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5 An Evil Daily Magnifying he held his slaves: yet kept the while his reverence for the human; in the dark vassals of his will he saw but Man and Woman! no hunter of God’s outraged poor his Roanoke valley entered; no trader of souls of men Across his threshold ventured. Amid the flurry of the historic seventh session, Randolph presented a routine committee report regarding the indiana Territory. The report responded to a letter from William henry harrison, president of the indiana Territory Convention (and future president of the United states), requesting that slavery—barred in the territory by the northwest ordinance—be allowed for a ten-year period. harrison argued that a labor shortage required a suspension of the ban, but he was also concerned that slaveholders were settling in Kentucky, not indiana, due to the ban.1 The request was referred to a committee chaired by Randolph. The committee reported that it was “inexpedient to suspend” the ban on slavery, but went beyond a simple denial of harrison’s request. The committee members, the report continued, “deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the northwestern country , and to give strength and security to that extensive frontier.” The “salutary operation of this sagacious and benevolent restraint” of slavery would provide the citizens of indiana with “ample remuneration for a temporary privation of labor and of emigration.”2 it is unknown if Randolph drafted the report, but he commanded a majority on the committee and could direct the report as he saw fit.3 Therefore it is curious that a slaveholder representing slaveholders would assert the authority of the federal government to preserve the free labor status of the 68 an evil dailY MagnifYing 69 northwest Territory—curious, but not surprising. Randolph’s views about slavery were a complex mixture of realism, religion, culture, and custom.4 his views reflect the conflict, identified by Lacy Ford in his study of slavery and the south, between slavery and “republican ideals, which treasured liberty and despised dependence.”5 “[We] must concern ourselves with what is,” Randolph told Josiah Quincy, “and slavery exists.”6 That comment concedes that slavery existed, in part, because Randolph was one of its most vigorous defenders against any actual or perceived attack, deeming it “a question of life and death” for the south.7 Yet this same man confided to Quincy that the “curse of slavery . . . an evil daily magnifying, great as it already is, embitters many a moment of the virginia landholder who is not duller than the clod beneath his feet.”8 Randolph was a persistent opponent of the slave trade, considered emancipation to be a viable option, never bought or sold slaves, and repeatedly condemned the institution.9 Like Joseph nicholson, he supported manumission , but stopped short of abolition.10 he was, by all accounts, a humane master.11 When Randolph’s 383 slaves were manumitted, only seven bore any “fleshmarks,” and none of these had been caused by physical abuse.12 Many times, Randolph articulated the conflict Ford identified—often combining condemnation and defense of slavery in the same sentence. “i have often bewailed the lot that made me their keeper,” he wrote in 1818. “i now bow with submission to the decree of him who has called me to this state and pray to be enabled to discharge the duties of it.”13 in his youth, Randolph read the anti-slavery essay of British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. The “impression made on my mind by the dissertation,” he wrote, “sunk deep.”14 he asserted that, from the time he read the pamphlet , “all my feelings and instincts were in opposition to slavery in every shape; to the subjugation of one man’s will to that of another.”15 it is not surprising that Randolph would be drawn to Clarkson’s essay, which bristled with eloquent appeals to “reason, justice, nature, the principles of law and government, the whole doctrine, in short, of natural religion, and the revealed voice of God.”16 Randolph no doubt heard echoes of his own principles when he read: “With respect to the loss of liberty, it is evident that men bear nothing worse . . . and that they have shewn, by many and memorable instances, that even death is to be preferred.”17 Yet the impact of Clarkson was diluted, Randolph wrote, “by pleasure, or business,” by custom and culture.18 “i read myself into this madness...

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