Forty-six "inhabitants & Freeholders of the County of Hanover" react "with concern and astonishment" to the "doctrines [that] have been advocated & published to the world, and questions debated from day to day which fill the whole community with alarm." Deploring that "the right to property amounting to one hundred millions of dollars has been questioned," the petitioners report that "it has been said that no abolition will be attempted unless full compensation be made to the owners of the slaves"; they strongly retort that "this notion of compensation is the most extraordinary that ever entered into the mind of man. Whence is the compensation to proceed? From the state. The state is the people." This, they assert, would mean that "the slaveholders then are to pay themselves for their own slaves." The petitioners purport that "slaves while kept in subjection are submissive and easily controlled, but let any number of them be indulged with the hope of freedom ... that they reject constraint and become almost wholly unmanageable." They further decry that "it is the expectation of liberty, & by that alone, that they can be rendered a dangerous population." Of the opinion that "our slaves are a cheerful & contented race strongly attached to their owners," the petitioners therefore urge the legislature "to abstain from every attempt to provide for the emancipation of the slaves partial or general, immediate or prospective in any manner whatsoever."
Result: Laid on table.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
