From this period I have not been able to refer to the Sessions Acts.
[15]☞The following extract from a petition to the throne, presented from the house of burgesses of Virginia, April 1, 1772, will shew the sense of the people of Virginia on the subject of slavery at that period.
"The many instances of your majesty's benevolent intentions and more gracious disposition to promote the prosperity and happiness of your subjects in the colonies, encourages us to look up to the throne, and implore your majesty's paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most alarming nature."
"The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under itspresent encouragement, we have too much reason to fearwill endanger the very existenceof your majesty's American dominions."
"We are sensible that some of your majesty's subjects ofGreat Britainmay reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of the colonies, withmore usefulinhabitants, and may, in time, have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope that theinterest of a fewbe disregarded when placed in competition with the security and happiness of such numbers of your majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects."
"Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your majesty toremove all those restraintson your majesty's governors of this colony,which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce." Journals of the House of Burgesses, page 131.
This petition produced no effect, as appears from the first clause of ourconstitution, where among other acts of misrule, "the inhuman use of the royal negative" in refusing us permission to exclude slaves from among us by law, is enumerated, among the reasons forseparating from Great Britain.
[16]In December term 1788, one John Huston was tried in the general court for the murder of a slave; the jury found him guilty of manslaughter, and the court, upon a motion in arrest of judgment, discharged him without any punishment. The general assembly being then sitting, some of the members of the court mentioned the case to some leading characters in the legislature, and the act was at the same session repealed.
[17]See Jefferson's Notes, 259.—The Marquis de Chatelleux's Travels, I have not noted the page; the Law of Retribution, by Granville Sharpe, pa. 151, 238, notes. The Just Limitation of Slavery, by the same author; pa. 15, note. Ibidem, pa. 33, 50, Ib. Append. No. 2. Encyclopédie. Tit. Esclave. Laws of Barbadoes, &c.
[18]There aremorefree Negroes and mulattoes 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 ourEasternbrethren 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. Those who take a subject in the gross, have little idea of the result of an exact scrutiny. Out of 20,348 inhabitants on the Eastern Shore of Virginia 1185 were free Negroes and mulattoes when the census was taken. The number is since much augmented.
[19]The act of 1795. c. 11. enacts, that any person held in slavery may make complaint to a magistrate, or to the court of the district county or corporation wherein he resides, and not elsewhere. The magistrate, if the complaint be made to him, shall issue his warrant to summon the owner before him, and compel him to give bond and security to suffer the complainant to appear at the next court to petition the court to be admitted to suein forma pauperis. If the owner refuse, the magistrate shall order the complainant into the custody of the officer serving the warrant, at the expence of the master, who shall keep him until the sitting of the court, and then produce him before it. Upon petition to the court, if the court be satisfied as to the material facts, they shall assign the complainant council, who shall state the facts with his opinion thereon to the court; and unless from the circumstances so stated, and the opinion thereon given, the court shallsee manifest reason to deny their interference, they shall order the clerk to issue process against the owner, and the complainant shall remain in the custody of the sheriff until the owner shall give bond and security to have him forthcoming to answer the judgment of the court. And by the general law in case of pauper's suits; the complainants shall have writs of subpoena gratis; and by the practice of the courts, he is permitted to attend the taking the depositions of witnesses, and go and come freely to and from court, for the prosecution of his suit.
[20]The number of slaves in the United States at the time of the late census, was something under 700,000.
[21]Mr. Jefferson most forcibly paints the unhappy influence on the manners of the people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave, says he, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning what he sees others do. If a parent had no other motive either in his own philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execrations would the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms them into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also, is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be ever thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.—But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust; his condition mollifying; the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed in the order of events, to be with the consent of their masters, rather than by their extirpation. Notes on Virginia, 298.
[22]What is here advanced is not to be understood as implying an opinion that the labour of slaves is more productive than that of freemen.—The author of the Treatise on the Wealth of Nations, informs us, "That it appears from the experience of all ages and nations, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that done by slaves. That it is found to do so, even in Boston, New-York and Philadelphia, where the wages of common labour are very high." Vol. 1. pa. 123. Lond. edit. oct. Admitting this conclusion, it would not remove the objection that emancipated slaves would not willingly labour.
[23]Doctor Franklin, it is said, drew the bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania.
[24]It is probable that similar laws have been passed in some other states; but I have not been able to procure a note of them.
[25]The object of the amendment proposed to be offered to the legislature, was to emancipate all slaves born after a certain period; and further directing that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such a place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper; sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements should be proposed. Notes on Virginia, 251.
[26]It will probably be asked, why not retain the blacks among us andincorporate them into the state? Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; thereal distinctionswhichnaturehas made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race. To these objections which are political may be added others which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour.—&c. The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; Why not in that of man? &c. In general their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior; that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anamolous. &c. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age, especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable, than that of the blacks on the continent of America. Yet among the Romans their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion requires many observations. &c.—I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites both in the endowments of body and mind. &c. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining, the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history.—See the passage at length, Notes on Virginia, page 252 to 265.
"In the present case, it is not only the slave who is beneath his master, it is the Negroe who is beneath the white man. No act of enfranchisement can efface this unfortunate distinction." Chatelleux's Travels in America.
[27]The celebrated David Hume, in his Essay on National Character, advances the same opinion; Doctor Beattie, in his Essay on Truth, controverts it with many powerful arguments. Early prejudices, had we more satisfactory information than we can possibly possess on the subject at present, would render an inhabitant of a country where Negroe slavery prevails, an improper umpire between them.
[28]See Spirit of Laws, 12-15.——1. Black Com. 417.
[29]The immense territory of Louisiana, which extends as far south as the lat. 25° and the two Floridas, would probably afford a ready asylum for such as might choose to become Spanish subjects. How far their political rights might be enlarged in these countries, is, however questionable: but the climate is undoubtedly more favourable to the African constitution than ours, and from this cause, it is not improbable that emigrations from these states would in time be very considerable.
[30]As it may not be unacceptable to some readers to observe the operation of this plan, I shall subjoin the following statement:
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.