"CODICIL.-It is my will and desire, that my old servants, Essex and Hetty his wife, be made quite comfortable.

"JOHN RANDOLPH, of Roanoke.” [The laws of Virginia prohibit emancipation without the removal of the emancipated from the state.]

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the state for internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore confidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the safety of our wives, and our children. Yet, sir, I must ask, upon whom is to fall the burden of this defence? not upon the lordly masters of their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with their families when danger threatens. No, sir; it is to fall upon the less wealthy class of our citizens; chiefly upon the non slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out where there was not a slaveholder among them, and this is the practice of the country. I have slept in times of alarm quietly in bed, without having a thought of care, while these individuals, owning none of this property themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a pittance of seventy-five cents per twelve hours, the very curtilage of my house, and guarding that property, which was alike dangerous to them and myself. After all, this is but an expedient. As this population becomes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your guard must be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for the expense of its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening the free population of a country. The wealthy are not dependent upon the poor for those aids, and those services, compensation for which, enables the poor man to give bread to his family. The ordinary mechanic arts are all practised by slaves. In the servitude of Europe, in the middle ages, in years of famine, the poor had to barter their liberty for bread: they had to surrender their liberty to some wealthy man to save their families from the horrors of famine. The slave was sustained in sickness and in famine upon the wealth of his master, who preserved him as he would any other species of property. All the sources of the poor man's support were absorbed by him. In this country, he cannot become a slave, but he flies to some other country more congenial to his condition, and where he who supports himself by honest labor is not degraded in his caste. Those who remain, relying upon the support of casual employment, often become more degraded in their condition, than

the slaves themselves.

The gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being a part of the profit; it is admitted; but no great evil can be averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be questioned, how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice in parts of Vir

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

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ginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this ancient dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for the shambles. Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave trade; that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the slave, a stranger in language, aspect and manner, from the merchant who has brought him from the interior. The ties of father, mother, husband and child, have all been rent in twain; before he receives him, his soul has become callous. But here, sir, individuals, whom the master has known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the innocent gambols of childhood, who have.been accustomed to look to him for protection, he tears from the mother's arms, and sells into a strange country, among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.

He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the same principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery and murder, or any other of the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist in any part of civilized Europe? No, sir, in no part of it. America is the only civilized Christian nation that bears the opprobrium. In every other country, where civilization and Christianity have existed together, they have erased it from their codes; they have blotted it out from the page of their history. He has attempted to reconcile us to the dangers of negro slavery, by comparison with slavery as it existed among the ancients. There is one view of this subject which has escaped the gentleman, and which I think reverses his conclusions. The slaves of the ancients were of the same species of the human race; they were of different nations it is true, taken in war, but nevertheless white, bearing no distinctive specific mark, stamped upon their countenances, which should designate them through illimitable generations as a distinct race. In the march of events their blood mingled with their masters; all varieties of dialect or language, the slight differences of aspect and countenance, became blended into one mass. These, from individual genius and assiduity, from high moral and intellectual qualities, could rise separately into higher classes. Such was Esop, Phædrus, Narses, Terence, and the father of Juvenal, who have transmitted their names to an immortal posterity, while their proud masters sleep in oblivion with the common herd. To rise by merit was practicable; there was no inducement to attempt to elevate violently a caste, with whom they had no community of interest or feeling. The ancients even forbade badges of slavery to be worn, fearing to mark them too plainly, lest they might see their own strength; and with this precaution, Italy was ravaged by servile wars. The slave Spartacus kept the field for three years in the heart of Italy, repeatedly defeating consular armies. But, sir, how different is it with the African; nature has stamped upon him the indelible

mark of his species: no lapse of time or generations, no clime or culture, can weaken or obliterate her impression from his countenance. On the burning sands of Africa, in the snowy regions of Canada, as the naked hunter of his native woods, pursuing with the poisoned dart the lion or the elephant, or here, sir, after two hundred years of culture, it remains unfaded, unchanged, and unchangeable. No matter what the grandeur of his soul, the elevation of his thought, the extent of his knowledge, or the purity of his character; he may be a Newton or a Des Cartes, a Tell or a Washington, he is chained down by adamantine fetters; he cannot rear himself from the earth without elevating his whole race with him.

The gentleman has appealed to the Christian religion in justification of slavery. I would ask him upon what part of those pure doctrines does he rely; to which of those sublime precepts does he advert, to sustain his position? Is it that which teaches charity, justice, and good-will to all? or is it that which teaches "that unto others as ye would they should do unto you?"—Speech in the Virginia Legislature.

ye do

B. SWAIN.

Is it nothing to us, that seventeen hundred thousand of the people of our country, are doomed illegally to the most abject and vile slavery that was ever tolerated on the face of the earth? Are Carolinians deaf to the piercing cries of humanity? Are they insensible to the demands of justice? Let any man of spirit and feeling, for a moment cast his thoughts over the land of slavery-think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings of lamentation and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies, and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart. Too long has our country been unfortunately lulled to sleep, feeding on the golden dreams of superficial politicians, fanciful poets, and anniversary orations. The worst is not generally known. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of sevenfold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm. We cannot yet believe the condition of our country so desperate, as to forbid the judicious application of proper remedies."-Address of B. Swain of North Carolina, in 1830.

GOVERNOR RANDOLPH.

The deplorable error of our ancestors in copying a civil institution from savage Africa, has affixed upon their posterity a depressing burden, which nothing but the extraordinary benefits conferred by our

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happy climate, could have enabled us to support. We have been far outstripped by states, to whom nature has been far less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, under other circumstances, the amount of general wealth in Virginia, or the whole sum of comfortable subsistence and happiness possessed by all her inhabitants.-Address to the Legislature of Virginia, in 1820.

MR. BRODNAX.

That slavery in Virginia is an evil, and a transcendant evil, it would be more than idle for any human being to doubt or deny. It is a mildew, which has blighted every region it has touched, from the creation of the world. Illustrations from the history of other countries and other times might be instructive; but we have evidence nearer at hand, in the short histories of the different states of this great confederacy, which are impressive in their admonitions, and conclusive in their character.-Speech in the Virginia Legislature,

1832.

MR. CUSTIS.

The prosperity and aggrandizement of a state is to be seen in its increase of inhabitants, and consequent progress in industry and wealth. Of the vast tide of emigration, which now rushes like a cataract to the West, not even a trickling rill wends its way to the ancient dominion. Of the multitude of foreigners, who daily seek an asylum and home in the empire of liberty, how many turn their steps to the region of the slave? None. No, not one. There is a malaria in the atmosphere of those regions, which the new comer shuns, as being deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide spreading ruin which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in the South, as witnessed in a sparse population of freemen, deserted habitations, and fields without culture.

Strange to tell, even the wolf, driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of an hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery.

MR. FAULKNER.

I am gratified to perceive that no gentleman has yet risen in this hall the avowed advocate of slavery. The day has gone by, when such a voice could be listened to with patience, or even forbearance. I even regret, sir, that we should find one among us, who enters the

lists as its apologist, except on the ground of uncontrollable necessity. If there be one who concurs with the gentleman from Brunswick (Mr. Gholson) in the harmless character of this institution, let me request him to compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of this Commonwealth-barren, desolate, and seared as it were by the avenging hand of Heaven, with the descriptions which we have of this same country from those, who first broke its virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to the withering and blasting effects of slavery. If this does not satisfy him, let me request him to extend his travels to the northern states of this Union, and beg him to contrast the happiness and contentment which prevails throughout the country-the busy and cheerful sound of industry-the rapid and swelling growth of their population-the means and institutions of education-their skill and proficiency in the useful arts-their enterprise and public spirit-the monuments of their commercial and manufacturing industry;-and above all, their devoted attachment to the government from which they derive their protection, with the division, discontent, indolence, and poverty of the southern country. To what, sir, is all this ascribable? To that vice in the organization of society, by which one half of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half-to that unfortunate state of society in which freemen regard labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannically imposed upon them-to that condition of things, in which half a million of your population can feel no sympathy with the society, and in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate-no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice.

MR. SUMMERS.

Sir, the evils of this system cannot be enumerated. It were unnecessary to attempt it. They glare upon us at every step. When the owner looks to his wasted estate, he knows and feels them. When the statesman examines the condition of his country, and finds her moral influence gone, her physical strength diminished, her political power waning, he sees and must confess them. Will gentlemen inform us when this subject will become less delicate, when it will be attended with fewer difficulties than at present-and at what period we shall be better enabled to meet them? Shall we be more adequate to the end proposed, after the resources of the state have been yet longer paralyzed by the withering, desolating influence of our present system? Sir, every year's delay but augments the difficulties of this great business, and weakens our ability to compass it. Like silly children, we endeavor to postpone the work, which we know must be performed.-Speeches in the Virginia Legislature, 1832.