Thomas Jefferson Randolph in his speech before the Legislature of 1832 deplored the fact that Mr. Jefferson had not lived: "to see the revolution of the public mind of Virginia. He has not lived to see a majority of the House of Delegates in favor of abolition in the abstract."[[208]]
Washington and Jefferson have both left on record the fact that the people of Virginia of the Revolutionary period would not tolerate any proposal of emancipation. Mr. Randolph in his speech just quoted from said: "Sixty-two years ago when a proposition was made in the Legislature of Virginia by one of the oldest, ablest and most respected members ... to ameliorate the condition of the slaves he was ... denounced as an enemy of his country."
The constitutions of the ante and post-Revolutionary periods in Virginia all required property qualification as a prerequisite to the suffrage, and apportioned representation in the General Assembly to the several cities and counties on the basis of property and white population, rather than on the latter alone. Under this system, the slaves being taxed as property, the slaveholders and their counties exercised a power far in excess of that enjoyed by their brethren in the non-slaveholding sections. The General Assembly elected every state official, including the Governor and the judges of the higher courts, and thus in the hands of that body was lodged complete control of every department of the state government.
GROWING POWER OF NON-SLAVEHOLDERS
The constitution of 1830 admitted to the suffrage, in addition to property-owners, only the citizen "who for twelve months next preceding (the election) has been a housekeeper and head of a family ... and shall have been assessed with a part of the revenue of the commonwealth within the preceding year and actually paid the same." But this constitution retained in the hands of the General Assembly the election of all the state officials, including the Governor, and continued in force the "mixed basis" in apportioning representatives among the several cities and counties.[[209]] With suffrage thus restricted, with a General Assembly in which property in slaves secured for the slaveholders and their counties an additional representation over that of the non-slaveholders, and with every officer of the state government elected by the Legislature thus constituted, the political dominance of the slaveholding counties over the non-slaveholding counties will be readily appreciated. The scheme was alike inequitable and un-Republican, yet it was not until the Reform Convention of 1850-51 that white manhood suffrage was established, the privilege of electing all state officials accorded to the people, and the changes made with respect to the basis of representation which would have eventually accorded to all the counties and cities representation in the General Assembly in proportion to their white populations.[[210]] To strip the slaveholding counties of their political power, to admit on an equal basis to the suffrage every white man in the commonwealth, and to accord to the electorate thus constituted the privilege of electing every high state official did not indicate the growth of pro-slavery sentiment. These achievements of the Convention were confessedly the most signal victories for liberty and progress which had marked the history of Virginia since her liberation from British rule. These fundamental changes in the constitution and in the relative rights and powers of the slaveholders and the slaveholding sections, as compared with the non-slaveholders and non-slaveholding sections, were ratified by the people by a vote of 75,748 to 11,063—only five counties in the state out of the one hundred and forty-eight giving majorities in the negative.[[211]]
| [197] | Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Fiske, Vol. II, p. 191. |
| [198] | Abraham Lincoln, A History, N. & H., Vol. III, p. 413. |
| [199] | Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers, Adams, p. 425. |
| [200] | Thomas H. Benton, Roosevelt, p. 34. |