The history of legislation, in the Colony of Virginia, records twenty-three Acts, imposing duties on the importation of slaves, with the avowed design of suppressing the trade. “In 1772, most of the duties, previously imposed, were re-enacted, and the Assembly transmitted, at the same time, a petition to the Throne, of which the following are extracts:—
“‘We are encouraged to look up to the Throne, and implore your Majesty’s paternal assistance, in averting a calamity of a most alarming nature.... The importation of slaves into the Colonies from the coast of Africa, hath long been considered a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of your Majesty’s American dominions. Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty’s Governors of this Colony, which prohibit such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce.’
“The first Assembly which met in Virginia, after the adoption of her Constitution, prohibited the traffic; and ‘the inhuman use of the royal prerogative’ against the action of the Colony upon this subject, is enumerated in the first clause of the first Virginia Constitution, as a reason of the separation from the mother country.”[5]
[5] Professor Dew.
Such was the common feeling of the Southern Colonies, though more decidedly manifested in Virginia. They never invited, they never tempted the slave trade, except by a silent acquiescence for a season, in what was imposed upon them by the cupidity of foreigners, and the mandates of authority, before the public conscience of mankind had begun to remonstrate; and the moment they opened their eyes to its domestic results among themselves, they set their faces, and employed all their lawful powers, against it.
“Federal America interdicted the slave trade from her ports thirteen years before Great Britain; she made it punishable as a crime seven years before, she fixed four years sooner the period of non-importation—which period was earlier than that determined upon by Great Britain for her Colonies.”[6]
[6] Walsh’s Appeal.
For the introduction of Slavery into America, therefore, the Americans themselves are acquit of all political responsibility. All that can be said is, that individuals purchased slaves that were brought and offered, when the public conscience of the world tolerated the traffic; but it was under the authority, and by the imposition, of a parent Government, in another Continent, that slavery was reared into a domestic and political institution, the process all the while having been solemnly protested against by those whose voice had a claim to be heard, and who were most intimately concerned, until it grew into a magnitude and importance, too formidable to be dealt with by a violent hand of excision and extirpation—sufficiently formidable, indeed, to demand the utmost wisdom and prudence of man for its treatment and ultimate disposal.
Thus, having fairly wiped from the American escutcheon the political responsibility of introducing slavery in this Continent, and among ourselves, it remains to be considered, how far the present generation of slaveholding Americans are responsible for this state of things. The sum of the matter lies in one short sentence: They were born into the world the heirs of this condition. In no manner or degree are they responsible for it, any farther than they maintain it, and as they maintain it. We suppose the Abolitionists themselves would not differ widely from us here, except as, peradventure, some of them may take their stand on the theological proposition—“In Adam’s fall we sinned all.” If, however, it may be assumed, that all agree on this point, it is the simple and the great question at issue. The slave States say, that is their business; and the Abolitionists say, it is ours. This is the contest—the question to be tried.