"a year after the Virginia act was passed the legislatures of three different States—Maryland, Kentucky, and Delaware—had passed countervailing acts forbidding free negroes to come in from other States to take up permanent residence. Other States followed the lead of the three already named, and passed laws excluding free negroes or imposing upon their admission such rigid requirements as to render their coming impracticable. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee had passed some such law within twenty-five years after the Virginia act of 1806. The people of Mercer County, Ohio, refused to allow John Randolph's three hundred and eightyfive negroes, who left Virginia in compliance with the laws, to remain even for three days upon land purchased for them in that county, although these negroes could comply with Ohio's law requiring of emigrant free negroes bond for good behavior. In no State was a cordial welcome held out to Virginia's expatriated negroes. A refugee slave was far more likely to meet with hospitality in the Northern States than was a free negro." The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865, John Henderson Russell
By 1826 Virginia was on its way to full emacipation of slaves. But in 1832, the bottom fell out with this sentiment. At around the same time laws in other states changed. In 1835 North Carolina, where free blacks had been allowed to vote since it had become a state, a new state constitution disenfranchised this class of people. Everywhere in the South, a new pro-slavery movement was growing. The cause for this change can be assumed by several factors, Dew's "Essay on Slavery", a pro-slavery book, the writings of George Fitzhugh, Alfred T. Bledsoe, professor of mathematics in the University of Virginia, Rev. Dr. Thornton Stringfellow, and Edmund Ruffin. But just as important to the change in sentiment was the beginnings of an aggressive Northern campaign against slavery by dis-unionist abolitionist; and South Carolina and the Nullifacation Crises revealed a secession movement, who, Andrew Jackson warned was going to next use the issue of protecting slavery as a political tool to spark secession.
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David Upton