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.As had been the pattern before the war, most of those whostole themselves possessed a marketable skill.Few fi eld hands appeared inthe runaway advertisements.Most were like Francis, a  tailor by trade whohoped to  get on board some vessel and begin life anew with a decent wage,but perhaps the most determined was General, a tailor who vanished despite having lost both his legs, cut off near the knees, which being defended byleather, serve him instead of feet. 27A few young men proved even more  brazen and impudent. When facedwith white intransigence, some Virginia bondmen picked up weapons, as hadtheir masters when they heard of the battles at Lexington and Concord.Oneofficer in Accomack County heard whispers in the spring of 1782 of  a con-spiracy of tories, British and negroes, and four years later, another nervousplanter informed Patrick Henry of a  dangerous insurrection of the slaves inCumberland County.The rumblings unnerved so many whites that one mili-tia colonel found it impossible to stockpile muskets, since private individuals secrete them and Say they will do it for their own Defence against insur-rections of Slaves. If runaways in search of individual freedom served as apainful reminder that a truly egalitarian America had yet to be created, chat-tel who plotted for mass liberation forced state authorities into politicallyuntenable positions.When John Tayloe s Billy was caught aiding the Britisharmy in 1781, he was  Indicted for Treason and sentenced  to be hangedby the Neck untill Dead, a judgment that implied Billy was a citizen andabsalom s  meritorious service | 133a political being.In fact, under Virginia law the  said Slave Billy was just apiece of moveable property officially lacking in free will.28Faced with these legal contradictions, the Virginia government slowlylurched toward reform, but in a curiously contradictory fashion indicativeof a region burdened by a huge number of slaves.When George Mason pro-posed his Declaration of Rights in 1776, delegates to the Virginia Conven-tion objected to his statement that  all men are by nature equally free andindependent on the grounds that it might lay the basis for black citizenship.Robert Carter Nicholas wondered how a fellow slaveholder could write thatblacks deserved any  inherent rights, and Edmund Randolph argued that slaves not being constituent members of our society could never pretendto any benefi t from such a maxim. At length, the Declaration was savedwhen Edmund Pendleton modified the offending clause by adding the words when they enter into a state of society, since none of the delegates believedtheir slaves to be part of the social contract.From the moment of its incep-tion, Virginia pursued a path of quiet progressive reform followed by a con-servative counterresponse.29One year later, the General Assembly banned the further introduction ofAfrican slaves into the state.In a bill drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the law exempted from all Slavery or Bondage any slave brought into Virginia, eventhose born in the colonies and imported from another state.This rather boldpronouncement, however, was balanced by the clause that clarified the statusof runaways from other states, since no slave  absconding from neighboringmasters would become free upon entering Virginia.Even some white sup-porters of the law conceded that this ostensibly humanitarian act masked thefact that planters such as Jefferson and Mason had laborers enough.Reform-ers regarded the law as only the first of many progressive steps toward eman-cipation, but the fact that Virginians could still sell their surplus workerswithin the state at artificially inflated prices raised suspicions that the actwas hardly inspired by antislavery sentiments.30Even more revealing were two laws passed in 1779.As the war draggedon, the always cash-poor planter class found itself unable to pay the necessarywartime taxes, which traditionally fell on land.Particularly given the chaosthat reigned across the countryside, the assembly was unable to obtain con-sistent assessments and instead levied a £5 poll tax  for all negro and mulattoservants and slaves. Here, at least, was a financial disincentive to own otherVirginians as chattel.But within two months, the legislature raided theincreased treasury to compensate state residents for any  Loss or Damagecaused by invading British forces.Drafted, ironically, by George Mason, thestatute did not specifically mention property in slaves, but it did include any134 | death or libertypossessions burned, destroyed, or carried away from  helpless Individuals,contrary to the principles of Humanity. As Richard Henry Lee indicated in1781, all  unfortunate owners of slaves should receive £5 from  the publictreasury for each runaway.In short, the legislature imposed a poll tax onslaves, but used those funds to compensate masters who had lost  the negroesnow with the enemy. 31Perhaps no greater indication of the assembly s haphazard course existsthan its 1780 bill to enhance the size of the state s beleaguered militia.Fac-ing the threat of a new invasion with declining recruits, the legislature votedto grant every new militiaman who promised to serve for the duration of thewar a bonus of £60 in hard currency or 300 acres of western land together with a healthy, sound Negro between the ages of ten and thirty [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]