Wrong again.
What to do about slavery and the resulting free Negroes was never far from the minds of the public and politicians.
Fernando Fairfax, a prominent Virginian, was the first known individual to write a proposal. It was called the “Plan for liberating the negroes within the united states.” (Notice the capitalization choices.) It is dated “Richmond March 6, 1790.” The text can be found in Encyclopedia Virginia.
Fairfax first reviews the arguments.
Pro-emancipation friends claim their basis on natural right and justice, considering this claim “paramount” to all other considerations. (This will be the stand of abolitionists of the Civil War era.)
The other party agrees with the claim of natural right and justice, but insists on a cohesive policy that also considers “the inconveniences which would result to the community and to the slaves themselves.” These included the right to property legally obtained at the time of purchase.
And in this explanation, we see the conflict of liberal and conservative thinking that continues today.
Liberals see in black and white, and can therefore demand something be done immediately. The results are always “unintended consequences.” Conservatives see in color, considering all shades of the problem. Therefore, they proceed slowly and often offer step by step solutions. They rarely see unintended consequences, because they have foreseen outcomes.
This is why our best government is when liberals and conservatives actually talk to each other. But liberals have no time for thoughtful consideration. They live in the present.
Fairfax next says that the general opinion is for gradual emancipation. So, there are few who agree that slavery should exist perpetually. As a conservative, Fairfax points out the unfairness and illegality of taking a person’s property by force or legislation. Therefore, the states would be required to reimburse the owners. We know that the states, at this point in time, were still struggling with debt incurred by the Revolutionary War and could not reimburse immediate emancipation.
Fairfax says that “it is equally agreed, that, if they be emancipated, it would never do to allow them all the privileges of citizens: they would therefore form a separate interest from the rest of the community.”
Fairfax provides no proof for that statement. He has not explored this from the black point of view at all.
He also states that the one thing that could form a common community would be intermarriage between whites and blacks. He asks which owner, upon freeing a male slave, would allow his daughter to marry that man.
This is faulty logic, but it does show white thinking that would exist in many places well into the 1960s. To Fairfax, this is the final determinant in his argument.
The Fairfax plan is gradually to emancipate slaves, first on a voluntary basis and then, as the states become financially secure, by reimbursement to the owners. All former slaves would be exported to a colony in Africa, to be governed by whites until the blacks show the educated ability to rule themselves thanks to schools established for that purpose.
Fairfax then repulses the argument that England tried this and failed by insisting that the plan did not accomplish the policy. From what Fairfax says, England failed because the slaves were not required to operate within a capitalistic society. What we know as a socialistic society failed, just as it did in the initial years at Jamestown, according to Fairfax.
This plan would actually remain the most popular choice among whites all the way to the Civil War and would be the personal opinion of Abraham Lincoln, as he stated himself on a number of occasions.
