To collate the sentiments of her great sons antagonistic to the institution;
To show the small number of her citizens holding slaves as compared with the great company of those who possessed no such interest;
To note the injurious effects upon her prosperity resulting from the presence of the institution;
To summarize what were considered the almost insuperable difficulties which embarrassed every plan of emancipation—difficulties that were augmented and intensified by the bitterness and partizanship with which, during the three decades immediately preceding the Civil War, the subject had become invested;
To present the situation with respect to the controversy at the time Virginia seceded from the Union; and finally,
To consider the effects, if any, upon her position, of President Lincoln's Proclamations of Emancipation issued subsequent thereto.
VIRGINIA'S COLONIAL RECORD
African slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619 by a Dutch vessel. George W. Williams, the negro historian of his race in America, says, "It is due to the Virginia colony to say that the slaves were forced upon them."[[3]]
Though slaves were thus introduced as early as 1619, it was not until 1661 that the institution of slavery was recognized in Virginia by statute law.[[4]]
For a long period after their first introduction, very few slaves were imported. At the end of the first half-century there were only some two thousand, and as late as the year 1715 they numbered only about twenty-five thousand. In the sixty years, however, immediately preceding the Revolution, they came in ever-increasing numbers, so that at the latter date they almost equalled the white population of the colony.[[5]]