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FinalPaper Writing Prompt
HIST 32200: The Age of the American Revolution – Final Paper Writing Prompt – Spring
2018
Historians have long debated the nature and significance of the American Revolution. Some
have argued that the years between 1763 and 1789 marked a turning point, not only in
American history, but in human history as well. Thirteen of Britain’s mainland North American
colonies declared their independence from empire and monarchy and set out on an experiment
in freedom, equality, and republican government. The result of this experiment – the United
States of America – was a beacon of liberty, democracy, and opportunity throughout the world,
and eventually rose to become one of the greatest powers on earth. To these triumphalist
scholars, the seeds of American greatness were planted in 1776.
More recently, scholars have found less to celebrate in the American Revolution. While it may
have benefitted white men, these scholars point out, the revolution held out little promise for
women, Native Americans, or enslaved and free people of color. Indeed, the political liberty of
independent republican men often relied on the continuation of domestic patriarchy, the
expropriation of indigenous peoples, and the enslavement and marginalization of hundreds of
thousands of African-descended men and women. The continuation of these forms of
unfreedom, these scholars argue, provides strong evidence that, while it may have been
transformative for some, American independence was not truly revolutionary.
Task: Your assignment is to enter into this scholarly debate, and evaluate the extent to which
the American Revolution was truly revolutionary. Each student will select ONE of the themes we
have studied this semester – gender and domestic patriarchy; Native American history; slavery
and race – and analyze the extent to which the American Revolution caused meaningful
changes in political, social, economic, and/or cultural life for your chosen group. To fully address
this question, responses must go beyond merely describing what happened to a particular
group, and use specific evidence from our shared readings to explain why certain changes
occurred while others did not, and discuss how these changes are related to broader themes,
ideas, or events in the history of the revolution.
Format: Papers should be 4-7 pages long, with a clear introduction and conclusion that lay out
a thesis statement directly addressing the task above. All papers must use relevant primary and
secondary source material from the syllabus to support their argument, and all sources must be
appropriately cited with Chicago style footnotes. (While you may consult as many sources as
you like in the paper, you MUST use at least FIVE primary source documents.) Please use
standard formatting for academic writing (12 pt. font; double spaced; 1” margins; heading with
name, class, and date).
Pennsylvania- An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, 1780
SECTION 1. WHEN we contemplate our abhorrence of that condition to which the arms and
tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us; when we look back on the variety of dangers to
which we have been expofed, and how miraculously our wants in many inftances have been
fupplied, and our deliverances wrought, when even hope and human fortitude have become unequal
to the conflict; we are unavoidably led to a ferious and grateful fence of the manifold bleffings which
we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect gift
cometh. Impreffed with there ideas, we conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our
power to extend a portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us; and a releafe
from that state of thraldom to which we ourfelves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we have
now every profpect of being delivered. It is not for us to enquire why, in the creation of mankind, the
inhabitants of the feveral parts of the earth were diftinguifhed by a difference in feature or
complexion. It is fufficient to know that all are the work of an Almighty Hand. We find in the
distribution of the human fpecies, that the moft fertile as well as the moft barren parts of the earth are
inhabited by men of complexions different from ours, and from each other; from whence we may
reasonably, as well as religiously, infer, that He who placed them in their various situations, hath
extended equally his care and protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract his
mercies. We efteem it a peculiar bleffing granted to us, that we are enabled this day to add one more
ftep to univerfal civilization, by removing as much as poffible the forrows of thofe w ho have lived in
undeferved bondage, and from which, by the assumed authority of the kings of Great Britain, no
effectual, legal relief could be obtained. Weaned by a long courfe of experience from thofe narrower
prejudices and partialities we had imbibed, we find our hearts enlarged with kindness and
benevolence towards men of all conditions and nations; and we conceive ourfelves at this particular
period extraordinarily called upon, by the bleffings which we have received, to manifeft the fincerity
of our profeffion, and to give a Substantial proof of our gratitude.
SECT. 2. And whereas the condition of thofe perfons who have heretofore been denominated
Negro and Mulatto flaves, has been attended with circumftances which not only deprived them of the
common bleffings that they were by nature entitled to, but has caft them into the deepeft afflictions,
by an unnatural feparation and fale of hufband and wife from each other and from their children; an
injury, the greatnefs of which can only be conceived by fuppofing that we were in the fame unhappy
cafe. In juftice therefore to perfons So unhappily circumftanced, and who, having no profpect before
them whereon they may reft their forrows and their hopes, have no reasonable inducement to render
their fervice to fociety, which they otherwise might; and also in grateful commemoration of our own
happy deliverance from that ftate of unconditional fubmiffion to which we were doomed by the
tyranny of Britain.
SECT. 3. Be it enacted, and it is hereby enacted, by the reprefentatives of the freeman of the
commonwealth of Pennfylvania, in general affembly met, and by the authority of the fame, That all
perfons, as well Negroes and Mulattoes as others, who fhall be born within this ftate from and after
the paffing of this act, fhall not be deemed and confidered as fervants for life, or flaves; and that all
fervitude for life, or flavery of children, in confequence of the flavery of their mothers, in the cafe of all
children born within this ftate, from and after the paffing of this act as aforefaid, fhall be, and hereby
is utterly taken away, extinguifhed and for ever abolifhed.
SECT. 4. Provided always, and be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That every Negro
and Mulatto child born within this ftate after the paffing of this act as aforefaid (who would, in cafe
this act had not been made, have been born a fervent for years, or life, or a flave) fhall be deemed to
be and fhall be by virtue of this act the fervant of fuch perfon or his or her affigns, who would in fuch
cafe have been entitled to the fervice of fuch child, until fuch child fhall attain unto the age of twenty
eight years, in the manner and on the conditions whereon fervants bound by indenture for four years
are or may be retained and holder; and fhall be liable to like correction and punifhment, and entitled
to like relief in cafe he or fhe be evilly treated by his or her mafter or miftrefs, and to like freedom
dues and other privileges as fervants bound by indenture for four years are or may be entitled, unlefs
the perfon to whom the fervice of any fuch child fhall belong fhall abandon his or her claim to the
fame; in which cafe the overfeers of the poor of the city, township or diftrict refpectively, where fuch
child fhall be So abandoned, fhall by indenture bind out every child fo abandoned, as an apprentice
for a time not exceeding the age herein before limited for the fervice of fuch children.
SECT. 5. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That every person, who is or fhall
be the owner of any Negro or Mulatto flave or fervant for life or till the age of thirty one years, now
within this ftate, or his lawful attorney, fhall on or before the faid firft day of November next deliver or
calm to be delivered in writing to the clerk of the peace of the county, or to the clerk of the court of
record of the city of Philadelphia, in which he or fhe fhall respectively inhabit, the name and furname
and occupation or profeffion of fuch owner, and the name of the county and townfhip, diftrict or ward
wherein he or fhe refideth; and alfo the name and names of any fuch flave and flaves, and fervant
and fervants for life or till the age of thirty one years, together with their ages and fexes feverally and
refpectively fet forth and annexed, by fuch perfon owned or ftatedly employed and then being within
this ftate, in order to afcertain and diftinguifh the flaves and fervants for life, and till the age of thirty
one years, within this ftate, who fhall be fuch on the faid firft day of November next, from all other
perfons; which particulars fhall by faid clerk of the feffions asked clerk of the faid city court be
entered in books to be provided for that purpofe by the faid clerks; and that no Negro or Mulatto, now
within this ftate, fhall from and after the faid firft day of November, be deemed a flave or fervant for
life, or till the age of thirty one years, unlefs his or her name fhall be entered as aforefaid on fuch
record, except fuch Negro and Mulatto flaves and fervants as are herein after excepted; the faid
clerk to be entitled to a fee of two dollars for each flave or fervant fo entered as aforefaid from the
treafurer of the county, to be allowed to him in his accounts.
SECT. 6. Provided always, That any perfon, in whom the ownerfhip or right to the fervice of any
Negro or Mulatto fhall be vefted at the paffing of this act, other than fuch as are herein before
excepted, his or her heirs, executors, adminiftrators and affigns, and all and every of them feverally
fhall be liable to the overfeers of the poor of the city, townfhip or diftrict to which any fuch Negro or
Mulatto fhall become chargeable, for fuch neceffary expence, with cofts of fuit thereon, as fuch
overfeers may be put to, through the neglect of the owner, mafter or miftrefs of fuch Negro or
Mulatto; notwithfhanding the name and other defcriptions of fuch Negro or Mulatto fhall not be
entered and recorded as aforefaid; unlefs his or her maftcr or owner fhall before fuch flave or fervant
attain his or her twenty eighth year execute and record in the proper county a deed or inftrumcnt,
fecuring to fuch flave or or fervant his or her freedom.
SECT. 7. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That the offences and crimes of
Negroes and Mulattoes, as well flaves and fervants as freemen, fhall be enquired of, adjudged,
corrected and punifhed in like manner as the offences and crimes of the other inhabitants of this
ftate are and fhall be enquired of, adjudged, corrected and punifhed, and not otherwife; except that a
flave fhall not be admitted to bear witnefs againft a freeman.
SECT. 8. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That in all cafes wherein fentence
of death fhall be pronounced againft a flave, the jury before whom he or fhe fhall be tried, fhall
appraife and declare the value of fuch flave; and in cafe fuch fentence be executed, the court fhall
make an order on the ftate treasurer, payable to the owner for the fame and for the cofts of
profecution; but cafe of remiffion or mitigation, for the cofts only.
SECT. 9. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That the reward for taking up
runaway and abfconding Negro and Mulatto flaves and fervants, and the penalties for enticing away,
dealing with, or harbouring, concealing or employing Negro and Mulatto flaves and fervants, fhall be
the fame, and fhall be recovered in like manner as in cafe of fervants bound for four years.
SECT. 10. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That no man or woman of any
nation or colour, except the Negroes or Mulattoes who fhall be regiftered as aforefaid, fhall at any
time hereafter be deemed, adjudged, or holden within the territories of this commonwealth as flaves
or fervants for life, but as free men and free women; except the domestic flaves attending upon
delegates in congrefs from the other American ftates, foreign minifters and confuls, and perfons
paffing through or fojourning in this ftate, and not becoming refident therein; and feamen employed
in fhips not belonging to any inhabitant of this ftate, nor employed in any fhip owned by any fuch
inhabitant. Provided fuch domeftic flaves be not aliened or fold to any inhabitants nor (except in the
cafe of members of congrefs, foreign minifters and confuls) retained in this ftate longer than fix
months.
SECT. 11. Provided always; And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That this act or
any thing in it contained fhall not give any relief or fhelter to any abfconding or runaway Negro or
Mulatto flave or fervant, who has absented himfelf or fhall absent himfelf from his or her owner,
mafter or miftrefs refiding in any other ftate or country, but fuch owner, mafter or miftrefs fhall have
like right and aid to demand, claim and take away his flave or fervant, as he might have had in cafe
this act had not been made: And that all Negro and Mulatto flaves now owned and heretofore
refident in this ftate, who have abfented themfelves, or been clandeftinely carried away, or who may
be employed abroad as feamen and have not returned or been brought back to their owners,
mafters or miftreffes, before the paffing of this act, may within five years be regiftered as effectually
as is ordered by this act concerning thofe who are now within the ftate, on producing fuch flave
before any two juftices of the peace, and fatisfying the faid juftices by due proof of the former
refidence, abfconding, taking away, or abfence of fuch flaves as aforefaid; who thereupon fhall direct
and order the said flave to be entered on the record as aforefaid.
SECT. 12. And whereas attempts maybe made to evade this act, by introducing into this ftate
Negroes and Mulatoes bound by covenant to ferve for long and unreafonable terms of years, if the
fame be not prevented:
SECT. 13. Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforefaid, That no covenant of perfonal
fervitude or apprenticefhip whatfoever fhall be valid or binding on a Negro or Mulatto for a longer
time than feven years, unlefs fuch fervant or apprentice were at the commencement of fuch fervitude
or apprenticefhip under the age of twenty one years; in which cafe fuch Negro or Mulatto may be
holden as a fervant or apprentice refpectively, according to the covenant, as the cafe fhall be, until
he or fhe fhall attain the age of twenty eight years, but no longer.
SECT. 14. And be it further enacted by the authority aforefaid, That an act of affembly of die
province of Pennfylvania, paffed in the year one thousand Seven hundred and five, intitled, “an Act
for the trial of Negroes;” and another act of affembly of the faid province, paffed in the year one
thousand feven hundred and twenty five, intitled, “An Act for the better regulating of Negroes in this
province; ” and another act of affembly of the faid province, paffed in the year one thousand feven
hundred and fixty one, intitled, .. An Act for laying a duty on Negro and Mulatto flaves imported into
this province; ” and also another act of affembly of the faid province, paffed in the year one thousand
feven hundred and feventy three, inititled, “An Act making perpetual an Act laying a duty on Negro
and Mulatto flaves imported into this province, and for laying an additional duty faid flaves,” fhall be
and are hereby repealed, annulled and made void.
JOHN BAYARD, SPEAKER
Enabled into a law at Philadelphia, on Wednefday, the firft day of March, A.D. 1780
Excerpts from the US Constitution Relating to Slavery (1787)
Article I, Section 2:
“…
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative…”
Article I, Section 8:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; …
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;…
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;…
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;…”
Article I, Section 9:
“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person…
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid,
unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another…”
Article II, Section 1:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
Article II, Section 2:
“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”
Article IV, Section 1:
“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
Article IV, Section 2:
“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
”
Article IV, Section 3:
“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”
Article IV, Section 4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.”
Article V:
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
Excerpts from Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787
Query XIV
…Many of the laws which were in force during the monarchy being relative merely to that form of government, or inculcating principles inconsistent with republicanism, the first assembly which met after the establishment of the commonwealth appointed a committee to revise the whole code, to reduce it into proper form and volume, and report it to the assembly. This work has been executed by three gentlemen, and reported; but probably will not be taken up till a restoration of peace shall leave to the legislature leisure to go through such a work.
The plan of the revisal was this. The common law of England, by which is meant, that part of the English law which was anterior to the date of the oldest statutes extant, is made the basis of the work. It was thought dangerous to attempt to reduce it to a text: it was therefore left to be collected from the usual monuments of it. Necessary alterations in that, and so much of the whole body of the British statutes, and of acts of assembly, as were thought proper to be retained, were digested into 126 new acts, in which simplicity of stile was aimed at, as far as was safe. The following are the most remarkable alterations proposed:
To change the rules of descent, so as that the lands of any person dying intestate shall be divisible equally among all his children, or other representatives, in equal degree.
To make slaves distributable among the next of kin, as other moveables.
To have all public expences, whether of the general treasury, or of a parish or county, (as for the maintenance of the poor, building bridges, court-houses, &c.) supplied by assessments on the citizens, in proportion to their property.
To hire undertakers for keeping the public roads in repair, and indemnify individuals through whose lands new roads shall be opened.
To define with precision the rules whereby aliens should become citizens, and citizens make themselves aliens.
To establish religious freedom on the broadest bottom.
To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, 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 geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant 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 were to be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the 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. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. 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? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious (* 1) experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. 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, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch (* 2). Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. — Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation. 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. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this particular, (* 3) took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. — The same Cato, on a principle of ;oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old waggons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become useless. `Vendat boves vetulos, plaustrum vetus, ferramenta vetera, servum senem, servum morbosum, & si quid aliud supersit vendat.’ Cato de re rustica. c. 2. The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the island of Aesculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared, that if any person chose to kill rather than to expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances 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 master’s children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. — Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago…
Jove fix’d it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. — 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, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. 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 in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?’ join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. 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. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. …
QUERY XVIII.
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave 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 all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his 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 execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae 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 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 the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia
Author(s): Fredrika Teute Schmidt and Barbara Ripel Wilhelm
Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1, Chesapeake Society (Jan., 1973),
pp. 133-146
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1923706
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Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia
Fredrika Teute Schmidt and Barbara Ripel Wilhelm*
With the recent emphasis on the history of the black man in America,
historians of the Revolutionary and early national period have given
greater attention to the national antislavery movement in that era.
Although the South did not match the North’s success in realizing the
Revolutionary rhetoric by emancipating its slaves, it has been generally
assumed that southern opinion, especially in Virginia, found slavery,
at least in theory, repugnant to the ideals of the Revolution. Southern
leaders like Jefferson and Madison were optimistic that with time the
South would be able to free itself from the recognized evil. Historians
have accepted the opinion that in practice most southerners simply
acquiesced in the existing labor system. For example, Winthrop Jordan,
Gerald Mullin, and Robert McColley state that in the post-Revolutionary
era Virginians neither attacked nor defended slavery.’
According to Jordan, “No one in the South stood up in public to
endorse Negro slavery” during the Revolutionary period.2 The petitions
presented below, submitted to the October I784 and I785 sessions of the
Virginia legislature, contradict the view that all Virginians refrained
from defending slavery. Jordan does provide examples of northern
endorsements, but when they are compared with the Virginia petitions,
they show that the Virginians did not in this instance borrow from the
North. The northerners asserted the inferiority of Negroes; their argu-
ment revolved around the problems of inherent nature versus environ-
mentalism. Virginians only implied Negro inferiority; their petitions
exhibit an extensive scriptural defense that received only slight attention
from the northerners who dwelt on Enlightenment reasoning in their
attempt to provide a “scientific” rationalization for the existence of
slavery.8
*Ms. Schmidt is an associate editor of The Papers of James Madison, and
Ms. Wilhelm, a former associate editor, lives in Riverhead, New York.
‘Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the
Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, I968); Robert McColley, Slavery and leflersonian
Virginia (Urbana, Ill., i964); Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Re-
sistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York, I972).
2Jordan, White Over Black, 304.
3ibid., 304-308.
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134 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
Mullin asserts that the last quarter of the eighteenth century was
one of the most tolerant and relaxed eras for race relations in Vir-
ginia before emancipation. “Virginians,” he states, “who never again
demonstrated a receptiveness to freedmen as on this occasion [the decade
following the I782 private manumission act], also made significant at-
tempts to ameliorate the slaves’ condition.”4 These Virginia petitioners,
however, expressed a profound fear of free Negroes and felt their
society physically and morally threatened by them. Their petitions sup-
port Jordan’s statement that “the evident source of Virginia’s mounting
determination to bring a halt to individual acts of emancipation was
fear of increase in the free Negro population. More correctly, it was
Lcar of Negroes as such.”‘ Although it is true that Virginians seem to
have felt no necessity to assert the inferiority of Negroes,6 there was an
implicit assumption in the petitions that blacks were incapable of caring
for themselves or functioning as free members of society.
McColley depicts Virginians of public prominence as denouncing
slavery in principle while setting forth a series of propositions which
excused Virginia from taking any action toward a general emancipa-
tion.7 The majority of Virginians did not feel the necessity of embracing
even these defensive arguments but merely accepted slavery “as a normal
feature of life.”8 This author cites Jefferson’s opinion in I785 that the
greater part of the people favored emancipation in theory but lacked the
courage to relinquish their property even though it worried their con-
sciences.9 The proslavery petitions of 1784 and I785 do not entirely
conform to these assumptions. In the petitions not only Virginia states-
men but ordinary slaveholders throughout the state were responding
to fears evoked by the private manumission act of I782 and by the
Methodist petitions calling for a general emancipation that were circulated
in the summer and fall of I785 and submitted to the I785 General
Assembly.
The antislavery sentiment and agitation extant in Virginia at the time
clearly stimulated the proslavery petitioners. Religious groups-in par-
ticular Quakers, Methodists, and to some extent Baptists-were zealous
in their endeavors against slavery in the I78os.10 Methodist ministers
Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, I27.
5 Jordan, White Over Black, 577*
6 Ibid., 456.
7McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, ii6.
8 Ibid., I i 8.
9 Ibid., I W9.
?See Jordan, White over Black, 2.93; McColley, Slavery and jeffersonian Vir.
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PROSLAVERY PETMONS 135
rode on circuit through out Virginia, preaching against the institution
and urging individuals to free their slaves.1″ Among the most notable
were Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, who initiated circulation of
the I785 petition for a general emancipation. The petition was unani-
mously rejected by the legislature, “but not without an avowed pa-
tronage of its principle by sundry respectable members. A motion was
made to throw it under the table which was treated with as much
indignation on one side, as the petition itself was on the other,” wrote
James Madison, a member of the House of Delegates at the time.’2 The
proslavery petitions received a more favorable hearing in the House;
nevertheless a bill drawn up to repeal the I782 private manumission
act was defeated 52 to 35.13 While the actions of the Virginia legislature
in I785 indicated that there was some sympathy for the principle of
emancipation, none of the delegates was willing to go beyond allowing
private manumission and a sizable number agreed with the proslavery
petitions presented to the House wishing to prohibit even private
manumission.
The liberalizing trend in Virginia set off by the Revolution appears,
then, to have been short-lived. Methodist abolitionist enthusiasm reached
its peak at the I784 Methodist conference in Virginia, when the delegates
condemned slavery and decided that wherever manumission was legal,
Methodists should free their slaves. In the following year the emanci-
pation rule was suspended as a consequence of the threat of a wholesale
withdrawal by southern members.14 The Virginia Baptist General Com-
mittee passed strong resolutions in I785 and I790 condemning the practice
of owning slaves but received almost no response from the congrega-
ginia, I48-i62; and W. Harrison Daniel, “Virginia Baptists and the Negro in the
Early Republic,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXX (i972),
60-62, 65-66.
11 McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, 148-152. See also Albert Matthews,
“Notes on the Proposed Abolition of Slavery in Virginia in I785,” Colonial Society
of Massachusetts, Publications, VI (1904), 370-380; and Richard K. MacMaster,
“Liberty or Prosperity? The Methodists Petition for Emancipation in Virginia,
I785,” Methodist History, X (1971), 44-55.
12 ames Madison to George Washington, Nov. II, I785, George Washington
Papers, CCXXXIV, 4I, Library of Congress; Journal of the House of Delegates
of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond.
In the County of Henrico, on Monday, the seventeenth day of October, in the
year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five (Richmond, i828), 3r.
13 House of Delegates Journal, im0.
14 McColley, Slavery and Jeflersonian Virginia, 152. See also Jordan, White
Over Black, 293.
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136 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
tions; in 1793 the General Committee voted to dismiss the subject as
more properly a matter for the legislature. The Quakers, however,
maintained their opposition to slavery throughout the period.1″ Although
the number of free Negroes in Virginia doubled in the two years
following the 1782 private manumission act,17 manumission continued to
be exceptional.’ If religious and Revolutionary idealism contributed
to a more benevolent attitude toward slaves on the part of some Virginians,
it also influenced the minds of those Virginians who spoke in defense
of slavery.
Indeed, the rhetoric of the Revolution seems to have had a particular
impact in fortifying the proslavery defense. The tone of the petitions
is not one of guilt and defensiveness. They contain a fierce assertion of
property rights and liberty at the same time they deny the slaves’
humanity and their right to enjoy freedom to participate in society.
In the petitioners’ eyes, religious justification gave added weight to the
validity of their society, recently liberated from British oppression but
based on a more profound form of oppression to which they were blind.
The Virginians who publicly stood up to defend slavery were certain
of the basis for their argument. Calling on the Lockean theme of pro-
perty rights, these proudly independent Americans claimed that they
had “risked their Lives and Fortunes, and Waded through Seas of Blood”
in order to preserve the right to their property. They expressed alarm
at the attempts fomented by “the enemies of our Country [andl Tools
of the British Administration,” to deprive them of their hard-earned
victory. In positive, not defensive, terms they declared that “Scripture
and Sound Policy” supported their pleas for laws to protect their rights.
Besides implicating foreign nations in the plot to destroy the rights
of Virginia citizens, the petitions adumbrated the positive defense of
slavery formulated in the 1830s. Freed Negroes would increase crime
rates and shatter the peace, causing ruin to those who held a stake
in society. In describing the damage that general emancipation would
cause, the petitions held blacks to be remorseless and revengeful and
of consequently causing the destruction of free citizens, the state, and
the nation. Blacks, however, had only negative sensitivities, and the
petitioners were certain that emancipation would serve “no one’s civil,
religious, or national purpose.” Free blacks, unpropertied-and therefore
15 Daniel, “Virginia Baptists and the Negro,” VMHB, LXXX (x972), 65-67.
“I McColley, Slavery and jeffersonian Virginia, I53-154.
17 Jord-,n, White Over Black, 347.
18 McColley, Slavery and Jeflersonian Virginia, I41.
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PROSLAVERY PETITIONS 137
unprincipled and irresponsible-existed on the fringes of organized
society and were a constant threat to its survival.
The 1,244 signatures on the petitions of I784 and i785 testified to a
firm belief that emancipation, or even manumission, was not only in-
appropriate but inequitable and destructive to the welfare of society.
The arguments of these petitioners were neither as coherently presented
nor as psychologically indispensible as those developed in the I830s,
but the conviction of the rightness and necessity was clearly present.
The petitions came from counties in central and southern Virginia;
most were from the southside and southwestern piedmont, which were
the only areas of extensive tobacco production after the war.’9 By I787
slaves accounted for slightly more than 50 percent of the population
in some of the counties (Hanover, Henrico, Amelia, and Brunswick),
which places them among those with the heaviest concentration of
slaves in the state.20 The other counties were contiguous to this “black
belt” region and were probably experiencing an increase in the number
of slaves and an expansion in tobacco production. To some extent, then,
the prospect of economic growth may have suggested a need for more
slave labor. At the same time, social and economic dislocation and
reorientation, according to Mullin, contributed toward an unsettled,
insecure society in Virginia in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.2′
The presence of large numbers of slaves, the fear of an increasing
number of freemen, and the severe postwar depression may have deepened
their anxiety and influenced these Virginians to petition against abolition
and for repeal of the 1782 act. The signers of the petitions were already
acutely aware of the effects of what Mullin calls the “permissive, confused,
and disordered state of slavery” at the end of the eighteenth century
that culminated in the Gabriel Insurrection.22 As other Virginians
did after the discovery of the plot fifteen years later, they attributed
the restlessness of their slaves to the activities of freemen.
The petitions are all located in the Legislative Petitions, 1784-1785,
Virginia State Library, Richmond. They were submitted by eight coun-
ties: Hanover, Henrico, Amelia, Lunenburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburg,
Halifax, and Pittsylvania. There are five separate texts, two of which
were submitted from more than one county. The general similarity in
form and content of all five, as well as the multiple submission of
“9Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, i26-I27.
20Ibid., i26.
21 Ibid., I24-126.
22 Ibid., 14I.
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138 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
identical copies of two, suggests that the petitions must have been
copied, with some variation, and passed from county to adjacent county.
One copy of each of the five texts is reprinted below, and the number
of signers, the date, and any duplicate submissions are indicated in
editorial notes.
To the Honourable the General Assembly
The Petition of divers Freeholders and inhabitants of Hanover County
Humbly Represents, that many Evils have Arisen from A Partial eman-
cipation of Slaves under the Act intitualed an Act Authorizing the man-
umission Of Slaves, that your Petitioners are well Convinced many of the
said Free Negroes are Agents, Factors, and Carriers to the neighbouring
Towns, For Slaves of Property by them Stolen From their masters and
Others, that your Petitioners have room to believe A Great number of slaves
taken by The British army are now passing in this Country as Freemen
therefore to Remedy the Above Evils and prevent their becoming more
General as Well as to Guard Against fraud of the owners of Slaves who
may be indebted, as much as their worth are, your petitioners Humbly
pray the Above Recited Act may be repealed, and that no free negroe or
mulatto shall Be permited to pass as a Freeman Unless he shall produce
from under The hand of the Clerk of the Court of some County within
this state Testifying his right to freedom and that some mode may be
Adopted which The wisdome of the Honourable the Assembly may sug-
gest to prevent free Negroes or mulattoes trading with or For slaves; and
your petitioners as in Duty Bound shall Ever pray & etc.
[Hanover County, November s6, 1784, two identical petitions with 92 and 59
signatures. Also submitted by Henrico County, November i6, 1784, with io6
signatures.]
II
To the honourable the General Assembly of Virginia, the Remonstrance
and Petition of the Free Inhabitants of Amelia County.
Gentlemen,
When the British Parliament usurped a Right to dispose of our Property
without our Consent, we dissolved the Union with our Parent Country,
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PROSLAVERY PETITIONS 139
and established a Constitution and Form of Government of our own, that
our Property might be secure, in Future. In Order to effect this we risked
our Lives and Fortunes, and waded through Seas of Blood. By the favourable
Interposition of Providence our Attempt was crowned with Success. We
were put in the Possession of our Rights of Liberty and Property: And
these Rights as well secured, as they can be by any human Constitution or
Form of Government. But notwithstanding this, we understand a very
subtle and daring Attempt is made to dispossess us of a very important
Part of our Property. An Attempt set on Foot, we are informed, by the
Enemies of our Country, Tools of the British Administration, and sup-
ported by certain Men among us of considerable Weight, To WREST FROM
US OUR SLAVES, by an Act of the Legislature for a general Emancipation
of them. An Attempt unsupported by Scripture or sound Policy.
It is unsupported by Scripture. For we find that under the Old Testa-
ment Dispensation, Slavery was permitted by the Deity himself. Thus,
Leviticus Ch. 25. Ver. 44, 45, 46. “Both thy Bond Men and Bond Maids,
which thou shalt have, shall be of the Heathen that are round about you;
of them shall ye buy Bond Men and Bond Maids. Moreover, of the
Children of the Strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye
buy, and of their Families that are with you, which they beget in your
Land, and they shall be your Possession, and ye shall take them as an
Inheritance, for your Children after you, to inherit them for a Possession;
they shall be your Bond-men forever.” This Permission to buy and inherit
Bond-men and Bond-maids, we have Reason to conclude, continued through
all the Revolutions of the Jewish Government, down to the Advent of our
Lord. And we do not find, that either he or his Apostles abridged it. The
Freedom promised to his Followers, is a Freedom from the Bondage of
Sin and Satan, and from the Dominion of Mens Lusts and Passions; but
as to their Outward Condition, whatever that was before they embraced the
Religion of Jesus, whether Bond or Free, it remained the same afterwards.
This St. Paul expressly asserts i Cor. Chap. 7. Ver. 20. where he is speaking
directly to this very Point, ‘Let every Man abide in the same Calling, wherein
he is called’; and Ver. 24. ‘Let every Man wherein he is called, therein
abide with God.’ Thus it is evident the said Attempt is unsupported by
Scripture.
It is also exceedingly impolitic. For it involves in it, and is productive
of Want, Poverty, Distress, and Ruin to the Free Citizen; Neglect, Famine
and Death to the black Infant and superannuated Parent; The Horrors of
all the Rapes, Murders, and Outrages, which a vast Multitude of unprincipled,
unpropertied, revengeful, and remorseless Banditti are capable of per-
petrating; inevitable Bankruptcy to the Revenue, and consequently Breach
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140 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
of public Faith, and Loss of Credit with foreign Nations; and, lastly, sure
and final Ruin to this now flourishing free and happy Country.
We therefore, your Petitioners and Remonstrants, do solemnly adjure
and humbly pray you that you will discountenance and utterly reject every
Motion and Proposal for emancipating our Slaves; that as the Act lately
made, empowering the Owners of Slaves to liberate them, hath produced,
and is still productive of, very bad Effects, you will immediately and
totally repeal it; and that as many of the Slaves, liberated by that Act, have
been guilty of Thefts and Outrages, Insolences and Violences, destructive
to the Peace, Safety, and Happiness of Society, you will make effectual
Provision for the due Government of them.
And your Petitioners shall ever pray, etc. etc.
[Amelia County, November IO, 1785, with 22 signatures. Also submitted by
Mecklenberg County, November 8, 1785, with 223 signatures, and by Pittsylvania
County, November IO, I785, with 54 signatures.]
III
To the Honorable the General Assembly of Virginia, The Remonstrance
and Petition of the free Inhabitants of the County of Lunenberg,
Gentlemen,
When the british Parliament usurp’d a right to Dispose of our Property,
it was not the Matter, but the Manner adopted for that purpose, that alarm’d
us; as it tended to establish a principle which might one day prove fatal to
our rights of Property: In order therefore to fix a Tenure in our property
on a Basis of Security not to be shaken in future, we dissolved our union
with our parent Country, and by a selferected power bravely and wisely
establish’d a Constitution and form of Government, grounded on a full
and clear Declaration of such rights as naturally pertain to Men born free
and determined to be respectfully and absolutely so as human Institutions
can make them: This we effected by our representatives, to whom we
delegated our power, in General Convention; Whose Wisdom, Integrity,
Fortitude, and patriotic Zeal will ever reflect Glory on them and honor on
their Constituents. In support of this happy Establishment, with its at-
tendant Blessings we have chearfully sacrificed our Ease, Lives and fortunes,
and waded thro’ Deluges of civil Blood to that unequivocal Liberty, which
alone characterises the free independent Citizen, and distinguishes him
from the subjugated Vassal of despotic Rule.
Thus happily possess’d of all the rational rights of freedom, this Country
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PROSLAVERY PETITIONS 141
might have stood the Envy of admiring Nations, to the end of the Time, had
the same Wisdom fidelity and patriotic Zeal, which gave Being to this
Glorious Work, continued to guide the public Councils of the State: But how
far this has, or had not, been our happy Lot, let past Violations of our
sacred rights of property, and the recent Invasions of them from such
Examples, testify to the World. And here we could wish not to call to
Mind, particulars: Suffice it therefore only to Mention the Act for funding
our Paper Money, which not only involved Thousands of our most valuable
Citizens in irretriev’ble ruin, but stabb’d the very Vitals of public Faith.
But it was said to be expedient; And we acquiesced in it; But never
did, nor ever will, admit it as a ruling Precedent [in] the Wanton Disposal
of our property, of any kind, whenever the chimerical Flights of a fanatic
Spirit, or the venal Views of a corrupted heart shall prompt to the rash
attempt-No! we have seald with our Blood, a Title to the full, free, and
absolute Enjoyment of every species of our Property, whensoever, or
howsoever legally acquired; a Purchase of too great Value to be sacrificed
to the Caprice, or Interest of any rank or Description of Men, however
dignified, or distinguished, either by the confidential Suffrages of their fellow-
Citizens, or otherwise.
To this free, and we trust, inoffensive, as well as necessary Communica-
tion of our Sentiments, on the most important Subject that ever arrested
the attention of a free People, we are enforced by a daring attempt now
on foot in several Counties in this State by Petitions warmly advocated
by some Men of considerable weight to wreste from us, by an Act
of the Legislature, the most valuable and indispensable Article of our
Property, our Slaves, by a general Emancipation of them: An Attempt
that involves in it not only a flagrant Contempt of the constituent Powers
of the Commonwealth, in which it’s Majesty resides and which we are
sorry to have occasion to observe seem to be forgotten by too many, and
a daring attack on that sacred Constitution thereby establishd; but
also, Want, Poverty, Distress and ruin to the free Citizen; the Horrors of
all the rapes, Robberies, Murders, and Outrages, which an innumerable
Host of unprincipled, unpropertied, vindictive, and remorseless Banditti are
capable of perpetrating; Neglect, famine and Death to the abandoned
black Infant, and superannuated Parent; inevitable Bankruptcy to the revenue;
Desparation and revolt to the disappointed, oppressed Citizen; and sure
and final ruin to this once happy, free, and flourishing Country: And all
this [illeg.] to answer no one civil, religious, or national Purpose, whatever.
Such a Scheme indeed consists very well with the principles and Designs of
a Bute, or a North, whose Finger is sufficiently visible in it; nor should we
have wonder’d to see the despicable Cabal of an expiring Faction rearing
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I42 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
its batterd Front on any occasion that might minister to the Disturbance
of Governmente: But when we see those very Men who have been honor’d
with the fullest Confidence of their fellow Citizens inviting Great Brit-
ain, by their Apostasy, to effect that Tyranny over us which we have
taught her to feel is not in her Arms to compass; when we see such Men,
If such there are, prostituting their [views] by uniting them with a pro-
scribed Coke an imperious Asb[ur]y and other contemptible Emissaries
and Hirelings of Britain in promoting and advocating a Measure which
they know must involve their fellow Citizens in Distress and Desparation,
not to be described, or thought of, without Horror; and their Country in
inevitable ruin. No Language can express our Indignation, Contempt and
Detestation of the apostate Wretches: For tho’ we admit it to be the
indisputable right of the Citizen to apply to the Legislature by Petition on
any or otherwise Subject within the Cognizance of their constitutional
Powers; yet we positively deny a right in any Man or Description of Men,
even to move the Legislature in any Manner, to violate the smallest Article
of our Constitution, as it is not only a contempt of that, but strongly
implies a Want of Wisdom, Integrity, or Spirit in our representatives, to
discharge the high Trust [so] found in them, want of either of which
would render them very unfit Objects of the Confidence of their Con-
stituents, and of course, dangerous and contemptible. It therefore cannot be
admitted that any Man has a right, to petition or otherwise press the Legisla-
ture to divest us of our known rights of Property, which are so clearly
defined; so fully acknowledged; and so solemnly ratified and con-
firmd, by our Bill of rights, as not to admit of an equivocal Construction,
nor of the smallest Alteration or Diminution, by any Power, but that which
originally authorised its Establishment. To an unequivocal Construction
therefore of this Bill of rights we now appeal, and claim the utmost
Benefits of it; not doubting the hearty Concurrence of our faithful re-
presentatives in what ever may tend to promote our mutual Interests;
preserve our rights inviolate; secure to us all the Blessings of a free, un-
disturbd, independent Government; and So, an indiscriminate Diffusion
of Peace, Wealth, and happiness among the free Citizens of this Com-
monwealth. And as the lasting Welfare of our Country, and the happiness
of its Citizens depend [illeg.] invariable Adherence to our Constitution,
we most solemnly adjure, and humbly pray, that you, Gentlemen, to whom
we have committed the Guardianship of our rights of Property, will in no
Instance, permit them to be calld in Question; Particularly, that you will
discountenance, and utterly reject every Motion and Proposal for emancipa-
ting our Slaves; That you will immediately, and totally repeal the Act
for permitting Owners of Slaves to emancipate them; That you will provide
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PROSLAVERY PETITIONS 143
effectually for the good Government, and due restraint of those already set
free, whose disorderly Conduct, and thefts and outrages, are so generally
the just Subject of Complaint; but particularly whose Insolences, and Viol-
ences so freequently of late committed to and on our respectable Maids and
Matrons, which are a Disgrace to Government.
And We shall ever Pray/etc etc etc etc
[Lunenberg County, November 29, 1785, with i6i signatures.]
IV
To the General Assembly of Virginia
The Petition of sundry of the Inhabitants of Brunswick County, humbly
sheweth. That Whereas, We are credibly informed, That Petitions are
secretly handed about for subscription, by Persons We may reasonably sup-
pose disaffected to our State and Government; who not being satisfied with
the Act, already made, “To authorize the Manumission of Slaves [“]; make
bold to Petition your August Assembly for a general Emancipation of them:
pretending to be moved by Religious Principles and taking for their motive
universal Charity. But We your Petitioners, who are of opinion, That it
was ordained by the Great and wise Disposer of all Things, That some
Nations should serve others; and that all Nations have not been equally free:
Which may be supported by the following Texts of Scripture. Genesis
Chap: 9. Verses 25. 26. and 27th. “And he said cursed be Canaan; a Servant
of Servants shall he be unto his Brethren. And he said, blessed be the
Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his Servant. God shall enlarge
Jepheth, and he shall dwell in the Tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his
Servant.” Genesis Chap: 21. Verses 9. IO. II. i2. and 13th. “And Sarah
saw the Son of Hagar the Egyptian, which She had born unto Abraham,
mocking. Wherefore She said unto Abraham, Cast out this Bond-Woman,
and her Son: for the Son of this Bond-Woman shall not be Heir with my
Son, even with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s
Sight, because of his Son. And God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous
in thy sight, because of the Lad, and because of thy Bond-Woman; in all
that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice: for in Isaac shall thy
seed be called. And also of the Son of the Bond-Woman will I make a Nation,
because he is thy Seed.[“] Genesis Chap: 27th. verse 29th. “Let People
serve thee, and Nations bow down to thee; be Lord over thy Brethren, and
let thy Mother’s Son bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth
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144 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.”] And verses 38. 39. and 4oth.
“And Esau said unto his Father, hast thou but one blessing my Father? bless
me, even me also, 0 my Father. And Esau lift up his Voice and wept. And
Isaac his Father answered, and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall
be the fatness of the Earth and of the Dew of Heaven from above, And by
thy Sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy Brother.[“] And as it appears
that Abraham the Father of the Faithful, bought and kept Slaves, See
Genesis Chap: 19. Verse 27th. “And all the Men of his House, born in
the House, and bought with Money of the Stranger, were Circumcised
with him.[“] And that God speaking to Moses from Mount Sinai, Licences
or Commands his People to buy and keep Slaves; See Leviticus Chap: 25.
Verses 44. 45. and 46th. “Both thy Bond-men, and thy Bond-maids, which
thou shalt have, shall be of the Heathen that are round about you; of them
shall ye buy Bond-men and Bond-maids. Moreover, of the Children of the
Strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy; and of their
Families that are with you, which they beget in your Land: and they shall be
your Possession. And ye shall take them as an Inheritance for your children
after you, to inherit them for a Possession; they shall be your Bond-men for-
ever.” And Solomon had Servants born in his House. Ecclesiastes Chap: 2d.
Verse 7th.
Seeing then, That according to Scripture and observation, it hath been
the practice and custom, for above 3500 Years, down to the present time,
for one Nation to buy and keep Slaves of another Nation: That God so particu-
larly (as above recited) Licenced or Commanded his People, to buy of other
Nations and to keep them for Slaves: And that Christ and his Apostles
hath in the mean time, come into the World, and past out of it again,
leaving behind them the New-Testament, full of all instructions necessary
to our Salvation; and hath not forbid it: But left that matter as they found
it, giving exortations to Masters and Servants how to conduct themselves to
each other.
We your Petitioners therefore conclude, that We have a right to retain
such Slaves, as We have justly and legally in Possession. And without
Pleading the inexpediency, the impolicy, and the impracticability of such a
Measure; Pray that no Act may ever pass in this Assembly, for the general
Emancipation of Slaves, And that one Act passed May 6th. 1782. entituled,
An Act to authorize the Manumission of Slaves; as already productive of a
very great and growing evil; be, immediately and totally Repealed. And
your Petitioners shall ever pray etc.
[Brunswick County, November IO, 1785, with 266 signatures.]
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PROSLAVERY PETITIONS 145
V
To the honourable the General Assembly of Virginia the Remonstrance
and Petition of the Free Inhabitants of Halifax County.
Gentlemen,
When the British Parliament usurped a Right to dispose of our Property
without our Consent, we dissolved the Union with our Parent Country, and
established a Constitution and Form of Government of our own, that our
Property might be secure in Future. In Order to effect this, we risked our
Lives and Fortunes, and waded through Seas of Blood. Divine Providence
smiled on our Enterprize, and crowned it with Success. And our Rights
of Liberty and Property are now as well secured to us, as they can be by
any human Constitution and Form of Government.
But notwithstanding this, we understand, a very subtle and daring
Attempt is on Foot to deprive us of a very important Part of our Property.
An Attempt carried on by the Enemies of our Country, Tools of the
British Administration, and supported by a Number of deluded Men
among us, to wrest from us our Slaves by an Act of the Legislature for a
general Emancipation of them. They have the Address, indeed to cover their
Design, with the Veil of Piety and Liberality of Sentiment. But it is un-
supported by the Word of God, and will be ruinous to Individuals and to
the Public.
It is unsupported by the Word of God. Under the Old Testament
Dispensation, Slavery was permitted by the Deity himself. Thus it is re-
corded, Levit. Chap. 25. Ver. 44, 45, 46. ‘Both thy Bond-men, and Bond-
maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the Heathen that are round about
you; of them shall ye buy Bond-men and Bond-maids. Moreover, of the
Children of the Strangers, that do sojourn among you of them shall ye buy,
and of their Families that are with you, which they beget in your Land,
and they shall be your Possession, and ye shall take them, as an Inheritance
for your Children after you, to inherit them for a Possession; they shall be
your Bond-men forever.’ This Permission to possess and inherit Bond
Servants, we have Reason to conclude, was continued through all the
Revolutions of the Jewish Government, down to the Advent of our Lord.
And we do not find, that either he or his Apostles abridged it. On the
Contrary, the Freedom which the Followers of Jesus were taught to expect,
was a Freedom from the Bondage of Sin and Satan, and from the Dominion
of their Lusts and Passions; but as to their outward Condition, whatever that
was, whether Bond or Free, when they embraced Christianity, it was to
remain the same afterwards. This Saint Paul hath expressly told us i Cor.
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i46 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
Chap. 7. Ver. 20th. where he is speaking directly to this very Point; ‘Let every
Man abide in the same Calling, wherein he is called;’ and at Ver. 24. ‘Let
every Man wherein he is called therein abide with God.’ Thus it is evident
the above Attempt is unsupported by the Divine Word.
It is also ruinous to Individuals and to the Public. For it involves in
it, and is productive of Want, Poverty, Distress, and Ruin to the Free
Citizen; Neglect, Famine, and Death to the helpless black Infant and super-
annuated Parent; the Horrors of all the Rapes, Murders, and Outrages, which
a vast Multitude of unprincipled, unpropertied, vindictive, and remorseless
Banditti are capable of perpetrating; inevitable Bankruptcy to the Revenue,
and consequently Breach of public Faith, and Loss of Credit with foreign
Nations; and lastly Ruin to this now free and flourishing Country.
We therefore your Remonstrants and Petitioners do solemnly adjure
and humbly pray you, that you will discountenance and utterly reject every
Motion and Proposal for emancipating our Slaves; that as the Act lately
made, empowering the Owners of Slaves to liberate them, has been and is
still productive, in some Measure, of sundry of the above pernicious Effects,
you will immediately and totally repeal it; and that as many of the Slaves,
liberated by the said Act, have been guilty of Thefts and Outrages, In-
solences and Violences destructive to the Peace, Safety, and Happiness of
Society, you will make effectual Provision for the due Government of
them.
And your Remonstrants and Petitioners shall ever pray, etc.
[Halifax County, November Io, 1785, with 26i signatures.]
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- Contents
- Issue Table of Contents
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History, Vol. 30, No. 1, Chesapeake Society (Jan., 1973), pp. 3-186
Volume Information
Front Matter
Religion and Authority: Problems of the Anglican Establishment in Virginia in the Era of the Great Awakening and the Parsons’ Cause [pp. 3-36]
From Servant to Freeholder: Status Mobility and Property Accumulation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland [pp. 37-64]
The Virginia Muster of 1624/5 As a Source for Demographic History [pp. 65-92]
Thomas Cradock and the Chesapeake Golden Age [pp. 93-116]
Notes and Documents
General Smallwood’s Recruits: The Peacetime Career of the Revolutionary War Private [pp. 117-132]
Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia [pp. 133-146]
Trivia [pp. 147-148]
Reviews of Books
Review: untitled [pp. 149-152]
Review: untitled [pp. 152-154]
Review: untitled [pp. 154-157]
Review: untitled [pp. 158-160]
Review: untitled [pp. 161-163]
Review: untitled [pp. 163-166]
Review: untitled [pp. 166-167]
Review: untitled [pp. 168-170]
Review: untitled [pp. 170-172]
Review: untitled [pp. 172-174]
Review: untitled [pp. 174-176]
Review: untitled [pp. 176-178]
Review: untitled [pp. 178-179]
Review: untitled [pp. 179-181]
Review: untitled [pp. 181-183]
Review: untitled [pp. 183-185]
Review: untitled [pp. 185-186]
Back Matter
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