Lacy K. Ford Deliver Us from Evil, The Slave

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Madison’s proposal won narrowly, but a number of Virginia repre-sentatives defected to vote with the lower South.After the House action, Madisonlearned from friends in Virginia that public opinion there applauded the Senate forrefusing to take notice of the petitions but found “great fault” with the House for“wasting so much time and Expense” on the matter.The increasingly apparent grav-ity of the situation moved Madison to work behind the scenes to dissuade antislav-ery groups from sending petitions to Congress and to persuade Congress to refuseto accept petitions that asked it to take action the body had already decided it hadno power to take.16 On the latter point, he succeeded reasonably well.After ,Congress considered only narrowly framed petitions dealing with issues related toregulating the slave trade.At the level of federal policy, the infl uential Virginianshad taken the lead in turning back, and ultimately damping, a challenge to slaverywithout appearing to defend slavery.It was a gambit they yearned to perfect.17At the state and local levels, however, the concern George Mason expressedat the Constitutional Convention for the domestic safety of whites in a slave societyrefl ected the long-standing fears and anxieties of large numbers of upper Southslaveholders.Many of these slaveholders had experienced what historians now viewas the greatest slave revolt in American history: the fl ight and rebellion of tens ofthousands of slaves, many of them from Virginia, during the American Revolution.Lord Dunmore’s  off er of freedom to all slaves who remained loyal to theCrown had hardened white resolve to fi ght for independence, but it also raised blackhopes for freedom.Estimates suggest that more than thirty thousand slaves eitherwere freed by the British or escaped in the hope of fi nding protection from the Brit-ish military.Many of these African American loyalists were either never returnedby the British or never recovered by their owners.A great number of these ownerscarried large debts from slave purchases for which the slaves were their best or onlycollateral.This unprecedented black Revolutionary fl ight for freedom proceeded onO W N I N G S L A V E S , D I S O W N I N G S L A V E R Y23a large enough scale to shatter any white illusions that upper South slaves were con-tent with their lot.It also raised troubling questions about the security of investmentin slave property.But the persistent eff orts of upper South whites to secure repara-tions from the British for their “lost” slaves were as much a balm to the woundedpride of the slaveholders as an attempt to recoup fi nancial losses.No small number of upper South slaveholders observed the enslaved population’sRevolutionary-era record of fl ight and rebellion and decided that it would be wiseto rid themselves of slavery entirely if they could, or partially if they could not fullyextricate themselves from this peculiar and volatile institution.Other upper Southslaveholders thought the Revolutionary erosion of slavery simply meant that theinstitution’s foundation needed immediate strengthening, even if only for temporarystability rather than for perpetual benefi t.To a large degree such views defi ned thepoles of debate among slaveholders in the upper South over policies regarding slav-ery for several decades.18In the post-Revolutionary upper South, practical doubts about the fundamentalvulnerability to unrest of a society with a large proportion of slaves merged withtriumphant republican ideals and an emerging Christian morality to raise seriousreservations about the future of slavery in the United States, or at least in the upperSouth.Almost all of the upper South founders expressed a desire to end slaveryeventually even if they proved reluctant to take bold steps toward that goal.GeorgeWashington, who manumitted his own slaves, often privately voiced sentiments infavor of gradual emancipation and clearly stated that it was “his will and desires”that “all the slaves which I own” shall “receive their freedom.” 19 Virginia’s RichardHenry Lee, a former president of the Continental Congress, thought slavery a“moral blight.” 20 Patrick Henry puzzled over why, “at a time when the rights ofhumanity are defi ned and understood with precision, In a country, above all others,fond of liberty,” citizens would adopt “a principle as repugnant to humanity as it isinconsistent with the bible, and destructive to liberty?”21 Henry’s anti-Federalist allyGeorge Mason labeled slavery an “Evil” and bemoaned its “ill Eff ect” on the “Moralsand Manners of our People,” though Mason warned that it was best not “to exposeour Weakness by examining this Subject too freely” in public.22 Later, Henry andMason’s nationalist nemesis, James Madison, privately admitted that slavery was“unrepublican.”23But the most memorable expression by a republican slaveholder of the agonyinduced by extolling liberty while holding slaves came from Thomas Jeff erson in hisNotes on the State of Virginia [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podstrony