As the colonies had moved toward revolution, the Virginians' British contemporaries were perplexed. "How is it," asked Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" Edmund Burke offered Parliament an explanation in March of 1775:

"There is…a circumstance attending these [southern] colonies, which…makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege…I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man…In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." (Burke, 1775.)

Following the Revolution, foreign visitors were still perplexed. Catherine Drinker Bowen in Miracle at Philadelphia reports:

"Foreigners who went South were shocked to see slave quarters at Mount Vernon, though they noted that Washington was benevolent toward his slaves and that, like Jefferson, he disapproved the institution. But how could the father of liberty not free these poor creatures? Did he fear a general insurrection as a result?"

Life of George Washington--The Farmer painted by Stearns; lithograph. by Régnier, imp. Lemercier, Paris. From "By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present" of the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress.

Even the Virginia elite knew that slavery was wrong. In a famous and impassioned speech at the Constitutional Convention, George Mason, primary author of Virginia Declaration of Rights, denounced slavery. Mason, himself a wealthy slave owner, excoriated the institution, while at the same time blaming the British and the Northern states and holding to a belief in African-American inferiority:

"This infernal trafic [the slave trade] originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Govt. constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it…Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern [we would say Northern or New England] brethren had from a lust of gain embarked in this nefarious traffic."

Except for the vehemence, Mason's beliefs were not unusual. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson also knew that slavery was wrong, but thought that integration, or even peaceful coexistence, was impossible. African-American slaves could not, in their opinion, be freed unless they could be, in Madison's words, "permanently removed beyond the region occupied by, or allotted to, a white population." The White elite eventually selected a colony in African as the preferred site for relocation.

The emancipation and removal had to be done very slowly. As Jefferson explains in his autobiography:

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [African-American slaves] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers."

To his credit, Madison was more troubled than most by slavery and by the hubris of the great slave owners. He never seems as overtly racist as Jefferson at his worst. We have the testimony of Paul Jennings, once a slave of Madison, that he had been a kind and gentle master:

"Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived. I never saw him in a passion, and never knew him to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it. Whenever any slaves were reported to him as stealing or "cutting up" badly, he would send for them and admonish them privately, and never mortify them by doing it before others."

Looking back years later at a popular President, Mr. Jennings painted a benign picture of slave life; and Madison was a gentle man and probably a gentle master. Ralph Ketcham, a leading biographer of James Madison, wrote approvingly:

[J]udging from reference to them [the slaves] as "of the family" and from James Madison's life long abhorrence of the institution of slavery, it seems likely that at Montpelier they received attention in the best rather than the worst tradition of the colonial South. (Ketcham, 1990, page 12.)

While it is comforting to make the best of assumptions about the Madison and the Virginia elite, the expression "of the family" seems to only compound the hypocrisy. We know from Madison's testimony that estates as large as Montpelier, Monticello, and Mount Vernon employed multiple overseers for the immediate supervision of the slaves; that "slaves are often sold under execution for debt;" and that such sales could tear apart the real families of the slaves (see his letter to Dr. Morse). Can we imagine that this system was maintained without a credible threat of extreme violence?

Further, we do not have to imagine this extreme violence. Washington, Mason, Henry, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were supported by — and were part of — a larger repressive structure. That structure was extremely harsh on any slave who asserted "certain unalieable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In 1800, then Virginia Governor James Monroe dealt forcibly with an abortive slave revolt near Richmond. The Virginians were all too painfully aware of parallels between the revolt of the slaves and their own revolution. One of the rebels declared at his trial:

"I have nothing more to offer than what Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial. I have adventured my life in endeavoring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause." (Egerton, page 102)

No whites had died; nonetheless, the revolt had been well planned. The Virginians hung the leader, Gabriel, and 25 others (Egerton, page 137). Some sources say that 36 slaves were executed. These sources may be including 10 more Virginia slaves executed in a related rebellion in 1802.) More might have been executed except that Jefferson, then a candidate for the Presidency, wrote from Monticello and urged restraint. Monroe, a protege of Jefferson, went on to become Madison's Secretary of State, and of War, and the fifth President of the United States.

Louis Hughes reported that slaves, male and female, were stripped to the waist and lashed 39 times for minor infractions. Richmond slave owners who "affected culture and refinement" could have the whipping professionally administered by a slave whipping business. The whippings were severe and the slaves were often badly scarred.

On the larger plantations, the overseers were available to administer the whippings. Philip Vicker Fithian, after graduating from Princeton, traveled South to be a tutor for the wealthy Carter family of Virginia. In his journal, he recorded a conversation in 1773 with a Virginia overseer who found even severe whippings to be insufficient:

"He said that whipping of any kind does them no good, for they will laugh at your greatest severity…For Sulleness, Obstinacy, or Idleness, says he, Take a Negro, strip him, tie him fast to a post; take then a sharp Curry-Comb, and curry him severely til he is well scraped; and call a Boy [another slave] with some dry Hay, and make the Boy rub him down for several Minutes, then salt him, & unlose him. He will attend to his Business, (said the inhuman Infidel) afterwards!" (Vaughan, 1967, pages 19-20)

The Virginia elite's response to the abortive rebellions of 1800 and 1802 was not to ameliorate conditions. On the contrary, restrictions were increased on slaves and free African-American. In 1806, the legislature required newly freed slaves to leave the state or return to slavery:

"And be it further enacted, That if any slave hereafter emancipated shall remain within this commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to freedom shall have accrued, he or she shall forfeit all such right, and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor of any county or corporation in which he or she shall be found, for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation."

The fear and distrust of freed slaves was a widespread attitude: James Madison, himself was not above it (see his letter to Dr. Morse). Freed slaves faced an awful choice: leave behind loved ones still in bondage or revert to slave status. Other restrictions were placed on literacy, occupation, travel, assembly and interracial unions.

The Virginia legislature also tried, by repeated resolutions, to enlist the Federal government in the establishment of a colony where free blacks could be resettled. ThomasJefferson, now President, was not supportive:

"In early 1805, the [Virginia] Assembly made one final attempt to resolve the issue. Both Houses renewed their four previous resolutions and begged that any further correspondence between any president and any governor be forwarded to them. The dismayed men in the two chambers could not fathom why their small efforts, so laboriously made, had been rebuffed by a Virginia President [Jefferson] who previously had openly supported colonization." (Egerton, page 161.)

The notion of the colonization of free slaves in Africa was to be revived, however: an American Colonization Society was founded in 1817 (see Library of Congress website). In retirement, Madison was active in these futile efforts to colonize Africa, and served as President of the society. As long as slaves were considered property, their owners would have to be indemnified for freed slaves. The formidable expense of indemnifying the slave owners and resettling the freed slaves in Africa doomed these efforts. Madison, in retirement, proposed the sale of public lands to finance the endeavor, but these proposals were never seriously considered (see Madison's Emancipation Plan).

Madison and Jefferson, their fortunes dwindling, never did free their slaves. Only Washington, less brilliant, but eminently more practical, maintained his wealth. It is perhaps the final irony that Washington, more a symbol of stability and probity than of liberty, was the only of the three to provide in his will for the general manumission of his slaves and make provision for their care.

Madison may explain it all best in Federalist No. 10. He argues: "No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."