By his will which was probated March 23, 1848, John Warwick, of Amherst County, Virginia, emancipated all his slaves, and in like manner bequeathed his whole estate to create a fund for removing them to one of the free states, purchasing farms, and establishing them in their new homes. The testator indicated that he preferred Indiana as the place of residence for his slaves.[[92]] Dr. David Patteson, of Buckingham County, was appointed executor and charged with the duties of settling the estate and removing the freedmen to their new homes. Before arrangements for their removal to Indiana could be perfected, that state adopted its constitution of 1851, whereby free negroes and mulattoes were inhibited from coming into the state. Accordingly Dr. Patteson purchased for the ex-slaves a large tract of land in Ohio, near Kenton, and thither they were transported and settled in their new homes. The inventory of Mr. Warwick's estate shows that at the time of his death he owned seventy-four slaves.[[93]]
By his will, admitted to probate July 9th, 1849, Sampson Sanders, of Cabell County, emancipated all of his slaves and directed his executors to provide for their colonization "in the State of Indiana, or some one of the free states of the United States."[[94]] The testator bequeathed to these slaves the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, out of which fund should be paid the amount necessary for the purchase of land for their homes, the balance to be distributed among them. Before the intentions of the testator could be carried into effect, Indiana enacted a law denying to freed negroes the privileges of settling in that state. Accordingly these freedmen were carried to Cass County, Mich., where they were settled in homes purchased for them under the provisions of the will of their former owner. This colony seems to have succeeded, and many of the descendants of the former slaves of Sanders are to-day living upon the lands purchased by his bounty.[[95]]
SENTIMENTAL DIFFICULTIES
In addition to the many difficulties already enumerated, that invested colonization, there were other deterrent causes only less real. Was it right to send these newly manumitted slaves off, upon the hazard of maintaining themselves in the face of difficulties for which they had had so little training? This was the question for the master. What of their future in the far away and unknown land? That was the question for the slave. Then too, there came to both a genuine reluctance to meet the pain of separation. Of the fact of the existence of a strong affection between masters and slaves, in a great majority of the homes in Virginia where the institution of slavery existed, there can be no question. From the great number of instances illustrating the sorrows of masters and servants in the hour of separation, we select two.
INSTANCES ILLUSTRATING DIFFICULTIES
David W. Barton, of Winchester, Virginia, emancipated many of his slaves a short time prior to the Civil War. Some of these were sent to Liberia, and others, who from age or youth were not regarded as equal to the trials of the trip, were settled in this country. Robert T. Barton, Esq., a son of the emancipator, in a letter to the author bears testimony to the fact of the affection which subsisted between the members of his father's family and these freedmen. "I was quite a small boy at the time," he writes, "but I remember the incident perfectly. I recall the weeping family that parted with these servants, who were very dear to us."[[96]]
Traverse Herndon, of Fauquier, who died in 1854, by his last will emancipated his slaves, some fifty in number, and made provision for their transportation to Liberia. Two years later his brother, Thaddeus Herndon, emancipated his slaves, some twenty in number, and the two groups of freedmen, except such as were too old to bear the dangers of the voyage and life in the new country, were sent to Liberia in the fall of 1857, under the care of an agent of the American Colonization Society.
The Rev. Charles T. Herndon, of Salem, Virginia, has furnished the author with an account of the parting between these freedmen and his father, Thaddeus Herndon, which occurred on board of the ship "Euphrasia," written by the Rev. John Seys,[[97]] a former missionary to Liberia, who was present on the occasion. The subjoined extract from Mr. Seys' account of the separation, which was published soon afterwards in the Maryland Colonization Journal, presents in the most vivid manner the sorrow attending the parting of Thaddeus Herndon and his former slaves, and the reverence and affection with which the slaves of Traverse Herndon regarded their dead master.
OPPOSITION OF FREEDMEN TO COLONIZATION
Not infrequently the many difficulties which embarrassed the efforts of Virginia slaveholders to colonize their ex-slaves at points beyond the state were increased by the attitude of the slaves themselves. The experience of John Thom, of Berry Hill, Culpeper County, as related in a letter to the author under date of July 15th, 1908, by his son Cameron E. Thom, of Los Angeles, Cal., will serve as an illustration. Mr. Cameron Thom is at present a man of venerable years who seems to retain a vivid impression of the scenes incident to the attempt at colonization made by his father in the later thirties. Mr. Thom, after narrating that his father was a soldier in the War of 1812, where he gained his title as commander of a Virginia regiment, and was for thirty years a member of the State Senate, proceeds to write with reference to his father's attitude towards slavery as follows: