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VIRGINIA DID NOT SECEDE IN ORDER TO EXTEND SLAVERY INTO THE TERRITORIES, OR TO PREVENT ITS THREATENED DESTRUCTION WITHIN HER OWN BORDERS
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VIRGINIA'S COLONIAL RECORD WITH RESPECT TO SLAVERY
President Lincoln in his inaugural address declared:—"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes slavery is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute."
Other voices proclaimed that there existed an "irrepressible conflict" between the North and the South in which the abolition or maintenance of slavery was the gage of battle. The two assertions may be combined and the question considered whether Virginia seceded either to extend slavery into the territories or to perpetuate the institution within her borders.
In considering these questions it will be well to review Virginia's record with respect to slavery both during the period of her existence as a colony and her career as a state;
To collate the sentiments of her great sons antagonistic to the institution;
To show the small number of her citizens holding slaves as compared with the great company of those who possessed no such interest;
To note the injurious effects upon her prosperity resulting from the presence of the institution;
To summarize what were considered the almost insuperable difficulties which embarrassed every plan of emancipation—difficulties that were augmented and intensified by the bitterness and partizanship with which, during the three decades immediately preceding the Civil War, the subject had become invested;
To present the situation with respect to the controversy at the time Virginia seceded from the Union; and finally,
To consider the effects, if any, upon her position, of President Lincoln's Proclamations of Emancipation issued subsequent thereto.
African slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619 by a Dutch vessel. George W. Williams, the negro historian of his race in America, says, "It is due to the Virginia colony to say that the slaves were forced upon them."[3]
Though slaves were thus introduced as early as 1619, it was not until 1661 that the institution of slavery was recognized in Virginia by statute law.[4]