In the period 1780-1817 there were four possible responses to slavery.
1: outright abolition. End it. Mass, Vt. and the new states, Maine, Ohio, and Indiana took this position.
2: gradual abolition. The children of slaves would be born free and the institution would literally "die out" as the old slaves died out. Pa, Conn., RI, NY and NJ passed such laws, although all of them eventually ended slavery outright later on. Judge St. George Tucker of Va. proposed such a program for Virginia in an elaborate pamphlet that he published and circulated at his own expense. He also included this in his 5 volume, Tucker's Blackstone. No other leader of Va. endorsed this plan, even though it would have taken almost a century to end slavery under it; but such a plan would have been a great start. While in the state legislature during the Revolution Jefferson, as chair of the committee to revise the laws, sat on a bill for such a program and refused to allow it to come to the floor for debate. He later claimed to support it in his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VA. but this is a self-serving explanation that was completely dishonest even at the time he wrote the NOTES. (for more on that, see SLAVERY AND THE FOUNDERS).
3. allow private manumssion. Va adopted such a law in 1782 (after TJ left state government) and hundreds of masters voluntarily manumited their slaves. Under this law manumitted slaves were allowed to stay in the state.
4. prohibit all in-state manumissions. Va. later took this position as did most of the deep South except La. and SC. Under such laws either manumssion was absolutely prohibited or it was allowed, but the manumitted slaves had to leave the state after a certain period of time (say a year). Under these laws masters could still take their slaves to free states, or send them to Africa, but could not manumit them within their state.
The colonization society (begun in 1817) was mainly designed to remove blacks from the US. A few masters also used the society to free their slaves, and over the next 43 years a few thousand (at most) slaves were freed on condition the Colonization Society took them to Africa. Most free blacks in the US opposed colonization as a racist attempt to force them from the country of their birth.
-- Paul Finkelman Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law University of Tulsa College of Law 3120 East 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office) 918-631-2194 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Robert Justin Lipkin wrote:
Can one justifiably infer from this discussion that the distinction between governmental and non-governmental emancipation of slaves is not a distinction between the government passing laws (or proposing amendments) abolishing slavery as opposed to non-governmental suasion toward the same end? Rather, it is a distinction between the government deporting slaves, on the one hand, and private parties doing so on the other. Is this correct?
Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
