VIRGINIA'S FIRST CONSTITUTION
In August, 1774, the Virginia Colonial Convention resolved: "We will neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, after the first day of November, next, either from Africa, the West Indies or any other place."[[15]]
On the fifth of September, 1774, when the Continental Congress assembled for the first time, her delegates in that body submitted the memorial known in history as, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," in which the course of George III was arraigned and the sentiments of Virginia in regard to the slave trade declared as follows:
"For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, His Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet, our repeated requests to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by His Majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British Corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."[[16]]
The representatives from Virginia in the Continental Congress were active in their efforts to secure the adoption of the Non-Importation Agreement which included a resolve to discontinue the slave trade and a pledge neither to hire "our vessels nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[[17]]
W. E. B. DuBois declares: "Virginia gave the slave trade a special prominence and was in reality the leading spirit to force her views on the Continental Congress."[[18]]
Nor were these resolves of the Virginia people idle, for numerous evidences can be cited of the activity of her vigilance committees. At Norfolk, the committees, finding that one John Brown had purchased slaves from Jamaica, reported that we "hold up for your just indignation Mr. John Brown, merchant of this place ... to the end ... that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him."[[19]]
VIRGINIA'S BILL OF RIGHTS
Two years later, but before the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, Virginia adopted a written constitution and Bill of Rights. In the preamble to the former there are set forth the reasons which influenced the colony to cast off her allegiance to the British King. Among the foremost was his action in "perverting his kingly powers," ... "into a detestable and insupportable tyranny by putting his negative on laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good"; and again, for "prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us—those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by law."[[20]]
Her Bill of Rights opened with the then novel and far reaching declaration: