In 1857, alluding to the foregoing statement, he wrote:
"I have been for the last fifty years, and more especially for the last thirty, travelling much the length and breadth of Virginia, making observations for myself, conversing with intelligent farmers, politicians, ministers of the gospel, and other Christians on the subjects referred to above. ... I have not only reconsidered them myself, but freely conversed with many sound-minded persons concerning the views there presented; and the result has been an increased conviction that they are correct and have been in time past, and still are held by the great body of our citizens, Christians, and statesmen."[[144]]
The statement of Howison, made in 1848—that, "in general, the people of Virginia hold slavery to be an enormous evil, bearing with fatal power upon their prosperity," is confirmed by these conclusions of Bishop Meade, expressed ten years later.
Robert E. Lee writing in December, 1856, said:
"In this enlightened age, there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that as an institution slavery is a moral and political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are strongly for the former...."
"While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands, who sees the end and chooses to work by slow influences."[[145]]
RESULTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS
If it be urged that despite the foregoing anti-slavery sentiments the institution remained intrenched in the laws of Virginia, and supported by a strong body of public opinion, it may be replied that the views of these Virginians, and others of like mind, were nevertheless productive of far-reaching and beneficent results. They were effective in robbing slavery of many of its most abhorrent and oppressive incidents. Under the public opinion thus generated the institution in Virginia assumed, as a rule, the patriarchal character—master and slave being bound by ties of mutual obligation and affection. Many of the legal hardships inseparable from the system were reduced to a minimum. Thus the breaking up of families, by sale of their members, was confined as nearly as possible to the distribution of estates and the collection of debts by process of law. In all the category of disreputable callings, there were none so despised as the slave-trader. The odium descended upon his children and his children's children. Against the legal right to buy and sell slaves for profit, this public sentiment lifted a strong arm, and rendered forever odious the name of "Negro-trader." The good results of these conditions were evidenced in the higher measure of character, courtesy and capacity, which, as a whole, distinguished the negroes of Virginia.
NUMBER OF EMANCIPATIONS IN VIRGINIA
The position of these Virginians was also of great importance in keeping before the mind of the people the conception that slavery was an abnormal institution, and that with her growth in wealth and white population, Virginia could and would free herself from what Robert E. Lee described as "a moral and political evil." Furthermore these sentiments were productive of an actual emancipation, the character and extent of which has been little appreciated. If devotion to the cause is to be measured by the actual manumissions effected, then Virginia's emancipators could contemplate with pride their record. George Wythe liberated his slaves at the close of the Revolution. Robert E. Lee, executor of George Washington Parke Custis, left his place at the front with the Army of Northern Virginia to emancipate the slaves of his testator as directed by the latter in his will.[[146]] Between these two there stretches a long line of emancipators, who, without compensation, liberated thousands of slaves. Mr. Ballagh estimates this number as high as one hundred thousand.[[147]] These slaveholders incurred not only the pecuniary loss of this great emancipation, but in many instances the expense of colonization. When, too, it is remembered that their communities were often thus further burdened by the problems incident to the presence of an increasing body of freedmen, the full import of the beneficence is better appreciated. That many of these ex-slaves, despite statutes and the efforts of masters and others to settle them at points beyond the state, remained in Virginia is attested by the Federal census, from which it appears that in 1860 there were still fifty-eight thousand and forty-two free negroes within her borders.