A Defence of Virginia. Robert Lewis Dabney
"I. For preventing the farther importation of slaves into this Commonwealth: Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That from and after the passing of this act, no slave or slaves shall hereafter be imported into this Commonwealth by sea or land, nor shall any slaves so imported be bought or sold by any person whatsoever.
"II. Every person hereafter importing slaves into this Commonwealth contrary to this act, shall forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand pounds for every slave so imported, and every person selling or buying any such slaves, shall in like manner forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds for every slave so bought or sold, one moiety of which forfeitures shall be to the use of the Commonwealth, and the other moiety to him or them that will sue for the same, to be recovered by action of debt or information in any court of record.
"III. And be it further enacted, That every slave imported into this Commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall, upon such importation, become free."
The remaining sections of the law only proceed to exempt from the penalty citizens of the other United States, coming to live as actual residents with their slaves in the Commonwealth, and citizens of Virginia bringing in slaves from other States of the Union by actual inheritance.
Thus Virginia has the honour of being the first Commonwealth on earth to declare against the African slave trade, and to make it a penal offence. Her action antedates by thirty years the much bepraised legislation of the British Parliament, and by ten years the earliest movement of Massachusetts on the subject; while it has the immense advantage, besides, of consistency; because she was never stained by any complicity in the trade, and she exercised her earliest untrammelled power to stay its evils effectually in her dominions. Thus, almost before the Clarksons and Wilberforces were born, had Virginia done that very work for which her slanderers now pretend so much to laud those philanthropists. All that these reformers needed to do was to bid the British Government go and imitate the example which Virginia was the first to set, among the kingdoms of the world. It is true that the first Congress of 1774, at Philadelphia, had adopted a resolution that the slave trade ought to cease; but this body had no powers, either federal or national; it was a mere committee; and its inspiration upon this subject, as upon most others, came from Virginia. In 1788, Massachusetts passed an act forbidding her citizens from importing, transporting, buying, or selling any of the inhabitants of Africa as slaves, on a penalty of fifty pounds for each person so misused, and of two hundred pounds for every vessel employed in this traffick. Vessels which had already sailed were exempted from all penalty for their present voyages.[36] It is manifest from the character of the penalties, that this law was not passed to be enforced; and the evidence soon to be adduced will show, beyond all doubt, that this is true. The act was one of those cheap tributes which Pharisaic avarice knows so well how to pay to appearances. Connecticut passed a very similar law the same year, prohibiting her citizens to engage in the slave trade, and voiding the policies of insurance on slave ships. The slave trade of New England continued in increasing activity for twenty years longer.
It may be said, that if the government of Virginia was opposed to the African slave trade, her people purchased more of its victims than those of any other colony; and the aphorism may be quoted against them, that the receiver is as guilty as the thief. This is rarely true in the case of individuals, and when applied to communities, it is notoriously false. All States contain a large number of irresponsible persons. The character of a free people as a whole should be estimated by that of its corporate acts, in which the common will is expressed. The individuals who purchased slaves of the traders were doubtless actuated by various motives. Many persuaded themselves that, as they were already enslaved, and without their agency, and as their refusal to purchase them would have no effect whatever to procure their restoration to their own country and to liberty, they might become their owners, without partaking in the wrong of which they were the victims. Many were prompted by genuine compassion, because they saw that to buy the miserable creatures was the only practicable way in their reach to rescue them from their pitiable condition; for tradition testifies that often when the captives were exposed in long ranks upon the shore, near their floating prisons, for the inspection of purchasers, they besought the planters and their wives to buy them, and testified an extravagant joy and gratitude at the event. All purchasers were, perhaps, influenced partly by the convenience and advantage of possessing their labour. Had every individual in Virginia been as intelligent and virtuous as the patriots who, in the Burgesses, denounced the inhuman traffick, the colony might perhaps have remained without a slave, notwithstanding the two centuries of temptation during which its ports were plied with cargoes seeking sale. But a commonwealth without a single weak, or selfish, or bad man, is a Utopia. The proper rulers were forbidden by the mother country to employ that prohibitory legislation which is, in all States, the necessary guardian of the publick virtue; and it is therefore that we place the guilt of the sale where that of the importation justly belongs. Doubtless many an honourable citizen, after sincerely sustaining the endeavour of his Burgess to arrest the whole trade, himself purchased Africans, because he saw that their general introduction into the country was inevitable, without legislative interference; and his self-denial would only have subjected him to the severe inconveniences of being without slaves in a community of slaveholders, whilst it did not arrest the evil.
The government of Virginia was unquestionably actuated, in prohibiting the slave trade, by a sincere sense of its intrinsic injustice and cruelty. Mr. Jefferson, a representative man, in his "Notes on Virginia," had given indignant expression to this sentiment. And the reprobation of that national wrong, with regret for the presence of the African on the soil, was the universal feeling of that generation which succeeded the Revolution; while they firmly asserted the rightfulness of that slavery which they had inherited. But human motives are always complex; and along with the moral disapprobation for the crime against Africa, the Burgesses felt other motives, which, although more personal, were right and proper. They were sober, wise and practical men, who felt that to protect the rights, purity, and prosperity of their own country and posterity, was more properly their task, than to plead the wrongs of a distant and alien people, great although those wrongs might be. They deprecated the slave trade, because it was peopling their soil so largely with an inferior and savage race, incapable of union, instead of with civilized Englishmen. This was precisely their apprehension of the enormous wrong done the colony by the mother country. They understood also the deep political motive which combined with the lust of gain to prompt the relentless policy of the Home Government. With it, the familiar argument was: "Let us stock the plantations plentifully with Africans, not only that they may be good customers for our manufactures, and producers for our commerce; but that they may remain dependent and submissive. An Englishman who emigrates, becomes the bold assertor of popular and colonial rights; but the negro is only fit for bondage." For the same reason, the colonies felt that the forcing of the Africans upon them was as much a political as a social wrong. But that righteous Providence, whose glory it is to make the crimes of the designing their own punishment, employed African slavery in the Southern colonies as a potent influence in forming the character of the Southern gentleman, without whose high spirit, independence, and chivalry, America would never have won her freedom from British rule.
This contrast between the policy and principles of Virginia and of the New England colonies will be concluded with two evidences. The one is presented in the history of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Jefferson, the author, states that he had inserted in the enumeration of grievances against the King of Great Britain, a paragraph strongly reprobating his arbitrary support of the slave trade, against the remonstrances of some of the colonies. When the Congress discussed the paper, this paragraph was struck out, "in complaisance," he declares, "to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[37] Thus New England assisted to expunge from that immortal paper a testimony against the slave trade, which Virginia endeavoured to place there.
The other evidence is presented by a case much more practical. In the Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United States, two questions concerning African slaves caused dissension.