The writings of James Madison, comprising his public papers and his private correspondence, including numerous letters and documents now for the first time printed. |
TO JOSEPH JONES.
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 | The writings of James Madison, |  |
TO JOSEPH JONES.[1]
Dear Sir,—Yours of the eighteenth came yesterday.
I am glad to find the Legislature persist in their
resolution to recruit their line of the army for the war;
though without deciding on the expediency of the
mode under their consideration, would it not be as
well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks
themselves, as to make them instruments for enlisting
white soldiers?[2]
It would certainly be more consonant
be lost sight of in a contest for liberty; and with
white officers and a majority of white soldiers, no imaginable
danger could be feared from themselves, as
there certainly could be none from the effect of the
example on those who should remain in bondage; experience
having shewn that a freedman immediately
loses all attachment and sympathy with his former
fellow-slaves.
We have enclosed to the Governor a copy of an act
of the Legislature of Connecticut, ceding some of
their territorial claims to the United States, which he
will doubtless communicate to the Assembly. They
reserve the jurisdiction to themselves, and clog the
cession with some other conditions which greatly depreciate
it, and are the more extraordinary as their
title to the land is so controvertible a one.
The association of the merchants for fixing the depreciation
seems likely to prove a salutary measure;
it reduced it from 90 and 100 to 75 at once, which is
its present current rate; although it is observed that
many of the retailers elude the force of it by raising
the price in hard money.
The scheme of a negro bounty was discussed on several occasions in the Virginia
legislature, as Jones's letters show. "But my notion is," he says in the
letter to which Madison alludes, "and I think the mode would be more just
and equally certain in procuring the men, to throw the militia into divisions as
by the last law, and require the divisions to find a negro of a certain value or
age, or money equivalent to that value * * * But the negro bounty cannot
fail to procure men for the war under either scheme, with the draught as the
dernier resort." In reply to this letter of Madison's, Jones wrote Dec. 8: "The
negro scheme is laid aside upon a doubt of its practicability in any reasonable
time, and because it was generally considered as unjust, sacrificing the property
of a part of the community to the exoneration of the rest. It was reprobated
also as inhuman and cruel. How far your idea of raising black regiments, giving
them freedom would be politic, in this and the negro States, deserves well to
be considered, so long as the States mean to continue any part of that people in
their present subjection; as it must be doubtful whether the measure would not
ultimately tend to increase the army of the enemy as much or more than our
own. For if they once see us disposed to arm the blacks for the field they will
follow the example and not disdain to fight us in our own way, and this would
bring on the southern States inevitable ruin. At least it would draw off immediately
such a number of the best labourers for the culture of the earth as to ruin
individuals, distress the State, and perhaps the Continent, when all that can be
raised by their assistance is but barely sufficient to keep us jogging along with
the great expence of the war. The freedom of these people is a great and desirable
object. To have a clear view of it would be happy for Virginia; but
whenever it is attempted, it must be, I conceive, by some gradual course, allowing
time as they go off for labourers to take their places, or we shall suffer
exceedingly under the sudden revolution which perhaps arming them would
produce."—Letters of Joseph Jones, 48, 63, 64.
| The writings of James Madison, | |