| [147] | History of Slavery in Virginia, Ballagh, p. 144. |
XVI
Specimens of Deeds and Wills Emancipating Slaves
An examination of a few of the great number of deeds and wills which are to be found on record throughout Virginia will serve to illustrate the motives of her emancipators and the many difficulties which confronted them. These emancipations may be grouped in three periods,—from 1782 to 1806, from 1806 to 1833, and from 1833 to the outbreak of the Civil War. Each of these periods had its peculiar characteristics with reference to the problem of emancipation in Virginia. From 1782 to 1806 the law permitted emancipation without qualification, and public opinion, in the state, while deploring the existence of slavery was willing to permit the slaveholders to control, in large measure, the times and methods of its abolition. The period from 1806 to 1833 marked the years when anti-slavery sentiment showed increasing strength. The antipathy, however, to the presence of the free negro was equally pronounced and resulted in the laws which required his removal from the state within a year after his emancipation. This requirement invested emancipation with new, practical, as well as ethical difficulties. This period opened with the act which denied to slaveholders the unqualified right of emancipation—and it ended with the Nat Turner Insurrection and the futile attempts of the General Assembly to successfully meet the difficulties of the situation. The years from 1833 to 1860 were burdened with all the difficulties of the previous periods, as well as with the embarrassments growing out of the efforts of the Abolitionists beyond the state and of the pro-slavery advocates within her borders.
An examination of the following extracts from the deeds and wills of emancipators will serve to illustrate the truth of these views.
SPECIMENS OF DEEDS AND WILLS, 1782-1806
Extract from deed of Joseph Hill, of Isle of Wight County, dated March 6th, 1783:
"I, Joseph Hill, of Isle of Wight County in Virginia, after full and deliberate consideration, and agreeable to our Bill of Rights, am fully persuaded that freedom is the natural life of all mankind, and that no law, moral or divine, hath given me a just right or property in the persons of any of my fellow-creatures, and desirous to fulfil the injunction of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, by doing to all others as I would be done by in a like situation ... do hereby emancipate and set free all and every of the above named slaves, &c."[[148]]
Extract from deed of Charles Moorman, of Campbell County, dated September 1st, 1789: