Thinking that it might not be possible to transport all the Negroes of the country very easily, requests for dealing with the situation as it was, were also in order. As a number of the farmers had suffered from a loss of sheep by the numerous dogs maintained by slaves and free persons of color, there came requests praying that the keeping of dogs and hogs by Negroes be made illegal. Some of these petitions, too, had an economic phase. There came from Culpepper a petition praying for a passage of the law for the encouragement of white mechanics by prohibiting any slave, free Negro or mulatto from being bound as an apprentice to learn any trade or art. Charles City and New Kent complained against the practice of employing slaves and Negroes as millers and asked that a law penalizing such action be enacted.[24]
The question as to what should be done with the blacks turned out to be the most important matter brought before the legislature. Three-fourths of the session was devoted to the discussion of such questions as the removal of the free Negroes and the colonization of such slaves as masters could be induced to give up. The legislature met on the 5th of December and after going through the preliminaries of organization listened to the message of the Governor which had the insurrection as its most prominent feature. When the petitions from the various counties began to come in, there soon prevailed a motion that so much of the Governor's message as related to the insurrection of slaves and the removal of the free Negroes be referred to a select committee, which after prolonged deliberation found it difficult to agree upon a report.
Desiring to protect the interests of slavery, William O. Goode, of Mecklenburg County, moved on the eleventh of January that the select committee appointed to consider the memorials bearing on slaves free Negroes and the Southampton massacre be discharged from the consideration of all petitions, memorials and resolutions, which had for their object the manumission of slaves. The resolution further declared that it was not expedient to legislate on slavery.[25] Whereupon Thomas Jefferson Randolph, of Albemarle County, moved to amend this resolution so as to instruct the committee to inquire into the expediency and to report a bill to submit to the voters of the State the propriety of providing by law that the children of all female slaves who might be born in that State on or after the fourth day of July, 1840, should become the property of the commonwealth, the males at the age of twenty-one years and females at the age of eighteen, if detained by their owners within the limits of the commonwealth, until they should respectively arrive at the ages aforesaid. They would then be hired out until the net sum arising therefrom should be sufficient to defray the expenses of their removal beyond the limits of the United States.[26]