American Negro Slave Revolts by Herbert Aptheker

Author:Herbert Aptheker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

The only anti-slavery activity, outside of talk and the receipt of petitions,83 developed when a Mr. Witcher moved that consideration of the slavery question be indefinitely postponed.84 This was voted down, 71 to 60, and therefore a select committee on slaves, free Negroes, and the recent insurrection, was appointed. This committee, in the person of its chairman, Mr. Goode of Mecklenberg, resolved that “ it is not expedient ” to legislate on the question of emancipation, and asked to be absolved from further consideration of that subject. Two amendments, as to what the committee ought to consider, were offered. Mr. Preston suggested it was “ expedient ” for it to consider the problem. This was defeated by a vote of 73 to 58. Mr. Thomas J. Randolph then offered an elaborate plan for gradual emancipation which he thought the committee would do well to ponder. This seems never to have come to a vote.85 Nothing was done.

It may also be pointed out that while it is true the legislative halls and newspapers were filled with very nearly all the arguments against slavery that were ever to be used, it is far off the mark to say, for example,86 “ The Richmond Inquirer [sic] urged that slavery be abolished,” or that Ritchie, its editor, “ favored the abolition of negro slavery in 1832.” 87 True, that paper shouted 88 “ something must be done,” but what, concretely, what, did it suggest? “ In fine, by great discretion, the utmost respect for private property, great perseverance, by an active and increased police, we may rid ourselves, in some long and distant times, of an evil, which, if left to itself, will ‘grow with our growth, and strengthen with our strength’!” 89 That is the high point in the “emancipationist” feeling of this influential paper, and it is difficult to ascertain whether the writer is deploring slavery, or asking that its too rapid growth be checked.

And while anti-slavery letters abounded in the press, proslavery letters were certainly not rare, but now being considered vulgar, they are often overlooked by commentators in evaluating articulate Southern opinion. One, signed “A Slaveholder and No Politician,” declared: “ Some people seem very anxious to devise some scheme for the gradual emancipation of our slaves; if they know what was good for themselves they had better let that question rest; for as I live, for one, they will have to take them at the point of the bayonet. I do not mean to go into a discussion of the subject, but merely to state that public sentiment is against any scheme of emancipation.” A letter from Richard Hughes told of the decision of his neighbor, one Colonel Lee, to free his slaves and hire white men:

they’ll be cheaper, he says: and he can make more money on his plantation than he does now. Colonel, says I, the white laborers must be better fed, and clothed, and lodged, than your negroes— and you’ll have to pay them wages, too:—how

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