eed, so general was the feeling that it may be said all Virginia, during the first thirty years after the Revolution, was anti-slavery.
The only stumbling block in the way of emancipation seems to have been the difficulty of disposing of the emancipated negroes.
Jefferson himself thought the two races ought not to live together.
That great, but eccentric genius, John Randolph of Roanoke, though one among the largest slaveholders in the State, and though wont to resent any interference In 1803 he was chairman of a committee upon a memorial from Indiana to dispense, temporarily, with the ordinance of 1787 so far as it was applicable to that State, and made a report, of which the following is an extract:
"That the rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently evinces, in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of the slave is not necessary to promote the growth and settlement of colonies in that region.
That this labor, demonstrably the dearest of any, can only be e
