7973. SLAVES (Emancipation), Bill for.—
The bill to emancipate all slaves born
after the passing of the act, reported by the
revisers [of the Virginia Code] did not contain
this proposition; but an amendment containing
it was prepared, to be offered to the Legislature
whenever the bill should be taken up, and further
directing that they should continue with
their parents to a certain age, then to be brought
up, at the public expense, to tillage, arts, or sciences,
according to their geniuses, till the females
should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one
years of age, when they should be colonized
to such place as the circumstances of
the time should render most proper, sending
them out with arms, implements of household
and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the
useful domestic animals, &c., to declare them a
free and independent people, and extend to
them our alliance and protection, till they have
acquired strength; and to send vessels, at the
same time, to other parts of the world for an
equal number of white inhabitants; to induce
them to migrate higher, proper encouragements
were to be proposed.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 380.
Ford ed., iii, 243.
(1782)
