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-
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 43]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 44]
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
-------------------------
8 Hening, vol. ix, p. 320
9 Ibid., vol. x, p. 211
10 Ibid,
[Pg. 45]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 46]
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
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 47]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 48]
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 -------------------------
23 MS Court Records of York County,
1657-1662, p. 45, in Virginia State Library.
24 Ibid
[Pg. 49]
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 -------------------------
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.
[Pg. 50]
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- -------------------------
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.
[Pg. 51]
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 -------------------------
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
[Pg. 52]
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 -------------------------
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.
[Pg. 53]
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-
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 54]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 55]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 56]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 57]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 58]
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
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 59]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 60]
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
-------------------------
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
[Pg. 61]
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 . . .
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 62]
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
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 63]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 64]
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
-------------------------
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)
[Pg. 65]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 66]
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-
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 67]
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?"
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 68]
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.
-------------------------
100 Richmond Enquire, Jan. 15, 1805.
101 Ibid.
[Pg. 69]
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,
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 70]
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
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 71]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 72]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 73]
"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
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 74]
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-
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 75]
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
-------------------------
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.).
[Pg. 76]
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
-------------------------
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
[Pg. 77]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 78]
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
-------------------------
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)
[Pg. 79]
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-
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 80]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 81]
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
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 82]
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
-------------------------
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
[Pg. 83]
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 delivered.
Proof or acknowledgment in court is to an
instrument of emancipation what delivery is to a deed at
common law."163 In imitation
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 84]
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.
-------------------------
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.
[Pg. 85]
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.
-------------------------
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).
[Pg. 86]
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-
-------------------------
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
-------------------------
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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