VIEWS OF ROOSEVELT AND SMITH
As representative of a later generation and voicing sentiments of one more removed from the period of controversy, the views of Theodore Roosevelt are of value. Writing in 1898, he says:
"In 1833 the abolition societies of the North came into prominence; they had been started a couple of years previously. Black slavery was such a grossly anachronistic and un-American form of evil that it is difficult to discuss calmly the efforts to abolish it and to remember that many of these efforts were calculated to do and actually did more harm than good.... The cause of the Abolitionists has had such a halo shed around it by the course of events, which they themselves in reality did very little to shape, that it has been usual to speak of them with absurdly exaggerated praise. Their courage and, for the most part, their sincerity, cannot be too highly spoken of, but their share in abolishing slavery was far less than has commonly been represented; any single, non-abolitionist politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more than all the professional Abolitionists combined really to bring about its destruction."[[77]]
Writing still later, Mr. William Henry Smith, of Ohio, in his book, A Political History of Slavery, alluding to the work of the Abolitionists, says:
"What befell is what has always been the experience, which must needs be ever the experience of society when men 'encounter with such bitter tongues,' when full play is given to passion, prejudice and all uncharitableness.... After fifteen years of this commotion, the testimony of the judicious was 'that the tendency to general emancipation in the Border States had been checked, and that the Abolitionists had done more to rivet the chains of the slave and to fasten the curse of slavery upon the country than all the pro-slavery men in the world had done or could do in half a century.'"[[78]]
EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION
Despite, however, the growing embarrassments of the situation, there remained with the people of Virginia the conviction that in the dispersion or colonization beyond her borders, of a substantial part of her negro population, lay the surest road to ultimate emancipation and relief from the racial problems incident to slavery. The practice, therefore, of emancipation by deeds and wills continued, and individually and by concerted action, the various schemes for colonization were fostered and encouraged. The Legislature at its session, 1833, passed a bill appropriating $18,000.00 per annum, for a period of five years to assist in transporting and subsisting "free persons of color who may desire to migrate from Virginia to Liberia."[[79]]
This appropriation, as we shall see, was followed by others of larger amounts to further colonization; and, in no state of the Union, with the possible exception of Maryland, did the cause receive greater assistance, in money and sympathy, than in Virginia.
| [66] | See printed pamphlet T. J. Randolph, September 25th, 1870, on file with Virginia Historical Society. |