...and pushed on in the afternoon to "Edge Hill," the home of Colonel Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, beautifully situated on a hill almost under the shadow of famous "Monticello."
How well I recall the giant form of Colonel Randolph, as he sat and talked of the olden days of Virginia, of ihs illustrious grandfather, and of the Legislature of Virginia in 1832, when the whole State was so deeply stirred by the scheme for the emancipation of the negroes. He was a member of that body, and he told me that a large majority of the members was in favor of the measure; but after careful consideration it was deemed wiser to postpone action upon it until the next session, in order that the details of the the scheme might be more maturely considered.
But before the Legislature reassembled there occurred a violent ebullition of fantaticism on the part of the Abolitionists of New England. The Southern slave-holders were held up to scorn and detestation of mankind, and vengeance of God and man was invoked against them for the awful crime of slavery.
The consequence was a complete reaction of public opinion in Virginia on the subject of abolition of slavery, so that when the Legislature next assembled, the whole project was dropped. Thus was wrecked the most hopeful scheme of getting rid of the institution of slavery that had ever been proposed since its introducton in 1619. We may lament that the men of Virginia did not rise superior to the feelings naturally begotten by this unfair and fanatical assault, but, human nature being what it is, we cannot be surprised that the affair terminated as it did.
Had it been otherwise -- had the gradual emancipation of the slaves been decreed by Virginia -- there can be little doubt that Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee would have followed her example; and in time the moral pressure on the cotton States would have been so strong that they, too, must have adopted some scheme of emancipation. That this blessed consummation was not realized must be set down to the account of the fanatical Abolitionists, because of their violent and unjust arraignment of the South for an institution which she did not create, but had inherited, and against which the State of Virginia had many times protested in her early history.
. . .
It is not always remembered by students of American history that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence as drawn by Thos. Jefferson arraigned the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the people of the colonies against their will. It is also too often forgotten that the first government on earth to abolish the slave trade was the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was one of the first acts of the Old Dominion after her independence had been established, long before England passed her ordinance against it. And when the thirteen colonies formed the United States, in 1789, the voice of Virginia was raised in earnest advocacy of the immediate abolition of the trade in negro slaves, but owing to the opposition of New England, in alliance with some of the cotton states, the evil traffic was given a twenty years further lease of life.
The above was written by Randolph H McKim, a Confederate soldier, serving first as an infantry private, then a Lieutenant Aide-de-Camp and finally as a Chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia. His book, A Soldier's Recollections: leaves from the diary of a young Confederate with an oration on the motives and aims of the soldiers of the South, was originally published in 1910.
