The Virginia Legislative Debates of 1831 and 1832: A Culmination of Antislavery Sentiment

Program year: 1995/1996Digitized from print original stored in HDRThe debates which took place in the Virginia General Assembly of 1831 and 1832 were the most inclusive, public, and important deliberations concerning the future of slavery ever held in the South. An attempt, which may have slowly led Virginia out of slavery, to colonize freed slaves and Negroes along the coast of Africa and an effort to legislate on immediate emancipation both failed to gain passage into law, leaving the state to set a course bent on defending the "peculiar institution" to the very end. Examination of press coverage, public response, the Assembly's proceedings, and existing works dealing with the subject revealed that a strong legacy of antislavery in Virginia, the East/West sectional conflict within the state, economic depression, a rising slave population, and the Southampton Slave Insurrection all played significant roles in pushing the legislature toward this debate. Investigations also demonstrated that sectional divergences, national distractions, economic resurgence, and the question of what to do with approximately half a million freed slaves collectively worked to crush whatever feasibility the idea of emancipation may have once had in Virginia