"What have we done to her," said the Rev. Nehemiah Adams of Boston, "but admonish, threaten and indict her before God, excommunicate her, stir up insurrection among her slaves, endanger her homes, make her Christians and ministers odious in other lands."[[65]]
From this period, too, may be noticed the gradual increase in the number of pro-slavery men in Virginia. This element did not justify slavery simply because of the difficulties and dangers attending emancipation, but they asserted that the institution was good in itself, sanctioned by religion, a blessing to the blacks and essential to the well-being of the whites. The growth of this new school in its aggressiveness and the extreme character of its utterances kept pace with the like development of the Abolitionists. As the latter denounced slavery as "man-stealing"—and slaveholders—as "thieves," the former marshalled Bible texts to show the divine origin and Heaven-approved character of the institution. As the Abolitionists portrayed the "degrading" and "brutalizing" effects of slavery upon the character of slaveholding communities, the pro-slavery men pointed to the moral and civic virtues which undoubtedly existed in such communities, and claimed that these very virtues were attributable to the institution of slavery. As Abolitionists, relying upon the insistence that slavery was a "monstrous oppression," justified slave insurrections to effect freedom, the pro-slavery men sought to drive into silence their fellow Virginians of anti-slavery sentiments because any acknowledgment that it was illegal and that the condition of the slave was at war with the laws of natural right warranted the slave in killing his master to secure his freedom.
THE GROWTH OF PRO-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS
Thus, from 1833 on to the time of the war, the pro-slavery advocates grew in influence and aggressiveness, though what proportion of the population of Virginia they represented it is impossible to determine. Their extreme utterances undoubtedly gave them great prominence, as the march of events, in like manner, augmented their power. The sentiments of the anti-slavery men found little place in the turmoil of the times. Their position was strongly analogous to that of the majority of the Northern people, who, in the midst of the war cries of the Abolitionists, continued in silence their business pursuits.
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[57]
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Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America,
Wilson, Vol. I, p. 195.
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[58]
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History of Slavery in Virginia, Ballagh, p. 138.
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[59]
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Journal of House of Delegates, 1832, p. 109.
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