![]() Thus, the historic opportunity was missed, and it would not resurface. In the end, however, it was decided by a vote of 73 to 58 not to enact legislation that would begin the process of terminating slavery, but to wait for a later time when public opinion in the Commonwealth would be more ready to consider it. ![]() Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, offered a plan that would slowly emancipate slaves, with the phase out of the system to be complete in about a hundred years. Crowds thronged into the gallery to hear the two-week debate on whether or not the gradual emancipation of slaves was feasible, advisable, or even desirable. Denunciations of its evils and enunciations of its benefits, both vehement, rang out in the house chamber. Turner's revolt opened up a remarkably critical discussion of slavery the following year in the Virginia legislature in Richmond, particularly in the House of Delegates. For an account of Turner's insurrection, in his own words, see " The Confessions of Nat Turner" at EDSITEment-reviewed Digital History. ![]() It backfired on the cause of emancipation in the South because of the fear engendered at the prospect of former slaves, now freed and traveling about the countryside, seeking revenge on the slaveholders and southern society in general. One example was Nat Turner's revolt, which took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. Ironically, some events aimed at freeing the slaves resulted in a hardening of the slaveholders' position as guardians of the "peculiar institution." These arguments, and those of the opposing side, took shape in a nation growing in size and population while expanding both slavery and self-government. To comprehend how the enslavement of some human beings could be justified, especially in a nation that based its own independence on the truth that "all men are created equal," one need only read the justifications that were offered during the development of the American republic. This lesson plan will explore the wide-ranging debate over American slavery by presenting the lives of its leading opponents and defenders and the views they held about America's "peculiar institution." Guiding Questions To those who feared the emancipation of slaves because of the possibility of retaliation such as Turner's, slavery was indeed the "wolf by the ears," to use Jefferson's expression, that could not be safely let go. Given the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, one might ask how slavery could be defended as late as the 1850s? Many southerners justified it on social and economic grounds, following South Carolina Senator John Calhoun in calling it a "positive good." Others pointed to the example of Nat Turner, a well-treated, literate slave who instigated a rebellion in 1831 that resulted in the massacre of nearly sixty white men, women, and children before his capture, and the deaths of almost two hundred blacks at the hands of white mobs. Selling 300,000 copies in its first year of publication, the book's popularity in the North revealed the growing sentiment against forcing people to live as chattel-human property that could be worked and disposed of practically at will. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), he was said to have remarked, "Is this the little woman who made this great war?" Such was the impact Stowe's novel had in exposing the inhumanity of slavery.
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