USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. II > Part 12
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116 The Rev. John B. Smith is said to have spoken three days in the Committee of the Whole. He must have received permission from the committee. If he had received it from the House, some notice of it would have appeared on the Journal. The Rev. Reuben Ford was deputed by the Baptist associations to present their remonstrance to the House .. He, too, may have addressed the committee; but the memorial was presented by a member of the House. The authority ' for the statement concerning the Rev. Mr. Smith is the Literary and Evangelical Intelligencer, of which I do not possess a complete set, and especially of the period in question; but Dr. Rice, its editor, though too young to have known Smith personally at the time, lived in his old neighborhood, was intimate with his personal friends, and was eager and cautious in gathering the materials of a history of the Presbyterian Church.
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lege of paying his tax in support of his own Church. The Pres- byterians, who in intelligence were equal to the Episcopalians, but were surpassed by them in wealth, justly thought that, as all the churches and glebes had been retained by the Episcopalians, a pro rata assessment might tend to strengthen their most formidable rivals, and in the same ratio to weaken themselves. The Baptists, though numerous, were poor, and it was evidently their policy rather to leave the religious contributions of their rivals to private impulse than to enforce them by law.117
There was, however, an obstacle to the success of the bill not less difficult to be surmounted than any abstract notion of the nature of assessments. The State was overwhelmed with an unsettled debt. Taxation was severe; and it was manifest, by petitions and other proofs, that it could hardly be borne. The Journal of the present session contains numerous memorials from whole counties, and from counties united in districts, praying for relief. One county prayed that its taxes should be appropri- ated to the making of a road towards the seat of government- or, in other words, that money should be commuted for labor. Another county prayed that the sheriffs should not distrain for taxes for a certain period, and that facilities for the payment thereof should be granted; and a bill for the purpose passed the
117 The Methodists were as yet regarded as connected with the Epis- copal Church. No memorial from them as a body was presented during the session. The relative numbers of the different sects at this time (17$5) I suppose to have been in favor of the Episcopalians, next of the Presbyterians, then of the Baptists. Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, estimates the number of dissenters to have been two- thirds, and, in his Memoir, as a majority of the people at the beginning of the Revolution. But when we remember that all the offices and honors of the Colony, that a seat in the Council, a commission in the militia, or a constable's post could only be held by a member of the Church of England, the amount of wealth owned by its members, and the social caste of the day, it is hardly to be presumed that a majority of the people were in open opposition to the Established Church. Mr. Madison evidently thought Mr. Jefferson's estimate alto- gether beyond the mark. It may be stated here that Washington, R. H. Lee, Patrick Henry, and some other leading men warmly approved the policy of assessments, while George Mason, Madison, George Nicholas, and others opposed it. Writings of Washington, Vol. XII, 404; Life of R. H. Lee, Vol. II, 51; Tucker's Jefferson, Vol. I, 99.
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Assembly, was printed in handbill form, and dispatched by a special messenger to the counties to which it applied. A bill " to postpone the collection of the tax for 1785," was brought forward, and was lost by two votes only. Three counties applied at the same time to be exempted from all taxes for a limited period. Then the unsettled state of the public mind in relation to the payment of British debts, many of which had been paid, and were now to be paid a second time, and in coin, rendered the suggestion of a new pro-rata tax highly distasteful. To add to the gloom which hung so heavily at this time above a people thinly scattered over a vast extent of country, and just emerging from an eight years' war, was the loss of the West India trade, by a British order in council. Petersburg, Norfolk, and other ports complained loudly of their loss of business, and called for relief or retaliation.118 It is nearly certain that no additional tax for any purpose, religious or political, would have been approved at that time by a direct vote of the people.
As several of the remonstrances against the bill, providing for the payment of teachers of the Christian religion, called for a revision of the act incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church, it may be proper to state in this connection that, on the 29th of December, Jeave was given to bring in a bill "to amend the act for incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church," and Wilson C. Nicholas, Meriwether Smith, Alexander White, Zachariah Johnston, Francis Corbin, and Carter Braxton were appointed to prepare and bring it in. It was accordingly brought in, and on the 16th of January, 1786, was read a second time and committed to the whole House; but in the press of business it was postponed from day to day, and was not reached before the final adjournment.
The ever-memorable act of this session was the passage, on the 17th of December, by the House of Delegates, of the bill for establishing religious freedom. As we have heretofore alluded to the bill in detail, we will only add here that it was
118 This order in council was met by the passage of a bill to impose additional tonnage duties on British vessels. The bill was brought in on the last day of the session, and read three times and passed by the House, and the same by the Senate, and enrolled-all in one day.
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passed in the House of Delegates by a majority of fifty- four votes-ascertained by ayes and noes. Of the members of the present Convention who voted in the affirmative were Alexander White, James Madison, Wilson Cary Nicholas, Samuel Jordan Cabell, Zachariah Johnston, John Trigg, Archibald Stuart, 119 French Strother, Meriwether Smith, Charles Simms, David Stuart, Thomas Smith, George Clendenin, Ralph Humphreys, Isaac Vanmeter, George Jackson, Benjamin Temple, Christo- pher Robertson, Cuthbert Bullitt, Andrew Moore, and James Innes, and in the negative were Miles King, Worlich West- wood, William Thornton, Francis Corbin, Wills Riddick, Anthony Walke, and Richard Cary. 120 As soon as the vote was announced Alexander White was ordered to carry the bill to the Senate and request the concurrence of that body. On the 29th the Senate returned the bill with an amendment, which struck out the whole of the preamble, and inserted in its stead the sixteenth article of the Declaration of Rights. The House refused to agree to the amendment by a vote of fifty-six to thirty-six. As the preamble of the bill was much admired in Europe, and is justly regarded with great favor here, the reader will be inclined to inquire how the members of the present Con- vention, who were then members of the House, voted upon the subject. In the affirmative-that is, for striking out the pre- amble-were John Tyler, Alexander White, David Patteson, Thomas Smith, Joseph Jones (of Dinwiddie), Miles King, Wor- lich Westwood, Parke Goodall, George Jackson, John Prunty, William Thornton, Benjamin Temple, Francis Corbin, Willis Riddick, and Richard Cary; and in the negative-that is, for retaining the preamble-were James Madison, Wilson C. Nicho- las, Samuel J. Cabell, Zachariah Johnston, John Trigg, French Strother, Meriwether Smith, Charles Simms, David Stuart,
119 It was not until the 19th-two days later-that the seat of Judge Stuart was vacated, as before mentioned.
120 King, Thornton, Corbin, and Riddick voted, on the rith of Novem- ber, 1734, for the resolution declaring the expediency of assessments, on which the bill providing for teachers of the Christian religion was founded. Westwood was absent when the vote was taken, and Richard Cary was not then a member of the House.
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William White, Cuthbert Bullitt, Andrew Moore, and Thomas Matthews. 121
The bill was returned to the Senate, which held it under advisement until the 9th of January, 1786, when it returned it to the House of Delegates, with the message that that body adhered to its amendment, and desired a free conference with the House on the subject. On the same day the House agreed to a free conference with the Senate, and Madison, Johnston, and Innes were appointed to manage the conference on the part of the House; and Madison was ordered to acquaint the Senate therewith. On the 12th a message from the Senate announced that that body had appointed managers to meet the managers on the part of the House in free conference on the subject-matter of the amendment of the Senate to the bill for establishing reli- gious freedom, and they were attending in the conference cham- ber. The House immediately ordered its managers to attend, and in due time they reported that they had met the managers of the Senate in free conference, and fully discussed the subject. On the 13th the House considered the report, receded from their disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and do agree to the said amendment, with amendments. What these amend- ments were is not stated in the Journal. On the 16th the Senate informed the House that it had agreed to the amendments pro- posed by the House to the amendments of the Senate, with several amendments, to which that body desires the concurrence of the House. The House, in the course of the day, took the amendments into consideration, and agreed to them by a majority of twenty-six votes-ascertained by ayes and noes. The amendments to the preamble, which the House was com- pelled to agree to in order to save the bill,122 may be seen by
121 There were three clergymen of the Episcopal Church, or had been, who voted on the bill establishing religious freedom at some one of its stages-Charles Mynn Thruston, Thomas Smith, and Anthony Walke. The two first were in favor of the bill as it passed on the 17th of December, and the last voted against it. Smith and Walke voted, as above, against the preamble, and Thruston in favor of it.
122 The original bill, and the bill as amended, may be seen in a single view in the first volume of Randall's Life of Jefferson, 219-220, and make an interesting study.
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comparing the act of religious freedom as reported by the revisors and the act as it now appears in the Code.
The votes in opposition to the preamble of the bill may be explained on the ground of literary taste, of the supposed unsoundness of its doctrines in a religious view, and of the apparent appropriateness of the sixteenth article of the Declara- tion of Rights as a preamble to the subject-matter of the bill. Nor does the final vote against the bill necessarily imply any hostility to religious freedom. There prevailed as great a degree of religious freedom in the State before its passage as after, and if at any future time the disposition to connect a Church with the State should exist, the act of religious freedom could as readily be repealed as any other. It is probable that all who voted against the bill approved the policy of assessments, which, though not inconsistent with its provisions, would be indefinitely defeated by its passage. 123 Fortunately an overwhelming majority of the House sustained the bill, not only for the truthfulness and beauty of its reasoning, but as a distinctive and definitive measure in relation to the connection of the State with religion. 124
The subject of slavery was discussed during the session, and that the descendants may form some opinion of the public sentiment of their fathers at that epoch, we will trace the course of a peti- tion in favor of a general emancipation of the negroes. It was presented on the 8th of November by one of the members, pur- ported to be from sundry persons without place, set forth "that the petitioners are firmly persuaded that it is contrary to the fundamental principles of the Christian religion to keep such a considerable number of our fellow creatures (the negroes) in this
123 The reasoning of the act establishing religious freedom applies only to the impolicy of compelling individuals to sustain a plan of religion. The assessment bill made the support of any plan optional, and was only operative in a religious view by the deliberate consent of each tax-payer.
124 Howison, Vol. II, 299, says that " a careful analysis of these docu- ments (the memorials of the Hanover Presbytery) will draw from them every material argument and principle that will be found embodied in the act for establishing religious freedom." This is, in one sense, true and proper praise ; but it may be well enough to recall the fact that the act of religious freedom was published far and wide seven years before the Hanover memorials were written.
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State in slavery; that it is also an express violation of the principles on which our government is founded; and that a gen- eral emancipation of them, under certain restrictions, would greatly contribute to strengthen it, by attaching them by the ties of interest and gratitude to its support ; and prayed that an act might pass to that effect." It was the obvious scope of the petitioners not only that the negroes should be emancipated, but that they should be made citizens, and reside within the Commonwealth. As a counter petition was presented at the same time from Mecklenburg, it is probable that the original petition came from that county. The counter petition not only opposed the abolition of slavery, but prayed that the act empow- ering the owners of slaves to emancipate them be repealed. Both petitions were ordered to be laid upon the table. On the Ioth counter petitions were also presented from Amelia, Bruns- wick, Pittsylvania, and Halifax. All the petitions were referred to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Common- wealth. In the course of the day, however, the House, waiving the form of going into committee, called up the petition in favor of abolition, and a motion was made to reject it, which passed unanimously. On the 14th of December Carter H. Harrison, from the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, reported that the petition from Halifax, praying that the act to authorize the manumission of slaves be repealed, was reasonable. The question presented by the report of the committee on the Hali- fax petition was very different from the one just decided. At that day it was evident that public opinion was disposed to allow every man to act on the subject of manumission as he pleased, the law leaning to the side of liberty ; and, as at particular sea- sons in many parts of the State there was a great demand of labor, which could be supplied to a certain extent by free negroes, it does not appear that there was that prejudice against that class of our population which, now, for obvious reasons, exists in a greater or less degree throughout the Commonwealth. As soon as the report of the committee was read a motion was made to strike out the words "is reasonable," and insert "be rejected." After a long discussion the vote was taken by ayes and noes, and it was ascertained there was a tie, when the Speaker gave his casting vote in the negative. Those who were members of the present Convention and voted in the
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affirmative were Alexander White, James Madison, John Tyler, Zachariah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, John Trigg, David Patte- son, French Strother, William Watkins, Worlich Westwood, Meriwether Smith, Charles Simms, David Stuart, George Clen- denin, Isaac Vanmeter, William Thornton, William White, Francis Corbin, Edmund Ruffin, Cuthbert Bullitt, Andrew Moore, Thomas Edmunds (of Sussex), John Norvell Briggs, and James Innes, and in the negative were Benjamin Harrison (Speaker), Wilson C. Nicholas, Samuel Jordan Cabell, Joseph Jones (of Dinwiddie), Miles King, Thomas Smith, Ralph Humphreys, Parke Goodall, Christopher Robertson, Anthony Walke, and Richard Cary.
The amendment was lost, and the question recurred on agree- ing to the report of the committee, which declared the repeal of the act to authorize the manumission of slaves to be reason- able. On this question another contest took place, the ayes . and noes were again called, and the repeal of the act was ordered by a majority of a single vote. Among the ayes were W. C. Nicholas, Cabell, Jones, King, Thomas Smith, Hum- phreys, Goodall, Robertson, Walke, and Cary, and among the noes were Madison, Tyler, Alexander White, Johnston, Archi- bald Stuart, Patteson, Strother, Watkins, Westwood, Simms, Meriwether Smith, David Stuart, Clendenin, Vanmeter, Jack- son, Thornton, Corbin, Ruffin, Bullitt, Andrew Moore, Edmunds (of Sussex), Briggs, Innes, and Matthews. The Committee of Propositions and Grievances was ordered to report a bill to repeal the act to authorize the manumission of slaves. On the 24th of December the bill was brought in and was read a first time, and, the question being put that it be read a second time, it passed in the negative by a majority of seventeen; Nicholas, King, Thomas Smith, Goodall, Temple, and Cary in the affirma- tive, and Madison, Tyler, Alexander White, Trigg, Patteson, Strother, Watkins, Westwood, Simms, David Stuart, Clendenin, Vanmeter, Prunty, Thornton, William White, Corbin, Bullitt, Andrew Moore, Briggs, and Matthews in the negative. As soon as the vote was announced a motion was made to bring in a bill to amend the act entitled an act to authorize the manu- mission of slaves, and Carter Braxton, Richard Bland Lee, Thomson, Tyler, David Stuart, Isaac Zane, Simms, and Nicholas . were ordered to prepare and bring it in. On the 17th of Janu-
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ary, 1786, within three days of the close of the session, Braxton reported the bill to amend the act in question, and it was read a first time; but on the motion that it be read a second time, the House rejected it without a count, leaving the law of 1782 as it originally stood.
The manumission of slaves was never popular in the Colony. When Jefferson, in 1769, for the first time took his seat in the House of Burgesses, one of the earliest schemes that engaged his attention was the melioration of the laws respecting slavery.125 He prevailed on Colonel Richard Bland to make the motion in the House; but the scheme was scouted, the learned and patri- otic Bland was denounced as an enemy of his county, and Jeffer- son owed it to his youth that he was not treated with the same severity. But, with the establishment of the Commonwealth, a new spirit began to be diffused among the people, and not only were obstacles to manumission removed, but the policy of the relation of slavery was called in question. The Committee of Revisors unanimously agreed upon the propriety of offering an amendment to one of the bills, declaring that all slaves born after a certain day should be free at a certain age, and then to be deported from the Commonwealth. And though the state of public sentiment did not justify the offering of such an amend- ment when the revised bills were discussed, there was an evident inclination among the leaders of the Revolution to oppose no obstacle in the way of voluntary manumission. Hence, before the close of the war (1782), the bill to authorize the manumis- sion of slaves was passed, and hence the refusal of the present Assemby to repeal it.
125 What the precise measure proposed by Mr. Jefferson was is rather uncertain. In his letter to Governor Coles, dated August 25, 1814, he says "he undertook to move for certain moderate extensions of the. protection of the laws to these people." Professor Tucker, in his Life of Jefferson, Vol. I, 46, states that his object was "merely to remove the restrictions which the laws had previously imposed on voluntary manumission, and even this was rejected." The letter to Governor Coles strongly details the views of its author on the present subject, and may be found in print in Randall's Life of Jefferson, Vol. III. 643. It is not in either Randolph's or the Congress edition of his writings. Its genuineness is beyond question, as I have seen the origi- nal, and have a copy in manuscript, which I owe to the kindness of the venerable gentleman to whom it was addressed.
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An interesting event occurred on the 31st of October in rela- tion to the Revised Code. Up to this period no nation in modern times had ever devolved upon a committee the office of deliberately revising its entire jurisprudence, and, embracing the work of the revision in the shape of bills, had proceeded to examine them in detail. It will be remembered that, during the session of the Assembly in 1776, a Committee of Revisors had been appointed, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pen- dleton, George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas Ludwell Lee. These gentlemen met in Fredericksburg on the 13th of January, 1777, and divided the task among themselves. 126 126 In February, 1779, they reassembled in Williamsburg, read and commented on the parts of each, ordered a fair copy to be made of the whole, and deputed two of their number to present their joint work to the Assembly. It was accordingly presented in the shape of one hundred and twenty-six bills. Thus was accomplished the most laborious, the most responsible, and the most delicate undertaking which had then been assigned to three men, and which, if it stood apart from the great deeds of an extraordinary epoch, would make an epoch of its own. 127
126 At this meeting all the revisors attended, when George Mason and Lee resigned, but not until some most important principles were set- tled, and the parts were assigned to Jefferson, Pendleton, and Wythe. Professor Tucker says (Life of Jefferson, Vol. I, 104, note) that he learned from Mr. Madison that Lee and Pendleton were in favor of codification, Wythe and Jefferson against it, and that Mason gave the casting vote. I use the word revisor because it is the word of the bill. In modern times it is written with an e. It is from the mint of Jeffer- son, and is nearer the original. I may add that the pay of the revisors, as proposed in the House of Delegates in 1785, was three hundred pounds apiece, or one thousand dollars of our present currency. What a theme for the artist, that gathering of the revisors in an attic in Fredericksburg !
127 It is due to Jefferson and Wythe to say that Mr. Pendleton, not having embraced exactly the views of his colleagues, "copied the British acts verbatim, merely omitting what was disapproved ; and some family occurrence calling him home, he desired Mr. Wythe and myself (Jefferson) to make it what we thought it ought to be, and authorized us (Wythe and Jefferson) to report him as concurring in the work. We accordingly divided the work, and re-executed it entirely. so as to assimilate its plan and execution to the other parts." ( Jefferson to Skelton Jones, July 28, 1809.) This. explicit statement destroys the
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The difficulties and dangers of the Revolution now began to engross the minds of men, and the time and attention of the Assembly was, for years to come, devoted exclusively to the complicated topics of the war, and at the commencement of the present session (1785) nine of the bills only had been enacted into laws.
And we are now to record the next step in this noble work. On the 31st of October Mr. Madison rose in his place in the House of Delegates, and presented from the Committee of Courts of Justice, according to order, one hundred and seven- teen of the printed bills contained in the Revised Code, and not of a temporary nature. The titles of the bills alone fill two closely-printed quarto pages of the Journal. The bills were received, read severally a first time, and ordered to be read a second time; and on motion they were read severally a second time and ordered to be committed to the whole House the follow- ing day. The order was postponed daily until the 7th of Novem- ber, when the House, fully appreciating the nature and urgency of revising so many fundamental laws, and the importance of setting apart a specified time for the purpose, resolved "that, ' during the continuance of the present session, it be a standing order of the House that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in each week be set apart and appropriated to the consideration of the Revised Code in such manner that no business be intro- duced, taken up, or considered after twelve o'clock of the day other than the bills contained in the said Revised Code, or such other as respects the interests of the Commonwealth at large, or messages from the Executive or the Senate." The House pro-
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