Part 10

"I give and bequeath unto my above named executors all the negro slaves that I now own or may own ... I do most solemnly and seriously request and exhort them to do with my said negro slaves as I now prescribe, that it is my wish that they ... should be liberated so that they may enjoy all the liberties and blessings of a free and independent people, and not approving the custom of liberating slaves to remain in the United States, I would recommend to my said executors to select for their residence some section of country which ... may supply them, the above named negro slaves, with all the comforts and necessaries that may render their lives as agreeable and easy as possible."

The will further authorizes the executors to sell so much of the lands and other property of the testator as may be necessary to pay his debts and then to apply so much of the proceeds as the above named "executors may think proper for the removal and settlement of my above named negro slaves."

The will concludes:

"That it is owing to no malignity of feelings towards my relations that I have thus disposed of my negro slaves, but because I think they own enough of them without mine and I think that they are a general evil and withal I deprecate the principle."[167]

Extract from the will of John Warwick, of Amherst County, admitted to probate March 20th, 1848:

"I, John Warwick, of the County of Amherst, ... do make, publish and declare this my last true will and testament....

"First: The future condition of my slaves has long been a subject of anxious concern with me, and it is my deliberate intention, wish, and desire that the whole of them be manumitted and set free as soon after my demise as the growing crops shall be safe and the annual hires terminated, not later than the end of the year of my death, to be removed, or so many of them as I do not manumit and send to a free state during my life, with the exception hereinafter named, and settled in one or more of the free states of this Union under the care and direction of my executors, hereinafter appointed. Indiana is my choice.

"Second: To carry out the above bequest ... next to the payment of any debts I may owe, my funeral expenses, and the charges of administration of my estate, I hereby declare that it is my wish and intention that my slaves shall on being emancipated have the whole of my estate now in being, or hereafter to be acquired, ... for the purpose of creating a suitable fund in the hands of my executors for their comfortable clothing, outfit, travelling expenses and settlement in their new homes".[168]

Extract from the will of Frances Eppes of Henrico County, admitted to probate February 7th, 1848.

"It is my will and desire that all my slaves shall be emancipated and set free—and I do hereby emancipate and set free the following slaves, and the increase of the females among them, namely—" (Here follow the names of the slaves, twenty-seven in number)—"And with a view to accomplish this my intention in an effectual manner it is my will and desire that at my decease all my slaves of every description be committed to the special care and trust of my friends Joseph J. Pleasants of the County of Hanover, in this state, and Joseph Jones of the State of Ohio....

"It is my will and desire that after all my just debts are paid, all the property of every description of which I may die seized, or the proceeds arising therefrom as may seem best to my executors hereinafter named, be divided among the said slaves so emancipated in such manner as the executors may deem fair and proper."[169]

Extract from the will of Sampson Sanders, of Cabell County, admitted to probate July 9th, 1849:

"It is my will and desire that all my slaves of every age and sex be free at the time of my death from all involuntary servitude....

"I hereby direct my executors ... to collect so much of my estate as may be necessary to buy land for my said slaves in the State of Indiana or some one of the free states of the United States of America as may be necessary for their comfortable support ... assigning each head of a family their proper proportion of land ... binding the heads of families and other young men for the comfortable support of the old and decrepit or weakly slaves during their natural lives. I hereby give and bequeath to my said slaves $15,000.00 to be paid out of my estate by my executors aforesaid."[170]

Extract of will of Joseph Early, of Madison County, dated 22nd of December, 1852, and admitted to probate August 24th, 1854:

"My will is that my executors hereinafter named send my negroes that I now have to Liberia—give each of the men,—three in number—fifty dollars each and Verindy and all her children, one hundred dollars, to take with them, besides getting them out, and bacon enough to last them six months after they get to Liberia."[171]

Extract from the will of William D. Jennings, of Henrico County, admitted to probate August 1st, 1853:

"I hereby manumit, emancipate and set free all the rest and residue of my slaves, viz.:" (Here follow the names of the slaves, thirty-four in number) "and request that they shall be sent to and settled in Africa, in some good location, to be approved by my executor, after conference with the agent of the American Colonization Society, at Washington City."

The will further provides that after paying the debts of the estate the balance shall be applied:

"To the expenses of removal to, and settling in Africa, of all the slaves hereby emancipated. After defraying the expenses of their said removal to Africa, it is my will and desire that the whole surplus of my estate then remaining (after paying debts and legacies) shall be divided among my said emancipated slaves as follows, viz.:—" (Here follow the names of the slaves).[172]

Extract from the will of Traverse D. Herndon, of Fauquier County, dated the 2nd of December, 1854, and admitted to probate 25th of December, 1854:

"Third: I desire that the servants formerly the property of Col. George Love, whose names and number have been sent on to the Colonization Society (The number thus designated were forty-eight, two have since been born) shall be sent to Liberia, so as to carry out the arrangements made with that society for their liberation, and I further wish that their expenses shall be paid to Baltimore, Md., and that my wife shall give them such an amount of money as she may think advisable."[173]

Extract from the will of Arthur B. Davies, of Amherst County, admitted to probate March 21st, 1853:

"It is my will and desire that all my slaves, fifteen in number and named as follows,—" (Here follow their names) "together with their future increase, shall be liberated and become invested with their freedom at my death, and for the purpose of removing them to some free state if that be lawful, or to Liberia if that shall become necessary, it is my will and desire that the debt now due to me by Charles S. Brown be collected and be used as a fund to effect that object. It is my further wish that in case any of my said slaves shall of their own free will and accord prefer remaining in slavery rather than accepting freedom under the provisions of this clause, then it is my desire that they shall be permitted to choose masters amongst any of my legatees hereinafter mentioned, and thereafter to become their slaves for life—the parents in such case to choose also for such of their infant children as may not be capable of making their own election."[174]

Extract from the will of Philip Lightfoot, of Culpeper County, admitted to probate May 21st, 1855:

"I hereby emancipate and set free all the slaves I may possess or be entitled to at the time of my decease, who are to enjoy their freedom as fully as if they had been born free. I give to each of my said slaves, without distinction of age or sex, the sum of one hundred dollars, to be paid to them respectively when my executor shall deliver to them their discharge from service. Moreover my executor is required to clothe each of them well, furnishing to each the necessary quantity of blankets and cause them to be moved to some place, or site, where they can enjoy their freedom, and I desire the clothing and expenses attending their removal to be paid out of my estate with the money on hand or money that can be first collected.

"My old and infirm negroes (if any) are to be supported in a suitable manner by my estate."[175]

Extract from the will of William Smith, of Orange County, admitted to probate September 28th, 1857:

"It is my will and desire that my house servant, Maria, my man, Paul, and my woman, Celia, be allowed to choose their masters or mistresses or either, and when they have made such selection, I hereby give and bequeath them to such person or persons as they may respectively select, provided the person or persons, so selected by them, will take them as their property, but if they cannot be thus disposed of, then my executors are to select suitable places for them where they will be well clothed and taken care of upon the most reasonable and best terms they can, paying out of my estate such sums of money as may be necessary for this purpose."[176]

Extract from the will of George Washington Parke Custis, of Fairfax County, admitted to probate December 7th, 1857:

"And upon the legacies of my four granddaughters being paid, and my estates that are required to pay the said legacies being free of debt, I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease.

"I do constitute and appoint as my executors, Lieut.-Col. Robert Edward Lee, Robert Lee Randolph, of 'Eastern View', Right Rev. Bishop Meade and George Washington Peter."[177]

Extract from deed of Eliza W. Cocke, of Smithfield, dated January 5th, 1857:

"Know all men by these presents that I, Eliza W. Cocke, of the Town of Smithfield, in the County of Isle of Wight, in the State of Virginia, from motives of benevolence have manumitted and set free from slavery, &c."[178]

Extract from the will of Louisa Muschett, of Prince William County, dated 19th March, 1856, and admitted to probate on the 12th February, 1858:

"I will and desire all my servants to be hired out for three years, and at the end of that time, to be free, each grown servant to have fifty dollars, and each child to have twenty-five dollars."[179]

Extract from the will of Robert Tinsley, of Amherst County, dated March 12, 1859, and admitted to probate January 20, 1862:

"It is my will and desire that the residue of my slaves and future increase be emancipated and removed at the expense of my estate to one of the free states of this Union. Although there are some legal impediments, I suppose with the provisions I intend for them they can be settled in Ohio, or some other of the Western States. I wish them settled in families upon tracts of land to be purchased and secured to them to the amount of one hundred dollars a head, and furnished with a substantial suit of clothes suitable to the season and plain provisions sufficient for a year's supply, and this is to be done as soon as sufficient funds can be raised from collection of debts in aid of any money I may leave on hand....

"If the slaves cannot be settled in Ohio, or some other free state of this Union, I wish them properly equipped and sent to Liberia at the expense of my estate."[180]

No attempt has been made to present extracts from all the great number of deeds and wills which are to be found of record in the various clerks' offices throughout Virginia but the foregoing have been selected as fairly representative, both with respect to the time of their execution, the different sections of the state in which they are to be found, and the social position of the emancipators. They are also illustrative of the great number of emancipations and of the difficulties and expenses incurred by Virginia slaveholders in effectuating that result.

Footnote 163:

_Will Book No. 14_, p. 263, Clerk's Office, Bath County, Virginia.

Footnote 164:

_Will Book No. 1_, p. 90, New Records, Clerk's Office, Prince George County, Virginia.

Footnote 165:

_Deed Book B._, p. 467, Clerk's Office, Clarke County, Virginia.

Note: William Meade was the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia from 1829 to 1862.

Footnote 166:

_Will Book No. 10_, p. 17, Clerk's Office, Orange County, Virginia.

Footnote 167:

See _Will Book No. 8_, p. 202, Clerk's Office, Madison County, Virginia.

Footnote 168:

See _Will Book No. 11_, p. 577, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Virginia.

Note: The appraisement of Mr. Warwick's estate showed that he owned seventy-four slaves at the time of his death, and his executor, Dr. David Patteson, removed them to the State of Ohio.

Footnote 169:

_Will Book No. 12_, p. 495, Clerk's Office, Henrico County, Virginia.

Footnote 170:

_Will Book A._, p. 391, Clerk's Office, Cabell County, West Virginia.

Footnote 171:

_Will Book No. 9_, p. 421, Clerk's Office, Madison County, Virginia.

Footnote 172:

_Will Book No. 14_, p. 188, Clerk's Office, Henrico County, Virginia.

Footnote 173:

_Will Book No. 25_, p. 274, Clerk's Office, Fauquier County, Virginia.

Footnote 174:

_Will Book No. 13_, p. 51, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Virginia.

Footnote 175:

_Will Book F._, p. 222, Clerk's Office, Culpeper County, Virginia.

Footnote 176:

_Will Book No. 12_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Orange County, Virginia.

Footnote 177:

_Will Book No. 7_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Fairfax County, Virginia.

Note: Robert E. Lee qualified as executor under this will and executed in 1862 the necessary papers emancipating the testator's slaves of whom there were one hundred and ninety-six.

Footnote 178:

_Deed Book No. 39_, p. 344, Clerk's Office, Isle of Wight County, Virginia.

Footnote 179:

See _Will Book Q._, p. 433, Clerk's Office, Prince William County, Virginia.

Footnote 180:

_Will Book No. 16_, p. 106, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Virginia.

XVIII

THE SMALL NUMBER OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN VIRGINIA AS COMPARED WITH HER WHOLE WHITE POPULATION

Among the many widespread misconceptions which existed with respect to slavery in Virginia, was the impression that the great majority of her citizens were slaveholders; that the slaves were scattered throughout the state, enriching by their labors every community, and that thus their emancipation was opposed from purely pecuniary motives. A presentation of the actual conditions will suffice to demonstrate that this impression was erroneous. The facts show that the slaveholders constituted a small minority of the population, and that, with comparatively few exceptions, the great body of the slaves were to be found within certain well defined sections of the state.

The United States census for 1860 fixes the white population of Virginia at 1,047,299 and the number of slaveholders at 52,128.[181] Admiral Chadwick, in his work, _Causes of the Civil War_, says: "Of the 52,128 slaveholders in Virginia, one-third held but one or two slaves; half held one to four; there were but one hundred and fourteen persons in the whole state who owned as many as a hundred each, and this out of a population of over a million whites."[182]

Thus, out of a population of over one million, only some fifty odd thousand men, women and children, were slaveholders, one-third of whom held only one or two slaves. If to the slaveholders be added such a number as would fairly represent those who were indirectly interested in a pecuniary way in slavery, the fact remains, that the overwhelming majority possessed no such incentive to support the institution.

AREA AND POPULATION OF STATE

By this same census the area of Virginia was fixed at 64,770 square miles, divided into one hundred and forty-eight counties. By an analysis of the census returns, it will appear that in the portion of the state lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, embracing eighty counties and 37,992 square miles, there were 596,293 whites and only 66,766 slaves; while in the remaining sixty-eight counties containing 26,778 square miles, there were only 451,006 whites and 424,099 slaves. Even with respect to this last mentioned portion of the state the slaves were not evenly distributed but were congested in certain well defined localities. Thus of the 424,099 slaves in the sixty-eight counties lying east of the Blue Ridge, 173,109 were in twenty-two counties situated between James River and the North Carolina border known as the "Black Belt," the white population of which was only 128,303.

"ARROGANT SLAVEHOLDERS"

The foregoing facts have an important bearing upon the statement so often found in the writings of historians and publicists, that the white population of Virginia and the South was composed in large measure of "slaveholders, arrogant and rich," and "poor whites," and that in the Civil War the former fought to defend their property interests in slaves, and the latter from a deep-seated fear that emancipation would reduce them to the social level of the blacks. It would seem impossible for such conditions to exist in counties and cities where the whites largely outnumbered the blacks. "Arrogant slaveholders," counting their slaves by the scores and dominating the social and economic fortunes of their white neighbors, could be found only in sections where the slaves greatly outnumbered the whites. While agriculture was undoubtedly the pursuit in which a great majority of the people of Virginia was engaged, yet this majority was not made up of "arrogant slaveholders" and "poor whites." The United States census showed that the great body of her white people were small farmers, wage-earners, mechanics, merchants and professional men, with some not inconsiderable number of miners, fishermen and employees in manufactories. The prosperous, among this more numerous element of her population, had little or no pecuniary interests in slave property, while the poorer classes entertained as little fear for the preservation of their social status from the abolition of slavery, as they had pecuniary stake in its maintenance.

Footnote 181:

_8th Census_, 1860, Vol. on Agriculture, p. 245.

Footnote 182:

_Causes of the Civil War_, American Nation Series, Chadwick, p. 33.

XIX

THE INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY UPON THE PROSPERITY OF VIRGINIA

From the foregoing statistics it appears that the slaveholders of Virginia constituted a small minority of her population, and that the slaves themselves were so grouped that the pecuniary advantage of their presence to the state—if any such advantage existed—was limited to certain well defined portions of her territory. That the institution of slavery, however, was a positive disadvantage to the material prosperity of Virginia is proved by the fact that free states, not half so richly endowed with natural resources, had far outstripped her in wealth and population, and also that as between the white and the slave sections of the commonwealth, the former were more prosperous.

Mr. Bancroft, writing in 1856, affirmed the truth of this position.

"Washington," he says, "was the director of his community of black people in their labor, mainly for their own subsistence. For the market, they produced scarcely anything but a 'little wheat'; and after a season of drought even their own support had to be eked out from other resources, so that with all his method and good judgment he, like Madison of a later day, and in accord with common experience in Virginia, found that where negroes continued on the same land, and they and all their increase were maintained upon it, their owner would become more and more embarrassed or impoverished."[183]

THE BLIGHT OF SLAVERY UPON VIRGINIA

Again the same author, contrasting the profitable character of slavery in the Cotton States, with its unprofitableness in Maryland and Virginia, says: "In the Northern-most of the Southern States slavery maintained itself, not as an element of prosperity, but as a baneful inheritance."[184]

In no way were the injurious effects of slavery more potent or more manifest than in retarding the growth of the white population of the state. The presence of the institution not only turned the tide of immigration from Virginia, but, during the three decades preceding the Civil War, it promoted a steady exodus of the whites from the slaveholding sections. Admiral Chadwick records that, "Nearly 400,000 Virginians were, in 1860, living in other states—nearly all of them Western, 75,874 in Ohio alone."[185]

Not only are the foregoing recitals true but it is equally true that their direful import was profoundly appreciated. Not all the people of Virginia lived in a Fool's Paradise. They balanced the known burdens of slavery against the anticipated burdens of emancipation—they compared the dangers and losses of present conditions with the problems of a future in which the slaves would be free, yet still in their midst; but by no calculation could the continuance of slavery be upheld because of the pecuniary benefits derived from its existence. The published sentiments of Virginians during the three decades immediately preceding the Civil War will serve to confirm this position.

INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY

Among the petitions presented to the Virgina Convention of 1829-30, was one from the citizens of Staunton, praying the abolition of slavery.

"We waive," the petition recited, "at present the considerations of religion and humanity, which belong to this momentous subject, and present it as a naked question of policy, wisdom and safety.... We affirm that the possession and management of slaves form a source of endless vexation and misery within the house, and a waste and drain on the farm; ... that the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself is bringing poverty upon all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the supineness of our population either prevent the institution of schools through the country or keep them in the most languid and inefficient condition; and that the same causes must obviously paralyze all our schemes and efforts for the needful improvement of the country....