But for the English debt which he inherited, it is
extremely probable that he would have followed the example of many of
the best Virginians of his day, and emancipated his slaves. He would,
perhaps, have done so when that debt was discharged, instead of
waiting to do it by his last will, but for the forlorn condition of
freedmen in a Slave State. His eldest brother wrote, upon the division
of the estate, in 1794:
"I want not a single negro for any other purpose than his
immediate emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an
insignificant animal as I am is invested with this
monstrous, this horrid power."
He told his guardian that he would give up all his land rather than
own a slave. There was no moment in the whole life of John Randolph
when he did not sympathize with this view of slavery, and he died
expressing it. But though lie was, if possible, a more decided
abolitionist than Jefferson, he never for a moment doubted the innate
superiority of a Virginia gentleman to all the other inhabitants of
America. He had not even the complaisance to take his hair out of
queue, nor hide his thin legs in pantaloons.
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