne stockings two white or blew shirts one pair of blew drawers an Axe a Hoe and to pay his leavies" (MS. Court Records of York County, 1687-1691, p. 278, in Virginia State Library).
     32 MS. Court Records of York County, 1690-1694, p. 154, in Virginia State Library.
     33 Virginia Magazine of History, vol. xi, p. 237
     34 Hening, vol. iii, p. 87
     35 Under the provisions of this law Richard Trother, of York County, near the close of the century made his will which reads:  "I will that old negro Peter and negro Tom have their true and

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     The conduct of the legislature in 1710 in manumitting by special act a negro slave might appear to be inconsistent with the restrictive policy begun in 1691, unless the legislative purpose in both instances be kept in view.  The policy of the colonial legislature, begun in 1710, of rewarding with freedom any acts of special merit in slaves was no indication of the growth of freedom sentiment.  Its real intent was a more perfect disciplining of negroes in slavery.  Freedom in the case of the negro Will was awarded as an example to discourage in slaves that which most free negroes were suspected of encouraging, namely, insubordination and any disposition to plot mischief.  Danger from conspiring and plotting negroes was the common object at which both laws were designed to strike.
     Notwithstanding the effort made to prevent servile insurrection, new conspiracies were discovered within the next dozen years, and the fears of the people were again much aroused.  "Tumultuous and unlawful meetings," "secret plots and conspiracies carried on among" all classes of negroes, "dangerous combinations," the exchange of advice "to rebel and make insurrection," brought the colonial legislature to declare existing laws " insufficient."86  The free negroes, suspected and accused upon every occasion of an outbreak, became in this instance the objects of restrictive legislation.  By an act passed in 1723 they were forbidden to visit or meet with slaves and to carry or own a firelock.37  They were deprived of the right to vote at elections and discriminated against in the levying of taxes;38 but still, despairing of success in restraining the free negro by drastic police measures, the legislature determined to prohibit entirely manumission by individual slave-owners.  In 1723 an act was passed which declared that under no pretense

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perfect liberty and freedome six days after my wife's decease and 15 pounds sterling money to be paid apiece for their transportation" (MS. Court Records of York County, 1694-1702, p. 194, in Virginia State Library).
     36 "Hening, vol. iv, p. 126.
     37 "Ibid., vol. iv, p. 131.
     38 "Ibid., vol. iv, p. 133.

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whatsoever could a master, without the license of the governor and the council, manumit a slave.39  Moreover, " meritorious service " was made the sole ground upon which permission might be obtained for setting free a slave.40  If
this law prohibiting manumission were violated, it became the duty of the churchwardens of the parish in which the violation occurred to apprehend and sell the negro "by public outcry," and to apply the receipts to the use of the
vestry.
     From this time till near the end of the colonial period, or, in other words, for nearly half a century, the policy of prohibiting voluntary manumission met with little opposition.41  The provisions of 1723 were reenacted in 1748 with no alterations that indicate a desire to allow to the free negro class wider liberty or possibility of increase.42  Under the
enforced prohibitions of these laws, manumissions were few and widely separated.43  The "meritorious service" for which a slave could expect to be rewarded with freedom was something more than faithfulness of service.  In 1729
the discovery by a slave of an herb medicine by which wonderful cures could be effected merited favorable action by
the governor and the council.44  Rev. Charles Greene de-

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     39 Hening, vol. iv, p. 132.
     40 Cf. J. B. Minor, Institutes of Common and Statute Law, vol. ii, p. 167.
     41 That "the manumission of slaves was never popular in the colony" was the opinion of a writer so careful of statement as H. B. Grigsby (Collections of the Virginia Historical Society, vol. x, p. 133.  Cited as Virginia Historical Collections).
     42 Hening, vol. vi, p. 112.
     43 "The number of manumissions under such restrictions must necessarily have been very few" (St. G. Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery, ed. 1796, p. 71).
     44 Governor Gooch asserted in a letter to the Board of Trade that he had "met with a negro, a very old man who has performed many wonderful cures of diseases.  For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a concoction of roots and barks. . . .  There is no room to doubt of its being a certain remedy here & of singular use among the negroes - it is well worth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom since it is now known how to cure slaves without mercury" (Sainsbury Transcripts from the British Public Record Office, vol. ix, p. 462).

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sired to manumit his slave woman, Sarah, in 1767, but under the laws in force he could not carry out his desire.45  Up to 1763, the date of the close of the struggle between the English and the French colonies in America, wars and troubles with the Indians had occupied so much of the attention of the people that there was little opportunity for the growth of an enlightened sentiment favorable to freedom for the negroes, whose labor was proving so valuable in the development of the resources of the colony.  Jefferson once wrote that at the time when our controversy with England was still "on paper only, few minds had yet doubted but they [the negroes] were as legitimate subjects of property as their horses or cattle."46  Andrew Burnaby, travelling in Virginia from 1759 to 1760, asserted that "their [the people's] ignorance of mankind and of learning exposes them to many errors and prejudices, especially in regard to Indians and Negroes, whom they scarcely consider of the human species."47
     This statement was written at about as late a date as it could have been truthfully made, for the principles of the rights of man and freedom by nature could not effect a revolution against foreign oppression and not ameliorate the hard situation of Virginia's black population.  An article in the Virginia Gazette in 1767 began with the following significant words, "Long and serious reflections upon the nature and consequences of slavery," and went on to say that "now, as freedom is unquestionably the birth-right of all mankind, Africans as well as Europeans, to keep the former in a state of slavery is a constant violation of the right and

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     45 MS. Petitions, Fairfax County, 1785, A 5460
     46 To Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814, in H. S. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, vol. iii, p. 643.  W. Goodell erroneously used this sentence from Jefferson's letter to describe the condition or state of sentiment in Virginia at the time the letter was written (The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice, p. 48).  The time of which Jefferson was writing was when he "came into public life" before the war with England.  The statement would not have been true had it been made with reference to conditions in 1814.
     47 Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America p. 54.

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therefore justice."48  Two years later Thomas Jefferson became a member of the legislature, and upon his initiative and with his aid Colonel Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, and most respected members of that body, pressed forward a proposition to remove the restrictions which for forty-six years the laws had imposed upon voluntary manumission.  "I seconded his motion," wrote Jefferson, "and as a younger member was more spared in the debate, but he was denounced as an enemy to his country and was treated with the greatest indecorum."49  Opposition to the measure was as yet overpowering, but the kind of support it received augured well for a later victory.  Even a legislature as conservative as this one declared that the discriminatory tax levied upon free negroes and mulattoes since 1668 was "derogatory to the rights of free born subjects," and, therefore, that it stood repealed.50  A new antislavery spirit which was nation-wide in its operation was powerfully affecting sentiment in Virginia.  While that spirit was rising at the North which was to culminate from 1777 to 1785 in acts of emancipation in Vermont, Pennsylvania Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and in a manumission act in Maryland, it was destined to grow and spread in Virginia till it effected the repeal of the old restraints upon manumission, and strongly threatened the existence of the institution of slavery in that State.
     The movement in Virginia kept a remarkably even pace with the American Revolution.  Since both were applications of the principles of natural equality and individual liberty, they must indeed be viewed as two parts of the same current of progress.  "The glorious and ever memorable Revolution," argued many petitioners of the legislature, "can be justified on no other principles, but what do plead with still greater force for the emancipation of our slaves

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     48 Virginia Gazette, Mar. 19, 1767, quoted in Views of American Slavery, Taken a Century Ago, p. 109.
     49 Jefferson to Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814, in Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. iii, . 643; G. Tucker, Life of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, p. 46.
     50 Hening, vol. ii, p. 267; vol.. viii, p. 393.

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in proportion as the oppression exercised over them exceeds the oppression formerly exercised over the United States by Great Britain."51
     This logical application of the Revolutionary philosophy, though not quite convincing to the legislature, was freely and conscientiously accepted by many individuals.52  From the beginning of the war it became quite common among slave-owners to applly the doctrine; for example, John Payne, of Hanover County, in the year of the Declaration of Independence freed his slave because he was "persuaded that liberty is the natural condition of all mankind."53  Some slave-owners ignored the laws, as did Charles Moorman, a Quaker, of Louisa County, who in 1778 executed a deed of manumission relinquishing his right to thirty-three slaves as if there were no laws forbidding such action.54  Joseph Mayo, of Henrico County, owner of nearly a hundred slaves, was more desirous that his act be in conformity with the laws, and expressed in his will a "most earnest request that the executors petition the General Assembly for leave to

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     51 MS. Petitions, Hanover County, 1785; Frederick County, 1786, A 6340.
     52 In 1814 Thomas Jefferson expressed his disappointment that the generation who had received "their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast, and had become, as it were, the vital spirit of every American" had not gone even to the extent of making possible a general emancipation of slaves (Jefferson to Edward Coles, in Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. iii, p. 644
     53 See quotation of the original will in R. A. Brock's prefatory note to "The Fourth Charter of the Royal African Company," in Virginia Historical Collections, vol. vi, p. 18.  In 1771 Jonathan Pleasants, large slave-owner, attempted to provide that his slaves be set free by a will beginning thus:  "and first believing that all mankind have an undoubted right to freedom and commiserating the situation of my negroes" (2 Call, 270).  William Binford, of Henrico County, set free twelve youthful slaves in 1782 because he was "fully persuaded that freedom is the nat'l right of all mankind" (MS. Deeds of Henrico County, no 1, p. 421).  In 1790 Colonel William Grason manumitted all of his slaves "born after the Declaration of Independence" ("History of the Virginia Federal Convention, of 1788," in Virginia Historical Collections, vol. ix, p. 211).  For similar expressions see MS Deeds of Henrico County, no. 3, p. 378; no expressions see MS. Deeds of Henrico County, no. 3, p. 378; no. 7, p. 131.
     54 Hening, vol. xii, p. 613.

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set free all" his slaves.55  Some masters made their wills in anticipation of an act permitting manumission.  A notable instance was the devise made in 1777 by John Pleasants, a Quaker, whose will, when later held valid by the supreme court of appeals, set free several hundred slaves.56  The contingency upon which this devise of freedom in futuro was based was that "the laws of the land . . . admit them to be set free without their being transported out of the country."
     A still more novel instance of anticipating action by the legislature was the devise by Gloister Hunnicutt, of Sussex County, of six slaves to the Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends, to be manumitted by such members as the meeting should appoint.  In passing upon the validity of this will, recorded two years prior to the act of 1782 permitting manumission, the supreme court said: "He knew the existing laws forbade it and that his society had been anxiously endeavoring to procure an enabling statute for that purpose from the legislature; which was generally believed would shortly be obtained."  Counsel, in defending the legality of the will, observed that the testator must have known "that a sentiment existed in the country very favorable to the passage of such a law."57
     In the forefront of the movement which culminated in the repeal of restrictions upon the right of private manumission were two religious sects - the Quakers and the Methodists.  Many Quakers in Virginia had been owners of slaves up to the period of the Revolutionary War, but they were among the first to recognize and admit fully the humanity of the negro and the injustice of depriving him of his right to freedom.  Committees of their meetings were appointed "to labor with such Friends as still hold their negroes in bondage, to convince them, if possible, of the

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     55 Hening, vol. xii, p. 612; MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1886, A8990.  By special acts of legislation in 1787 both the above-mentioned wills were made effective (Journal of the House of Delegates, 1786, p. 23.  Cited as House Journal).
     56 2 Call, 270; Brock, p. 17.
     57 Charles et al. v. Hunnicutt, 5 Call, 311, 312.

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evil of that practice and inconsistency with our Christian profession."58  The few members who clung to their slaves did so at the price of being disowned by their society.59  The growing body of Methodists likewise showed themselves the friends of the negro, and many of them, like the Quakers, refused to own or sell slaves.  In the Methodist annual conference held at Baltimore in 1780 this question was put to the conference: "Does this Conference acknowledge that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and hurtful to society' contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and doing that which we would not others should do to us and ours?  Do we pass our disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves, and advise their freedom?"  The answer was, "Yes."60   Philip Gatch, a slave-owning Methodist of Powhatan County, was one among many of these people who acted according to the advice of their society in a very short time after it was given.61  The Methodists as well as the Friends exerted an influence upon legislation by memorials to the legislature reiterating their opposition to slavery.62
     Probably these two societies, the Friends and the Methodists, deserve to rank first in the work of advancing the cause of manumission from genuine altruistic motives.  They sought to make manumission lawful because they were willing to take the negro within the scope of the doctrine of equal rights and natural freedom.  But the Baptists and Presbyterians were then striving to gain for the whites freedom of religion and freedom of conscience; hence they too were consistent advocates of the measure by

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     58 MS. Minutes of Fairfax Monthly Meeting, 1776-1802; MS. Minutes of Warrenton and Fairfax Quarterly Meeting, 1776-1787, passim; S. B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 211 et seq.
     59 MS. Minutes of Hopewell Monthly Meeting, 1777-1791. p. 184; MS. Minutes of Fairfax Monthly Meeting, 1777-1791, pp. 42, 65.
     60 W. W. Bennett, Memorials of Methodism in Virginia, p. 131.
     61 Ibid.
     62 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. iii, p. 124; cited as Madison's Writings.  See Weeks on the prominence of Quakers and Methodists among the eighty members of the Virginia Abolition Society in 1791 (Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 213).

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which restraints were to be removed from the will and conscience of a slave-owner who felt moved to set free his slave for conscience' sake.  Furthermore, without regard to church affiliations, there was a class of young men who, according to a distinguished French traveller, "were almost all educated in principles of sound philosophy and regarded nothing but justice and humanity."63  To this younger set of men, who represented the liberal ideas of the English and French thought of that time, and prominent among whom was Thomas Jefferson, is due much of the credit for the support in the legislature of the proposition which was enacted into law in May, 1782, bearing the title, "An act to
authorize the manumission of slaves."64
     To a certain class of those persons who demanded a revision of the laws respecting the negroes the law of 1782 was only a partial victory.  The object sought by persons of that class was the freedom of the negro and not the greater freedom of the white master; hence they were now as ready to support a plan of general emancipation as they had been to promote the progress of manumission.  In 1785 a petition was presented to the legislature asserting it to be the firm conviction of the petitioners that slavery is contrary to the principles of the Christian religion and an express violation of the principles upon which our government was founded.65  Several months later seventeen citizens of Frederick County petitioned for the gradual emancipation

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     63 F. J. Chastelllux, Travels in North America in the years 1780-82, vol. ii, pp. 196, 197
     64 "Be it enacted That it shall hereafter be lawful for any person by his or her  last will and testament, or by any other instrument in writing, under his or her hand and seal attested and proved in the county court by two witnesses, or acknowledged by the party in the court of the county where he or she resides, to emancipate and set free his or her slaves, or any of them, who shall thereupon . . . enjoy as full freedom as if they had been particularly named and freed by this act" (Hening, vol. xi, pp. 39, 40).
     65  House Journal, Nov. 8, 1785, p. 27.  This petition urged not only emancipation, but also "the strengthening of our government by attaching to its support by ties of interst and gratitude" the freedmen.  Apparently enfranchisement of the freedmen was within its scope.

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of slaves, reasoning that "liberty is the birthright of mankind, the right of every rational creature."66
     These propositions met with very strong protest from those who had opposed the passage of the manumission act and who were already preparing to make a fight for its repeal.  Counter petitions and remonstrances were received by the Assembly as soon as were the petitions.67  In addition to remonstrating against proposed plans of emancipation, the petitioners urged the repeal of the law authorizing manumission.68
     In the issue thus joined the balance of power was held by the class of persons who had supported the passage of the law of 1782 with the view to removing restraints upon the will of the master for the sake of the master's freedom.  Neither the proposition for emancipation nor the project for the repeal of the law authorizing manumission could command their support.  Persons of this class were as much opposed to hampering the property rights of the master by denying to him the right to dispose of slaves at will as they were to compelling him to relinquish his title to slaves.  The emancipation schemes and the projects to prohibit again the manumission of slaves failed of enactment.  Hence, on compromise ground between two extreme views, the act authorizing manumission remained on the statute book, and represented the policy to which the State remained for many years firmly committed.69

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     66 MS. Petitions, Frederick County, 1786, A6340.  Madison, in a letter to Jefferson of January 22, 1786, says that "several petitions (from Methodists, chiefly) appeared in favor of a gradual abolition of slavery" (Madison's Writings, vol. i, p. 217).
     67 MS. Petitions, Brunswick County, 1785, A2901; House Journal, 1785, p. 30; Madison to Washington, Nov. 11, 1785, in Madison's Writings, vol. i, p. 200.
     68 Petitions of this kind were received by the legislature from the counties of Brunswick, Amelia, Mecklenburg, Halifax, and Pittsylvania (House Journal, 1785, p. 91; MS. Petitions, A2901).  A petition from Hanover County, signed by one hundred and forty-four citizens, and one from Henrico, signed by one hundred and twenty citizens, praying for the repeal of the act of 1782, were sent to the legislature in 1784 (MS. Petitions, Hanover County, A8124; Henrico County, A8971.)
     69 House Journal, 1785, p. 91.  The vote against repeal was 53 to

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     The removal in 1782 of restraints upon manumission was like the sudden destruction of a dam before the increasing impetus of a swollen stream.  The free negro population in the State at that time - probably less than 3000, but the product of a century and a quarter's growth - was more than doubled in the space of two years.  Instances of manumission, often of large numbers of slaves, became frequent.70  In eight years after the act became effective the number of free colored persons rose from less than 3000 to 12,866.71  By 1800 the number had increased to 20,000; and according to the census of 1810 it was over 30,000.
     The principles of natural rights and the consent of the governed had only a year before the passage of the enabling act received a triumph in the victory of the American and French armies at Yorktown, and many a slave-master now seized the opportunity to follow those principles to their logical conclusion by manumitting every slave in his possession, whether one or one hundred.  In 1782 William Binford and Robert Pleasants, of Henrico County, manumitted respectively twelve and ninety slaves.  Most of them were of an age to be very valuable, but young and old were set free because of a "conviction and persuasion that freedom is a natural right."72  Joseph Hill of Isle of Wight County, gave expression to his views in his will of Mar. 6, 1783, as follows: "I . . . after full and deliberate consideration, and agreeable to our Bill of Rights, am fully persuaded that freedom is the natural life of all mankind . . .

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     70 Cf. Brock, p. 19
     71 In 1835 William Jay wrote as follows: "In 1782, Virginia repealed her restraining law and in nine years 10,000 slaves were manumitted"  (Slavery in America, p. 101).  In 1796 St. George Tucker called attention to the fact that "there are more free negroes and mulattos in Virginia alone than are to be found in the four New England states and Vermont in addition to them.  The progress of emancipation in this state is, therefore, much greater than our Eastern brethren may at first suppose.  There are only 1087 free negroes and mulattoes in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania more than in Virginia" (A dissertation on Slavery, p. 72 n.).
     72 MS. Deeds of Henrico County, no. 1, p. 42.

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do hereby emancipate and set free all and every one of the above-named slaves."73
     Every negro who fought or served as a free man in the late war was given in 1783 a legislative pledge of the utmost protection of the State in the enjoyment of the freedom he had helped to gain;74 and a slave who could prove any honorable service rendered by him to the American cause was freed by special act and at the expense of the State 75  Aberdeen, a slave who had helped forward the cause of liberty "by his long and meritorious service in the lead mines,"76 and "Caesar, who entered very early into the service of his country and continued to pilot the armed vessels of the state during the late War,"77 were set free at public expense.  Slave-owning Quakers who were reluctant to manumit their slaves were urged by their society to extinguish their titles in human chattels.78  The labor supply being abundant from 1782 to the end of the century, mercenary masters were

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     73 MS. Deeds of Isle of Wight County, no. 15, p. 122.  Quoted from B. B. Munford, Virginia's attitude toward Slavery and Session, p. 105.  In 1797 Richard Randolph jr., of Prince Edward County, manumitted his slaves "in whom my countrymen by their iniquitous laws in contradiciton of their own Declaration of Rights have vested me with absolute property" (MS. Wills of Prince Edward County, 1797; H. A. Garland, The Life of John Randolph, of Roanoke, vol. i, p. 67).
     74 Hening, vol. xi, p. 308; St. G. Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery, p. 40.  Compare below, pp. 110, 111, 11 n.
     75 William Boush and Jack Knight, and Saul, "who avoided the rocks upon which so many negroes wrecked when the trumpet call pronounced his freedom if he would turn upon his master," were all set at liberty by the State because of their services in the cause of liberty (Hening, vol. xiii, pp. 103, 619).  The slave James, a spy or secret agent of Marquis Lafayette in his Virginia campaign, received favorable consideration by the Assembly (MS. Petitions, New York County, 1786, B 4051).
     76 Hening, vol. xi, p. 309 (1783).
     77 Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 102 (1789).
     78 In 1788 it was inserted in the Friends' Discipline "that none amongst us be concerned in importing, buying, selling, holding, or overseeing slaves, and that all bear a faithful testimony against the practice."  In 1785 the following query was put before the delegates to the Upper Quarterly Meeting: "Do any Friends hold slaves and do all bear a faithful testimony against the practice?"  In 1796 it was reported at a meeting that there was no longer complaint of Friends' holding slaves when they could be lawfully liberated (Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, pp. 212, 214).

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often easily induced by the slaves themselves, or by a philanthropic person in behalf of the slaves, to grant deeds of manumission in consideration of a money payment.  This period from 1782 to 1806 was the time when manumission was most popular in Virginia, and is unique in the history of slavery in the State as being the only period when manumission went on at a rapid rate without legal restraint.
     Public opinion, however, was by no means unanimous as to the wisdom of manumission or as to the expediency of permitting the practice to go on without some legal restriction.  Very soon after the act of 1782 took effect, lessons learned from experience with a free negro element began to cast a tremendous weight in the balances on the side of the reactionaries, who lost no opportunity to point out the evil results of manumission.79  Almost a hundred years previously, manumission was for the first time restricted by law, because free negroes were unproductive and because they incited slaves to steal and to rebel.80  Throughout the long period which intervened between that experience and the close of the Revolutionary War the free negro was almost a negligible social factor, and afforded little reminder of the real character of a large and growing free negro element in a population constituted as was that of virginia.  With the old restraints upon manumission removed, two years trial of the freedmen was sufficient to convince many persons that "free negroes are agents, factors and carriers to the neighboring towns for slaves, of property by them stolen from their masters and others."81  Three years later the opponents of manumission declared it to be a very

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     79 MS. Petitions, 1784, A 8124; A 8971; A 2901.  A petition from Accomac County, in June, 1782, signed by forty-five persons, assigned before 1782 should not be set free: (1) Manumitted slaves had helped unmanumitted slaves to join the British; (2) It would depreciate the value of slave property and thus lessen revenue; (3) Manumission should be preserved solely as a means of rewarding slaves for good conduct; (4) Free negroes easily become charges upon the public (MS. Petition, Accomac County, 1785, A 11).
     80 See above, p. 51.
     81 MS. Petitions, Hanover County, 1784, A 8124; Henrico County, 1784, A 8971.

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great and growing evil," and, failing to get a prohibitive measure passed, they proposed the plan of compelling every negro to leave the State within twelve months after the date of his manumission.82  The plan was not adopted, but free negroes were forbidden by an act of 1793 to come into the State.83
     Much difficulty was soon experienced in discriminating between slaves fraudulently passing as free negroes and negroes actually free.  The right of free negroes to go and come and to pass to the fro in a community without hindrance or question proved to be a cloak behind which runaway slaves escaped detection.84  An attempt to regulate the evil by strict registration requirements only augmented it,85 free negroes treated their registers or "free papers" as if they were transferable, and escaping slaves used them to conceal their identity.86  Enterprising slaves even forged such papers, or secured them from white persons who made a practice of forging freedom certificates and supplying slaves with the means of escape.87
     All these things had been operating to effect a change in sentiment adverse to manumission when an attempted insurrection of slaves in Richmond, led by a slave named

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     82 K. M. Rowland, The Life of George Mason, vol. ii, p. 201.  For failure to leave they were to be sold at public auction.  The proposition followed closely the law passed in 1691.  Unlike that law, however, it contained no provision for requiring the master to pay the expenses of transporting the manumitted slave.
     83 Hening, vol. xiv, p. 239.  Any citizen might arrest a violator of this law and take him before a justice, who was empowered "to remove every such free negro or mulatto . . . into that state or island from whence it shall appear he or she last came."
     84 Virginia Gazette and the American Advertizer, July 5, 1783.  "Reward: Ran away from the subscriber a mulatto man slave named Jack a crafty fellow . . . he has a forged pass to pass for a free man" (ibid., October 16, 1784).
     85 Hening, vol. xiv, p. 238.
     86 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 78
     87 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 365.  Any person "aiding or abetting in forgery of writings whereby a slave or servant of another may go free" was liable to a penalty of two hundred dollars and one year's imprisonment.  Ishmael Lawrence was indicted, found guilty, and fined only ten dollars by a Henrico County court in 1795 for "forging uttering and distributing freedom papers or Deeds of emancipation to runaway slaves" (MS. Orders, no. 6, p. 514)

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Gabriel, set the white people of the State to thinking on the dangers from a partial subjection of a servile race.88  While the evidence showed but little direct or criminal connection of free negroes with the plot,89 it revealed the fact that barbacues, fish-feasts, and "preachings," at which the free negro was known to be a prominent figure, had furnished the occasion for arranging the plot.  This fact and testimony that Methodists, Quakers, and Frenchmen, all of whom had been favorable to manumission, were to be spared by the insurgents90 were convincing that a mere presence in a community of a manumitted negro was a source of danger.
     On Dec. 31, 1800, the year of the Gabriel insurrection , the legislature, behind closed doors, passed the following resolution: "That the Governor be requested to correspond with the president of the United States on the subject of purchasing lands without the limits of the United States whither persons obnoxious to the laws or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed."91
     The obnoxious and dangerous persons described here were bit criminals or seditious aliens, as might be supposed, but "free negroes and mulattos including those who may hereafter be emancipated."92  At the time of this resolution was passed there were upwards of twenty thousand persons in Virginia included within its scope; hence persons who viewed the growth of the free negro population with alarm

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     88 This attempt to massacre the white inhabitants of Richmond was called the Gabriel Insurrection.  See The Richmond Recorder, April 6, 9, 1803; R. R. Howison, A History of Virginia, vol. ii, pp. 390, 391.
     89 "A man named Samuel Bird, a free mulatto of Hanover town was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the conspiracy of the negroes; he . . . was finally discharged for want of evidence, it being decided that people of his own color, in slavery, could not give testimony against him.  His son, a slave, was condemned and executed yesterday" (Writings of James Monroe, ed. by Hamilton, vol. ii, p. 215).
     90 Richmond Recorder, April 9, 1803.
     91 Documents of the House of Delegates, no. 10, 1847-1848, cited as House Documents: A. Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa, p. 63.
     92 Writings of Monroe, vol. iii, p. 20.

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began to realize that restrictions upon the manumission of slaves could not now afford complete relief from the menace of the free negro.  The resolution of the legislature was the starting-point of the colonization movement in Virginia and, in fact, in the United States.  Governor Monroe, acting upon the request made of him by the resolution, promptly communicated with President Jefferson, and in a lengthy correspondence which followed, opinions were given and received of the comparative value of the southwestern frontier, the West Indies, and Africa as a place for a colony of these persons who were obnoxious to the laws and the peace.93
     While colonization ideas were being born, new and unusually stringent measures for keeping watch over and controlling the actions of free negroes were enacted.  They were forbidden to move from one county or town to another on penalty of being arrested and imprisoned as vagrants.94  The laws concerning the migration of free negroes
into the Commonwealth were declared defective and in need of revision, and more exacting registration requirements were enacted.95  The laws of evidence were changed so that a slave was a good witness in pleas of the Commonwealth against a free negro.98  A strong public guard to be stationed at Richmond was considered by the Assembly to be expedient for the public safety "in the present crisis of affairs."97
     The prospect of removing the free negroes was, however, not yet deemed so promising as to cause persons to lose sight of the necessity of reducing the enormous rate of increase in the free negro population by closing the avenue of escape from slavery to freedom. In the legislative session of 1804-1805 the state of public opinion upon the sub-

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     93 Writings of Monroe, vol. iii, pp. 201-217, 292; The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Ford, vol. iv, pp. 419-422; House Documents, no. 10, 1847-1848.
     94 Hening, vol. xv, p. 301 (1801).
     95 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 301
     96 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 295, 296; Howison, vol. ii, pp. 388-393; House Journal, 1800-1809, pp. 47, 48.

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ject of manumission was reflected in a vigorous debate on the floor of the house on the merits of a proposition to abolish the right of private manumission altogether.98  The speakers who favored a restriction of the privilege seemed to recognize the difficult task before them of overcoming a strong presumption against legislative interference with an individual right enjoyed since the close of the Revolution.  "It is not the natural rights of individuals," they asserted, "to dispose of his own property in every case . . . . It is a moral maxim that no man can appropriate his property to any purposes which may injure the interest of others . . . . Whoever emancipates a slave may be inflicting the deadliest injury upon his neighbor.  He may be furnishing some active chieftain of a formidable conspiracy."  Vivid illustration of and support for the argument were freely taken from the recent insurrections in Santo Domingo as well as from those in the State.99  An additional "power of combining," it was said, was placed in the hands of slaves by giving to them the "right of locomotion."  "What should we say of a man who having his mortal foe bound at his feet sets him at liberty and plants a stiletto in his hand?"
     A second ground of attack was occupied by matching against the property-rights defense of manumission an argument for economizing revenue by checking a reckless destruction of property in slaves.  The members of the House were asked to consider the loss to the State in revenue incurred by the manumission of twenty thousand slaves since 1782.  A third argument was in refutation of the strongly entrenched opinion that the proposed measure would violate "the rights of conscience."  "What respect is due," asked Smyth, of Wythe County, "to the conscience of that man who, after having made all the use he could of his slaves does not hesitate to deprive his wife and children of their labor?"

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     98 Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 15, 1805.
     99 A speaker in debate before the Hosue read portions of the history of the insurrection of Santo Domingo (Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 15, 1805).

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     With equal skill the defenders of the privilege of manumission matched arguments with the opposition.  They affirmed that the loss in revenue incurred by manumission was smaller than would be the loss of a single day occupied by the legislature in considering the mass of petitions which would pur in upon that body, as they poured in upon the legislatures  before the act of 1782, should be restrictive measure carry.  They emphasized also the fact that there was "a vast number of people who labor under scruples of conscience and think it wrong to keep their fellow creatures in slavery . . . . These men consider their religion as the law of God; and if we pass this bill we shall place them between two contrary and conflicting laws."
     Moreover, the proposed measure, then said, would not only be unwise policy, but would also be in violation of the constitution.  "The first clause says that all men are by nature equal and independent.  Already we have violated this declaration, but the present measure will do so still more; for . . . the last clause declares that conscience ought to be free."
     Finally, what better safeuard against insurrection could there be than the power in the hands of every slave-master to reward with freedom his faithful and loyal slaves?  "What reward is more seductive than the acquisition of freedom?  . . . Suppose a servant knows that some harm is to happen to his master, can he have a stronger incitement to inform him of it and put him upon his guard than the prospect of emancipation?"100
     When the vote which determined the fate of the bill was taken, it stood 77 against and 70 in favor of its becoming law.  The editor of the Enquirer avowed his disappointment that the measure, "in spite of the imperious policy which dictated its adoption was rejected," and expressed a hope "that some future Legislature will have the prudence to administer the suitable remedy."101.

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     100 Richmond Enquire, Jan. 15, 1805.
     101 Ibid.

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     In the next annual session of the legislature there were not lacking those who shared the views of the editor on the matter of reopening the question in another effort to administer a remedy.  Fears were expressed by some members that free and open discussion was dangerous, but in spite of these warnings a bill for taking from masters the right to free slaves was introduced and debated with much zest.102  The events connected with the Gabriel attempt at insurrection were again recalled and associated with the idle and vicious habits of free negroes.  A friend of the bill declared that "these blacks who are free obtain a knowledge of facts by passing from place to place in society; they can thus organize insurrection. . . .  It may be proven that it is the free blacks who instil into the slaves ideas hostile to our peace."103  Principles of policy and considerations of safety were no longer to be brushed aside by arguments based upon the rights of man.104
     When the division came, the bill was lost by a vote of 75 to 73.105  But the full strength of the party in favor of restricting manumission was not shown in this vote, which was a test only upon the question of abolishing the right altogether.  There was apparent agreement that drastic police measures were necessary, and but very little objection to placing free negroes under any surveillance and restriction that seemed to be necessary for the safety of society; but a majority was held intact against abolishing the right of manumission only because it believed that the measure infringed the rights of private property and "that the conscience of a dying man ought not to be deprived of the momentary comfort emancipation of his slaves would produce."106  The objectionable features could, however, be avoided by approaching the question from its other side,

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     102 Virginia Argus, Jan. 17, 1806.
     103 Ibid.
     104 A speaker affirmed that he was not less friendly to "the rights of man" than others who opposed the bill, but that he advocated it from policy (Virginia Argus, Jan. 17, 1806).
     105. House Journal, 1805-1806, pp 68, 77.
 

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that is, by leaving unrestrained the will of the master and restraining the will of the slave with an imposition of such conditions upon freedmen as would make liberty undesirable.  Such a plan had been adopted in 1691, and had been proposed in 1787.  The device met with the approval of this Assembly, and an act was passed by which all slaves manumitted after May 1, 1806, were required to leave the State within twelve months from the time their freedom accrued, or, if under age, from the time they reached their majority.107
     In 1784 a vote taken in the House of Delegates showed that only one third of the members of that House were then in favor of the absolute prohibition of the manumission of slaves.  By 1806 this minority had made such gains that an accession of only two votes would have transformed it into a majority.  It is a significant fact that when the opponents of the policy of permitting private manumissions seemed so near to victory, almost all concerted efforts to repeal the law of 1782 came to an end.  The law of 1806 was the last important change in the policy of the State respecting the slave-owner's right to free a slave.  The absence after 1806 of a strong demand to curb the power of a master to convert his slave into a free negro was due chiefly to two causes. 
     In the first place, the act of 1806 prescribing banishment for any slave, thereafter set free was regarded as an indirect restriction upon the will of the master; hence it afforded to those who had been urging the repeal of the act of 1782 a measure of satisfaction.  It promised to bring about the results which the opponents of manumission desired without

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     107 The act, being a restriction in disguise upon manumission, was included as section 10 in an act concerning slaves.  It declared that "if any slave hereafter emancipated shall remain within this Commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to free dom shall have accrued he or she shall forfeit all such right and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor for any county or corporation in which he or she shall be found for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation"  (Hening, vol. xvi, p. 252).  Section 10 was a Senate amendment to the act concerning slaves, and was agreed to by the House by a vote of 94 to 65 (House Journal, 1805-1806, p. 77).

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a direct interference with jealously guarded property rights and without hindrance to freedom of conscience.108  In the second place, the act of 1806 represented a new idea— that of removing free negroes from the State.  As the free negro population increased, a prohibition upon manumission was seen to be of diminishing importance as a means of coping with the problem.  From 1782 to 1806 strenuous efforts were made to limit the power of masters to recruit the free negro population from the slave class.  After 1806 the strength of the opposition to the growth of the free colored class was directed mainly to removing or colonizing that class of the population.  The question of colonization, as we have seen, assumed an aspect of importance as a consequence of a resolution of the state legislature in 1800.  The act of 1806 was the first actual law of a long succession of laws enacted with a view to realizing the ideas set forth in the House resolutions of the first years of the century.
     A fundamental defect in the law of 1806 was its failure to provide any definite place to which the freed slaves might go.  As an immediate consequence of spasmodic attempts to enforce the law and of fears on the part of manumitted slaves that the law would be enforced against them, a notice able egress of negroes took place from Virginia to the Northern States and to the States bordering on Virginia on all sides.  Citizens of Maryland soon began to make loud complaint to their legislature.  "Virginia," they said, "has passed a law [expelling certain free negroes] and many of her beggarly blacks have been vomited upon us."109  Within

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     108 "That Government would be justly chargeable with the extreme of depotism that should attempt, without necessity, to interfere with the kind and generous feelings of the human heart,: asserted a committee of the House of Delegates in its report in 1829 favorable to the expediency of continuing the policy of removing free negroes and of permitting masters to manumit slaves (African Repository and Colonial Journal, vol. iii, p. 54.  Cited as African Repository).
     109 MS. Petitions to House of Delegates, in Maryland Historical Society, portfolio 7, no. 28; J. R. Brackett, The Negro in Maryland, pp. 176, 177.

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a year after the Virginia act was passed the legislatures of three different States - Maryland,110 Kentucky,111 and Delaware112 - had passed countervailing acts forbidding free negroes to come in from other States to take up permanent residence.  Other States followed the lead of the three already named and passed laws excluding free negroes or imposing upon their admission such rigid requirements as to render their coming impracticable.  Ohio,113 Indiana,114 Illinois,115 Missouri,116 North Carolina,117 and Tennessee118 had passed some such law within twenty-five years after the Virginia act of 1806.  The people of Mercer county, Ohio, refused to allow John Randolph's three hundred and eighty-five negroes, who left Virginia in compliance with the laws, to remain even free three days upon land purchased for them in that county, although these negroes could comply with Ohio's law requiring of emigrant free negroes bond for good behavior.119  In no State was a cordial welcome held out to Virginia's expatriated negroes.  A refugee slave was far more likely to meet with hospitality in the Northern States than was a free negro.120
     When that portion of the population of Virginia which viewed the residence of the free blacks among them as "an intolerable burden"121 saw that the removal laws were being

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     110 Laws of Maryland, 1806, ch. 56; 1823, ch. 161; Brackett, p. 176.
     111 Acts of Kentucky Legislature, 1807-1808, sec. 3; J. C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, vol. 88, pp.15, 18; MS. Petitions, Cumberland County, 1815, A 4728.
     112 4 Delaware Laws, 108; Hurd, vol. ii, p. 77
     113 Ohio Sessions Laws, ch. 8; Hurd, vol. ii, p. 117
     114 Hurd, vol. ii, p. 130
     115 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 135
     116 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 170
     117 Revised Code of North Carolina, 107, sec. 54-58, 75-77; J. S. Bassett, Slavery in the State of North Carolina, in J. H. U. Studies, ser. xvii, nos. 7-8.
     118 Hurd, vol. ii, p. 92.  See also The Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 19, 1832, speech of Mr. Goode.
     119 The Liberator, August 7, 21, 1846.
     120 "If there is one fact established by steadily accumulating evidence it is that the free negro cannot find a congenial home in the United States.  He is an exotic among us" (quoted in De Bow's Commercial Review, vol. xxvii, p. 731, from Philadelphia North American).
     121 MS. Petitions, Prince William County, 1838.

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"frustrated by the action of sister states"122 as well as by the inactivity of local officials in enforcing the banishment provisions, efforts were made to seek a place beyond the United States where free negroes could be colonized.  On Dec. 14, 1816, a resolution was adopted in the House of Delegates which strongly urged the importance of colonization, and requested the governor to "correspond with the President of the United States for the purpose of obtaining a territory upon the shores of the North Pacific, or some other place not within any of the States or territorial governments of the United States to serve as an asylum for such persons of color as are now free and may desire the same and for those who may be hereafter emancipated within this Commonwealth."123  Within a short while after the adoption of this resolution there was organized in Washington the American Colonization Society, and throughout the counties and cities of Eastern Virginia auxiliary organizations sprang up.124  A state colonization society had headquarters at Richmond in 1831,and had various branches throughout the State.125  The two most important duties of these societies and their agents were to procure, first, funds for the transportation of free negroes126 to Africa, and, secondly, free negroes who were willing to be transported there.127
     From 1820 to 1860 these societies were very active in propagating the colonization ideas.  In 1833 they procured from the legislature an annual appropriation of eighteen

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     122 MS. Petitions, Dinwiddie County, 1838, A 5090.
     123 House Journal, 1816-1817, p. 90.
     124 Address of the Rockbridge Colonization Society, in African Repository, vol. iii, p. 274; Report of Managers of the Lynchburg Auxiliary Colonization Society, in ibid., vol. iii, p. 202; Memorial of the Richmond and Manchester Auxiliary Colonization Society, in MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1825, A 9358.
     125 Petition of the Colonization Society of Virginia, in MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1831, A 9431.
     126. African Repository, vol. iii, pp. 280, 281
     127. "Difficulty ahs been apprehended in obtaining a sufficient number of emigrants . . . . Many of the free people are either ignorant of the scheme or prejudiced against it.  They are suspicious of white men"  (Address of Rockbridge Colonization Society, in African Repository, vol. iii ,p. 279).

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thousand dollars for five years to be used in Africa.  From this time on for a quarter of a century the state legislature was committed to the plan of colonization as a solution of the free negro problem; and although that plan resulted in repeated failure, it was sufficiently promising to absorb the greater part of the interest of nearly all who wished to check the growth of the free colored class.128  Between 1836 and 1856, propositions for limiting the power of masters to manumit their slaves were pressed forward with some energy, but were uniformly defeated.129  The constitutional convention of 1850 evaded the question of limiting manumission by granting to the legislature the power to "impose such restrictions and conditions it shall deem proper upon the power of slave-owners to emancipate their slaves," a power which the legislature had always been understood to have.130  The law of 1806 was reenacted at various times after its first enactment, with such changes as were deemed necessary to improve its effectiveness, and in 1850 it was embodied in the new constitution and remained a part of the constitutional law of the State till the overthrow of the slavery regime.
     The adoption in 1806 of a new policy respecting manu-

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     128 Acts, 183-1833, p. 14.  Large appropriations ($30,000) were made by the legislature in 1850 and 1853 for the purpose of colonizing the free colored population (ibid., 1849-1850, p. 7; 1852-1853, p. 58).  But so few were the numbers of Virginia negroes actually colonized in comparison with the entire free negro population of the State of Virginia colonization ay be said to have been an absolute failure.  During the three years in which the law of 1850 was in operation only 419 free blacks and slaves were sent from Virginia to Africa, and of the $90,00 available for colonization purposes only $5410 was used.  Prior to 1854 only 2800 colored persons in all had been sent from Virginia to Africa.  After 1853 the annual appropriation of $30,000 was never consumed upon the transportation of emigrants.  For the fiscal year ending Oct. 1 1858, only $2100 was expended by the colonization board and only 42 negroes were sent out (Message of Governor Johnson, in House Journal, 1853-1854, p. 15; House Documents, 1859-1860, no 5, p. 407).
     129 House Journal, 1839, p. 247; 1842-1843, p. 28; 1852-1853, p. 83; 1855-1856 pp. 112, 436; 1857-1858, p. 262; Journals of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1857-1858, p. 668, cited as Senate Journal.
     130 Journal, Acts and Proceedings of the Convention of 1850, p. 327; Constitution of 1850, sec. 3 on Slaves and Free Negroes.

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mitted slaves should be considered as the point of division between two stages in the progress of manumission in Virginia.  The actual operation of the law was, however, only one of several causes of the decline which occurred about that time in the frequency of manumissions.  First among the causes which resulted in a decreased disintegration of slavery early in the century was the growth of an anti-free negro sentiment which acted as powerfully to determine the action of individual slave-owners as it did to determine legislation.  Not a few of these persons were becoming converted to the opinion expressed in the editorial columns of the Richmond Recorder that "there never was a madder method of sinking property, a method more hostile to the safety of society than the freak of emancipating negroes."131  Even from the point of view of the slave's welfare, honest reflection upon the hard conditions— economic, social, and legal— of free negroes, whether they remained in the State or attempted to emigrate, caused masters of benevolent intentions to hesitate long before surrendering a slave to his own care.  The feeling of this class of slave-owners was well expressed by Thomas Jefferson in 1814: "Men of this color are by their habits, rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves and are promptly extinguished whenever industry is necessary for raising the young.  In the meantime they are pests in society by their idleness and the depredations to which this leads them."132
     In the second place, among the causes of the decline in the frequency of manumissions must be reckoned the restraining effect of the law annexing banishment as an attendant condition.  "This law," wrote the Powhatan Colonization Society, "has restrained many masters from giving freedom to their slaves and has thereby contributed

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     131 Richmond Recorder, Nov. 10, 1802.  This issue contains a lengthy and animated discussion of the vicious character of the free negro and the dangers of manumission.
     132 Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. iii, p. 644.  Compare also John Burk's statement in 1804 that "The first loss to be sustained by an emancipation is not the greater bar to this desirable end"  (The History of Virginia, vol. i, p. 212 n.).

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to check the growth of an evil already too great and formidable."133  Richard Hildreth, writing in 1856, asserts that under the act of 1782 manumissions were very numerous, "and but for the subsequent re-enactment [in 1806] of restrictions upon it, the free colored population of Virginia might now exceed the slaves."134  A petition to the legislature from the Richmond Colonization Society attributed entirely to this law the decline of four thousand in the decennial increase in the free negro population from the first to the second decade of the century.135
     The Virginia slaves felt keenly their dependence upon those by whom they were reared and for whom they labored.  Many of them preferred to continue as slaves in their master's household rather than incur the risk of being sent homeless into a strange land.  Lucinda, a negro woman manumitted about 1812 by the last will of Mary Matthews, refused to be moved to Tennessee with other negroes set free by the same will, deliberately remaining in the State long enough to forfeit her freedom and petitioning the legislature to vest the title to her in William H. Hose. 136  Sam, a negro petitioner, declared to the legislature in 1808 that he preferred slavery to being forced to leave his wife and family, all of whom were slaves, 137  There were many slave-owners who considered the question of manumission solely from the standpoint of the welfare of their slaves, and who were therefore temporarily or permanently prevented from conferring upon them a freedom which would deprive them of their only hope of a lawful support.  John Randolph of Roanoke, writing in his will in 1819 concerning his slaves, said, "I has a long time been a matter of deepest regret to me that . . . the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws

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     133 Memorial to Virginia Legislature, in MS. Petitions, Powhatan County, 182(5?), uncatalogued.
     134 The History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 392.
     135 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1825, A 9358

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of the land have prevented my emancipating them in my life-time."138
     Furthermore, many free negroes who owned as slaves in a legal sense their wives and children or their brothers, sisters, and other relatives were after 1806 deterred from setting them free when they contemplated the prospect of seeing their dearest friends banished from the State by an enforcement against them of the limited residence law.  For example, a colored man named Frank, who resided in Amelia County, had purchased his wife and three children, and, according to the statement of his white neighbors, had "always intended that they should be virtually free, although the law prohibited him from making them actually so without subjecting them to removal from the state." 139  Bowling Clark, a free negro of Campbell County, purchased his wife a few years after the act of 1806 went into operation; but both were declining in years, and both preferred the existing arrangement to one which would have given the wife freedom at the cost of parting husband and wife or of sending both from their home together.140  Numerous instances could be cited to show that the law annexing banishment as a condition of manumission exerted a powerful effect in restraining the will of black slave-owners.141
     The third of the causes which deserve notice here in connection with the general decline in the frequency of manumissions in the nineteenth century is a noteworthy change in the economic aspects of slaveholding.  The invention of

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     138 The last will and testament of John Randolph of Roanoke set free about three hundred and eighty-five slaves.  The document is printed in Garland, vol. ii, p. 150.
     139 In 1809 Frank died, and the only means that remained of saving "Patience, the wife, and Philemon, Elizabeth and Henry, the children of the free black man" from sale into slavery was legislative intervention by private act.  The legislature intervened in this case because the purchase by Frank of his family took place before the enactment of the law of 1806.  Legislative action was refused in many similar cases of later date (MS. Petitions, Amelia County, 1809, A 768; Acts, 1809-1810, p. 54).
     140 MS. Petitions, Campbell County, 1815, A 3412.
     141  See MS. Petitions, Fauquier County, 1837, A 5859; and below, pp. 92, 93.  The imperfect enforcement of the act of 1806, a subject treated elsewhere in this monograph, did not relieve negroes of the fear of the consequences, following violation of it.

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the cotton gin in 1793 made possible the expansion of the cotton industry in the South.  The result of this industrial expansion created as demand for slaves to work in the cotton fields.   The abolition of the foreign slave trade in 1808 produced the final condition for the rapid growth of a domestic slave trade which eventually resulted in a rose in prices of  Virginia slaves.  About 1790, "when slave prices reached the bottom of a twenty years' decline,"142 the maximum frequency of manumissions was attained, with the exception of the first few months after the manumission act took
effect.  Conditions in 1794 were such as to lead Washington to say that he believed that slaves would be "found to be a very troublesome species of property ere many years pass over our heads."148  Any slave-owner having a limited number of acres for tillage might readily become overstocked with slaves and be forced to the alternative of manumitting or selling some of them.144  In various ways household slaves made demands upon or appeals to their owners for freedom.  In competition with these demands was the demand of the slave market.  When the competition of the market was weak, as it was in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the slave had a better opportunity to purchase, or to induce a friend to purchase, his freedom, or to appeal with success to the charity of his owner, than when attractive prices were being offered to owners for their surplus property.145

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     142 U. B. Phillips, "The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt," in Political Science Quarterly, vol. xx, p. 257.
     143 Washington to Alexander Spottswood, Nov. 23, 1794, in New York Public Library Bulletin, vol. ii, pp. 14, 15.
     144 Delegates representing slave-owning interests in the constitutional convention of 1829-1830 feared that delegates from western Virginia desired to see slavery taxed out of existence.  If slaves were to be taxed more heavily, thought Richard Morris, "Either the master must run away from the slaves or the slave from the master."  Here we see a recognition of the relation between the freeing of slaves and the paying character of slave property (Proceedings and Debates of the Convention, p. 116).
     145 In 1792 a negro man living in King William County died, leaving a will which directed that so much of his estate as was necessary to be used to purchase the freedom of his son, the property of Benjamin Temple.  This illustrates a phase of manumission directly affected by the market price of slaves (Hening, vol. xiii, p. 619)

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     It is important, however, to keep in mind that the change in economic conditions was not a sudden one, and that it was not the sole cause of the decline in the frequency of manumissions.  John Fiske overrated the economic phase when he wrote, "After the abolition of the slave-trade in 1808 had increased the demand for Virginia-bred slaves in the states further south the very idea of emancipation faded out of memory."146  This statement is erroneous both as to the facts and as to the inference that the cause of the change was wholly economic.  The personal and human element in the relations of the master and his slaves so often overshadowed the property relation that the disposition which a master would make of his slaves could not be foretold by reference to economic laws.
     The change in the economic value of slaveholding ascribed by Fiske to the early part of the century was in fact more potent in producing the second stage in the decline of manumission, which began about 1830, than it was in ushering in the first period of decline in the first decade of the century.  No great rise in slave prices came about in Virginia before 1830 as a result of the growth of the cotton industry.147  As a result of the decided improvement in slavery as an economic system and of the increasing vehemence of attacks made upon slavery by abolitionists, there arose soon after the great slavery debate in the Virginia legislature in 1832 a new school of slavery apologists whose outspoken defenses of slavery as a beneficial economic and political institution represented a new stage in the development of sentiment adverse to manumitting. The man who may be called the founder of this school of proslavery writers was Thomas R. Dew, professor of history and metaphysics in William and Mary College, who reviewed the slavery debate of 1832 and wrote an elaborate defense of slavery entitled "Essay on Slavery."  Other writers who followed Dew in defend-

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     146 Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, vol. ii, p. 191.
     147 W. H. Collins, The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States, p. 26 et seq.; W. Jay, Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery, pp. 266, 267.

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ing slavery upon its merits were George Fitzhugh,148 Alfred T. Bledsoe, professor of mathematics in the University of Virginia,149 Rev. Dr. Thornton Stringfellow,150 and Edmund Ruffin.151
     The theory advanced by these writers was that the negro occupied his true and proper economic and political sphere in slavery, and that the correct solution of the race problem was not a plan of gradual emancipation, as was urged by a large minority in the legislature of 1832, but a reduction and continued subjection of the members of the black race to slavery.  This view differentiates the part of the nineteenth century before 1832 from the part which came between 1832 and 1860, and serves to show by contrast how considerable was the freedom sentiment in Virginia up to 1832.  The increase of the free negro population during the decade of 1820-1830 was 10,474.  From 1830 to 1840 the increase in that class of the population was only 2500.  Prior to the Southampton insurrection and the consequent discussion of the slavery question, prevailing opinion regarded slavery as an evil system to be removed as soon as a feasible method could be devised.  It was hoped that by manumission the problem of drawing off a certain part of the colored class for colonization would be solved, and that this plan would finally remove the negroes to Africa.  A stronger and more general antislavery sentiment existed in Virginia prior to 1832 than some writers are disposed to admit.  The earnestness of the debate and the closeness of the vote on an emancipation project in the legislature in 1832 is wrongly regarded by Edward Ingle 152 as a sort of wild expression of fear created by the Southampton insurrection, and not as an expression of normal sentiment.  It is true that the insurrection furnished the occasion for the debate of 1832, but the antislavery sentiments expressed fairly represented

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     148 "Sociology for the South," and "What Shall be done with the Free Negroes?"
     149 Liberty and Slavery."
     150 "The Bible Argument."
     151 "African Colonization Unveiled."
     152 Southern Sidelights, pp. 265, 266.

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honest views which had persisted up to that time.  Anti-slavery sentiments had been uttered in the constitutional convention of 1829-1830 by such men as John Monroe. 153  In 1821 Madison declared that the free negroes were "increasing rapidly from manumissions and from offsprings."154  Again in 1826 he wrote to La Fayette that "manumissions more than keep pace with the outlets provided and that the increase of them is only checked by their [the freedmen] remaining in the country.155  This obstacle removed and all others would yield to the emancipating disposition."  In Madison's opinion, "the tendency was favorable to the cause of universal emancipation."
     In contrast with this view expressed by Madison, which is representative of an attitude toward the slavery question quite extensively held before 1832, we may consider the opinion of a pamphlet writer of the decade of the fifties as indicative of the change in sentiment since 1832.  Speaking of the mistaken philanthropy of the slave-owners of the period of the Commonwealth prior to 1832, he declared that the soil was then especially favorable to the growth of manumission sentiment.  "For slavery had come to be generally considered as an economical and political evil by a large portion of the intelligent slaveholders in Virginia.  It was not until after abolition fanaticism of the Northern people had become both active and malignant, and that Professor Dew's excellent 'Essay on Slavery' (the first important defense of the system offered in modern days) had been published that the revulsion began.  At the present time, there are few intelligent and well informed persons in all Virginia who do not deem negro slavery to be in every respect a beneficial institution."156

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     153 Debates of the Convention, p. 172; Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 5, 1829.
     154 Madison's Writings, vol. iii, p. 240.
     155 Madison's Writings, vol. iii p. 275, 540.  For petitions signed by large numbers of citizens pleading, in 1827, in the interest of "citizens who may feel disposed to emancipate their slaves." see  MS. Petitions, Frederick, Jefferson, and Berkeley Counties, 1827, A 6495.
     156 "Calx," pp. 4, 5.

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     From what has already been said it should appear clear that the periods in the history of manumission from 1782 to 1865 were marked rather by changes in sentiment than by changes in laws.  The act of 1782 authorizing manumission by the will or other instrument of writing remained in full force to the close of the Civil War.157  By way of comparing the three stages in manumission sentiment under the act of 1782 it may with tolerable accuracy be stated that the chances of manumission of a slave living in Virginia through the generation preceding 1800 were about ten in a hundred; of one living through the period from 1800 to 1832, about four or five in a hundred; and of one living after 1832,  about two in a hundred.
     On a basis of sentiment or of the frequency with which manumissions occurred there may be said to be three stages in the progress of manumissions during the period of the Commonwealth, but from the standpoint of legal processes and regulations of manumission the period from 1782 to 1865 is but one period.
     The act of 1782 imposed upon slave-owners who manumitted slaves over forty-five years of age the duty of providing for their maintenance, in order that they might not become charges upon the public.158  In 1792 a revision of the act of 1782 was deemed necessary to the proper protection of creditors.  A qualifying clause was appended to the provisions of the original act which made any manumitted slave liable to be taken by execution to satisfy the dets contracted by his former master previous to the date of manumission.159  In several important cases the supreme

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     157 It seems an inexcusable error on the part of Henry Wilson that he should have asserted in his History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power that the act of 1782 remained in force for only ten years, and that after its provisions were repealed "that source of just and humane individual action being forcibly stopped, gradually dried up and ceased to flow" (vol. i, p. 20).  See Code (1849), 459 n., for a statement by the compiler that "the right to emancipate has continued eer since [1782]; and the validity and effect of instruments of emancipation have been passed upon in many cases."
     158 See deed executed by Samuel Tinsley 1792, in MS. Deeds of Henrico County, no. 4, p. 212.
     159 Hening, vol. xiv, p. 128

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court of appeals held that "the right to emancipate slaves is subordinate to the obligation to pay debts previously contracted by express will of the statute."160  In 1805 certain negroes set free by a deed of gift from their owner were, in pursuance of a decision of the supreme court of appeals, taken in execution for the satisfaction of the debts of the slave-owner's wife, notwithstanding the fact that the negroes belonged to their owner before he married the wife for whose debts the negroes were held.161  All other forms of property, personal or real, had to be applied to the payment of debts before execution could be made upon liberated slaves; and if the amount of indebtedness remaining could be paid by hiring out the liberated negroes of the debtor, they were deprived of freedom only as long as was necessary to raise the required amount.  No statute of limitations could be appealed to by negroes who had been in peaceful possession of their freedom for five, ten, or apparently any number of years to stop an execution upon them for the debts of their owner contracted before the liberation.162
     Under the provisions of the act of 1782 and of every later revision of that act, manumissions could be made by last will and testament or by other instrument of writing properly attested and proved.  Written instruments of manumission other than wills were generally called "deeds of manumission" or "deeds of emancipation."  Strictly speaking, such instruments were not deeds, because they imported no transfer of property from one to another, but they bore a close analogy to deeds. Referring to this analogy, a judge of the supreme court of appeals in Thrift v. Hannah said: "A deed is a writing sealed and deliveredProof or acknowledgment in court is to an instrument of emancipation what delivery is to a deed at common law."163  In imitation

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     160 Dunn v. Amey, 1 Leigh, 465 (1829); Jincey et al. v. Winfield Administrators, 9 Grattan, 708 (1853).
     161 Woodley v. Abby, 5 Call, 336.  See also Patty v. Colin, 1 Hening and Munford, 519 (1807).
     162 Woodley v. Abby, 5 Call, 336; Patty v. Colin, 1 Hening and Munford, 519 (1807)
     163 Thrift v. Hannah, 2 Leigh, 330.

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of deeds or indentures conveying property from one to another, such instruments of manumission usually stipulated a pecuniary consideration.  Even when the act of the master was purely an act of benevolence, it was the practice to stipulate some such nominal consideration as five shillings,164 one dollar,165 or five dollars.166  Deeds of manumission were in frequent use between 1782 and 1800 by persons of very decided antislavery views,167 as, for example, the Quakers.  Though of less frequent occurrence in the deed-books of the nineteenth century, deeds of emancipation were used by free negroes who purchased and set free their relatives and friends, or by masters who agreed with their slaves to set them free upon payment of a certain sum of money.
     The most common type of deeds of emancipation is exemplified by the following instrument, taken from the court records of Henrico County: -

     To all whom these presents may come know ye, that I Peter Hawkins a free black man of the City of Richmond having purchased my wife Rose, a slave about twenty-two years of age and by her have had a child called Mary now about 18 mo. old, for the love I bear toward my wife and child have thought proper to emancipate them and for the further consideration of five shillings to me in hand paid . . . I emancipate and set free the said Rose and Mary . . . and relinquish all my right title and interest and claim whatsoever as slaves to the said Rose and Mary.
                        
               PETER HAWKINS (Seal)168

     From the standpoint of proslavery men of the nineteenth century, manumission by last will and testament was the method most likely to be abused.  It was certainly the method which remained in most common use throughout the entire period of the Commonwealth.  When a slave-owner recognized that he was approaching the end of life.

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     164 MS Deeds of Henrico County, no 2, pp. 569, 574; no 6, p. 274.
     165 Ibid., no. 7, p. 205.
     166 Ibid., no. 7, p. 454.
     167 Betsey Barlow, who from benevolent motives freed her slaves by deed in 1789, gave them not only freedom but new names: "I set free Jacob and Sarah to whom I give the names Jacob Holland and Sarah Marnick" (MS. Deeds of Northampton County, 1785-1794, p. 291).  Manumitted slaves often assumed the surnames of their former owner.
     168 MS. Deeds of Henrico County, 1800, no. 6, p. 78.

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he was likely to give serious consideration to his duty to his own slaves, regardless of his views respecting slavery in general.  There remained to him only one appropriate way of acknowledging his debt of gratitude for the long, patient, and faithful service of the slaves of his household.  Confronted with the alternative of dying ingrate or bequeathing to their servants freedom from bondage, many masters chose the latter course, and down to the Civil War the wills of slave-owners frequently contained such a clause as, "I give unto my negro her freedom on account of her faithfulness of service."169  Giles Fitzhugh, a descendant of a long line of slave-owners, freed all his slaves by his last will in 1853.170  A will of manumission sometimes represented a tardy effort or last resort to ease a goaded conscience.  John Randolph of Roanoke wrote in his last will, "I give to my slaves their freedom to which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled."171  Edmund Ruffin, lamenting in 1859 the abuse of testamentary manumissions by slave-owners of "sensitive or feeble minds, or morbidly tender consciences  . . . especially of wealthy old men and old women," saw in the motives of such slave-owners a resemblance to the motives appealed to by priests in the dark ages "when inducing rich sinners to smooth and pay their future pass to Heaven.

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     169 MS. Wills of Norfolk County, 1836-1868, p. 66.  The will of J. A. Schwartz, of Nottoway County, affords a striking illustration of the way in which the reflections of slave-masters in their last illness often impelled them to acknowledge their debt of gratitude to their slaves while there was opportunity.  With his slaves standing around him as he lay upon his death-bed, Schwartz questioned them separately before dictating orally what was intended for  his will in respect to them.
     "Bob, do you wish to be freed?"
     "I am willing to serve you, but I had rather be freed than have another master," said Bob.
     "He should be free," answered the master.
     When a similar conversation had taken place between Frank and the dying man with a like result, Polly enquired: "What are you going to do for me?"  "Polly and her children," said he, "should be free" (3 Leigh, 142).
     170 A. Crozier, Virginia County Records, vol. vii, p. 110.
     171 Garland, vol. ii, p. 150.  This last act of Randolph, liberating about three hundred and eighty-five slaves, was referred to by opponents of testamentary manumission as "the shocking example of John Randolph" (Ingle, p. 266).

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Such emancipations have been made in great amount and in many cases, and not only by the unquestionably benevolent and pious . . . but also by persons whose lives and actions, both as men and as masters, had indicated anything but piety, benevolence, or even a just and good treatment of their slaves."172
     The last will and testament was naturally the legal instrument selected by a slave-owner of moderate antislavery views who wished to retain the services of his negroes during his life, but desired at the same time to guarantee them, by providing for their freedom at his death, against being sold with his estate or separated from their homes and each other.  The testamentary method served equally well the master who wished to "lend" his slaves to his heirs for a fixed period during the lifetime of the heirs or until the slaves should arrive at a certain age.173  "Manumission in futuro " was the term applied to the act of a master whose will provided for the freedom of his slaves at a specified time after his death.
     Slave-owners making wills of manumission in futuro often attempted to affix conditions to the possession of freedom by their slaves.  A condition precedent to the manumission was held by the courts to be valid, that is to say, a master by his will could make the freedom of a slave depend upon some act or condition of the slave or upon some event, if such act, condition, or event was to be determined before the slave's freedom began.  A condition subsequent was invalid.  If a master manumitted his slave upon condition that the slave serve him for hire or otherwise after acquiring freedom or that the negro's children be slaves, the manu-

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     172 E. Ruffin, African Colonization Unveiled, p. 9.
     173 James Johnson, of Louisa County, made his will in 1785, bequeathing to his wife all his negroes during her lifetime.  After her death the negroes were to be set free upon attaining the age of twenty-one years (10 Leigh, 277).  John E. Taylor in his last will said: "I lend my slaves Margaret, Bridget, Ben, George, John and Sandy to my wife Keziah and my daughter Margaret during their natural lives, but in the event of the death of my said wife and daughter, I do hereby emancipate them and their issue forever"  (MS. Wills of Norfolk County, 1836-1868, p. 25).

[Pg. 87]
mission was valid, but the conditions stipulated were of no effect or force.174  Any effort to control or direct the conduct of a negro after manumission or to put him in a status intermediate between slavery and freedom was futile.175  Some wills conditioned the freedom of slaves upon the choice or election of the slaves when they arrived at certain ages or when certain conditions were fulfilled.  Until 1858 such wills were treated by the courts as valid.176  In the case of Baily et al. v. Poindexter the supreme court of appeals, contrary to the sentiment of the legal profession, ruled that slaves had no legal capacity even to choose to be free, and that allowing them such choice did not  manumit them or provide for their manumission.177

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     174 Minor, vol. i, p. 167.  John Fitzgerald of Petersburg bequeathed freedom to a female slave with the reservation that her children should be slaves.  When the instrument came for construction by appeal to the supreme court in 1827, it was held that the children of the woman set free were free and in no way under the control of their mother's former owner (Fulton v. Shaw, 4 Randall, 597).  It was different in the case of children born of a slave woman at any time before she had a right, according to the provisions of the will, to her freedom.  Such children were slaves (Maria et al. v. Surbough 2 Randall, 228).
     175 A will recorded in 1847, reading "I bequeath my negro girl Eliza to daughter Jimmey after the decease of my wife, not as a bond slave, but to be under her care and tuition: was held to be void of effect even to manumit the slave girl (2 Grattan, 227).
     176 Pleasants v. Pleasants, 2 Call, 319; Elder v. Elder's Executor, 4 Leigh, 252; Dawson v. Dawson's Executor, 10 Leigh, 602.
     177 14 Grattan, 132.  See also Williamson v. Coalter's Executors, 14 Grattan, 394.  Minor, vol. i, p. 160.
 

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