Greatly concerned in the mid-1700s over their growing African populations, both Virginia and North Carolina petitioned the British Crown to end its slave trade. This was denied while New England’s transatlantic slave trade continued.
Southern Aristocracy?
“That subordination of the black race which was called slavery gave rise to a certain development of society, not at all English, however, bore some features of an aristocracy. But this was by no means so general as might be inferred from much seen lately in print about the subject of the “slave oligarchy” of the South. It was by no means the controlling force. In South Carolina alone, by her peculiar Constitution, could it be correctly said that the slaveholders as a class held the political power.
The anti-slave element was always strong in Virginia; but for external agitation, I have no doubt slavery would have been abolished there long ago, or have been greatly modified. The same is true of North Carolina.
Throughout the South no feeling was more general, none stronger with the voting majority, than a deep-seated detestation of the very name “Aristocracy.” I do not think there was a county in Georgia where a man could have been elected to the State Legislature, or to any other office, upon the principles of an aristocracy, or if he were ever known to favor such a doctrine.
Eight-tenths of the people of Georgia, I believe, were thorough Jeffersonian Republicans and would have been as thorough abolitionists as Jefferson if they could have seen what better they could do with the colored people than they were doing.
They had a hard problem to solve, and the external agitation kept down internal inquiry and discussion as to whether there was any proper and safe solution [to the slaves among them].”
(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myra Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pg. 422)