XXIV
Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties
which Embarrassed Every Plan of
Emancipation (Continued)
Beyond all the difficulties mentioned, there loomed the more portentous problem of the effect upon the state's political and social well-being of the introduction into her free population of a great company of negroes, whether as citizens or suffragists, or mere tenants at the will of their white brethren. What should be the outcome of such an unparalleled experiment as universal emancipation under the conditions existing in Virginia? The results of emancipation in the free states furnished no assurance because there the number of negroes was so small as to constitute a negligible quantity. What were the voices of history which came from over-sea? In Spain, after centuries of conflict, the whites had finally driven the remnant of the Moors literally into the Mediterranean. In San Domingo, after the carnival of blood had spent its force, the blacks had expelled all the surviving whites from the island.
"It is futile," said Mr. Jefferson, "to hope to retain and incorporate the blacks into the state. Deep-rooted prejudices of the whites, ten thousand recollections of the blacks, of injuries sustained, new provocations, the real distinction 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 one or the other race."[[233]]
STATUS OF THE FREE NEGRO IN THE STATE
But casting aside these tragic warnings, the question of what would be the result of the great experiment, stood unanswered. What place in the life of the commonwealth were these people to fill? Should they be trained for the obligations of freedom and then denied its privileges? Should they be accorded the right of suffrage? If not, how would its denial comport with the genius of our institutions and the aspirations of our people? If entrusted with the suffrage how was the well-being of communities to be assured where, having the majority, they would become political masters? Had negroes ever, in the world's history, ruled in peace and order a community largely populated by whites? Was the race to be kept in a state of quasi-dependence—beholden for their social and economic privileges to the very people with whom they must come in competition? What provision for the pauperism, the vagrancy, the lunacy and the crime which would certainly follow the removal of the restraints of slavery? What measure and character of education for the young and by whom provided? These and many more like them were the questions, which, from the close of the Revolution, had confronted the people of Virginia. What should be the relations, political and social, of the two races after emancipation? Speaking in September, 1850, in Congress, on the Wilmot Proviso, Gov. James McDowell, of Virginia, said:
"Physical amalgamation? ... ruinous, if it were possible.... Political and civil amalgamation just as impossible.... Emancipation with rights of residence and property, but exclusion from social, civil and political equality, would conduce, sooner or later, to a war of colors."[[234]]