. Then the neighborhood
rallied and overcame them; slew several on the spot; but held the rest
for trial, which was held regularly and fairly, and thirteen were
executed. The origin of the outbreak remained mysterious. Turner said on
his trial that he had not been unkindly treated, and there was no
evidence of provocation by special abuse. There was no trace of any
instigation from the North in any form. It seemed not a stroke for
freedom by men worthy to be free; not even a desperate revolt against
intolerable wrong; but more like an outbreak of savagery, the uprising
of the brute in man, thirsty for blood. The fear at first prevailed that
there existed a widespread conspiracy, and various legislation for
protection and repression was enacted or discussed.

But the larger mind of Virginia was moved toward a radical treatment of
the disease itself, instead of its symptoms. In the next session of the
Legislature, 1831-2, proposals for a general emancipation were brought
forward, and the whole subject was canvassed in a long and earnest
debate. For slavery on its merits hardly a word of defense was spoken.
The moral condemnation was not frequent or strong, but the economic
mischief was conceded by almost all. It was recognized that labor was
debased; manufactures and immigration were discouraged; the yeomanry
were leaving the State. One bold speaker declared that the masters were
not entitled to compensation, since property condemned by the State as a
nuisance brings no award of damages to the owner. But the general
agreement was that emancipation should be compensated and gradual, and
that the blacks must be removed from the State. One plan was that they
should be deported in a body to Africa; another, that the
increase--about 6000 a year--should be so deported; while Thomas
Jefferson Randolph urged a plan which recalled that framed by his uncle,
Thomas Jefferson, half a century before. He proposed that the owner
should maintain the slave-child till the age of eighteen or twenty-one,
his labor for the last six or eight years being regarded as compensation
for the expense of infancy; and that the slave should then be hired out
till he had earned his passage to Africa. But, whatever the method, let
decisive action be taken, and taken now! The Legislature, it is said,
was largely made up of young and inexperienced men. Would not the
courage and hopefulness of Virginia youth essay this great deliverance?
Older voices bade th