ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS FROM 1810-1831
The following quotations, taken from speeches and letters of the period between 1810 and 1831, express the sentiments of men, many of whom, though contemporaries of Washington and Mason and Henry, yet survived them by a quarter of a century.
Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, wrote:
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God; that they are not violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."[[120]]
Writing in 1820 to John Holmes, he said:
"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property—for so it is misnamed—is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifice, I think it might be; but as it is, we have the wolf by the ears and can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[[121]]
John Tyler, in February, 1820, speaking in Congress as a Representative from Virginia when the bill for the admission of Missouri was under discussion, together with the amendment prohibiting the admission of slaves into the territories, said:
"Slavery has been represented on all hands as a dark cloud and the candor of the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Whitman, drove him to the admission that it would be well to disperse this cloud. In this sentiment I entirely concur with him. How can you otherwise disarm it? Will you suffer it to increase in its darkness over one particular portion of this land till its horrors shall burst upon it?... How is the North interested in pursuing such a course? The man of the North is far removed from its influence; he may smile and experience no disquietude. But exclude this property from Missouri by the exercise of an arbitrary power; shut it out from the territories; and I maintain that you do not consult the interests of this Union.
"The gentleman from Massachusetts also conceded that for which we contend—that by diffusing this population extensively you increase the prospects of emancipation. What enabled New York, Pennsylvania and other states to adopt the language of universal emancipation? Rely on it, nothing but the paucity of the number of their slaves. That which would have been criminal in those states not to have done would be an act of political suicide in Georgia or South Carolina to do. By this dispersion you also ameliorate the condition of the black man."[[122]]
John Randolph of Roanoke, speaking in Congress, March 2, 1826, said: