The Memorial of the Virginia Society, for promoting the Abolition of Slavery
A Quaker and former plantation owner who freed his slaves in 1782 and arranged for their education, Robert Pleasants (1723–1801) helped found the Virginia Abolition Society and served as its first president. He also founded the Gravelly Hill School, the first school for free blacks in Virginia. In this petition to the U.S. Congress, Pleasants and his colleagues use stark language, calling slavery “not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature.” In 1791 Virginia’s Abolition Society was one of six to appeal to Congress to abolish, or at least restrict, the slave trade; the others were Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
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To the Honorable the CONGRESS of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA—
The MEMORIAL of the VIRGINIA SOCIETY, for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of free Negroes, and others, unlawfully held in bondage, and for other humane purposes:
RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH,
THAT your memorialists, fully believing that “righteousness exalteth a nation,” and that slavery is not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes “peace on earth, goodwill to men;” they lament that a practice, so inconsistent with true policy and the unalienable rights of men, should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people professing, that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to freedom. But, more especially, that a trade to Africa, for the express purpose of enslaving and transporting that much-injured and oppressed people from their native country and connections, should be continued, or suffered, by any of the United States of America.
Your memorialists do, therefore, request, and earnestly in-treat Congress to take the premises into consideration, and exert the powers they are possessed of, in passing such laws as may put a stop to, or discourage, so unrighteous a traffic; and alleviate, as much as possible, the horrors and cruelties generally practiced in the prosecution of the trade, so contrary to every sentiment of humanity and justice, and destructive of the lives and temporal happiness of that unfortunate race of mankind. They conceive that an act so laudable, would well become the Representatives of a free people, and be pleasing in the sight of the merciful Father of all the families of the earth.
Signed, by appointment, and on behalf of the said Society, at their half-yearly meeting, held in the town of Manchester the 5th day of the 4th month, called April, 1791.
ROBERT PLEASANTS,
President
Attest.
JAMES SMITH, Secretary.