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Posted on 09/01/2025 3:03:08 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
There are two interesting items in the 1776 Constitution for the State of Virginia. The first one is in the second paragraph and it reads as follows:
Whereas George the Third, King of Great Britain and Ireland, and Elector of Hanover, heretofore intrusted with the exercise of the Kingly Office in this Government, hath endeavoured to pervert the same into a detestable and insupportable Tyranny; by putting his negative on laws the most wholesome and necessary for the publick good;
"Putting his negative" What this means is a veto. This would upset anybody. The people of Virginia want to do something, and a ruler in a far of land without any concept of what will benefit the people living in that place is simply saying nope. "These things are good for me, the King, and what you need is irrelevant so your laws are irrelevant and vetoed"
Now, what were these items that the king was negativing/vetoing? Well, they didn't say, specifically, except for one item in particular.
Yes, the Virginia Constitution 1776 does list grievances and among that list of grievances includes complaints about standing armies, quartering troops in homes, and inciting slave revolts; many of the same items you would find in the grievances of the Declaration of Independence. The one item they did highlight reads as follows:
those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by Law
So sure, the introductory paragraph says "laws", meaning that multiple laws in different contexts were vetoed and this upset the Virginians. But none of those so upset the Virginians more than this one item, enough that they specifically linked it. This was the one above all that they could not stand for.
Now the progressives out there who are invested in the goodness and the holiness of The 1619 Project will tell you, "well of course the Virginians wanted to stop more Blacks coming into the state, they wanted to breed them and sell them". No. That didn't start happening until the cotton gin decades later and the 1808 slave trade abolition but even more so no because that expressly misses the plain text pleas of Virginians who stated exactly why they wanted to bring slaving to an end.
Here is what the Virginians actually said on the matter shortly after the veto was issued, so that anybody from The 1619 caucus can't pollute the facts:
The Importation of Slaves into the Colonies from the Coast of Africa hath long been considered as a Trade of great Inhumanity
Great inhumanity, that is what they said that can't be missed. So they hated slavery on moral grounds, not economic ones and especially not racial ones. After lamenting the king's encouragement of slavery, the Virginians continued.
We are sensible that some of your Majesty’s Subjects in Great Britain may reap Emoluments from this Sort of Traffick, but when we consider that it greatly retards the Settlement of the Colonies with more useful Inhabitants, and may in Time, have the most destructive Influence, we presume to hope that the Interest of a few will be disregarded when placed in Competition with the Security and Happiness of such Numbers of your Majesty’s dutiful and loyal Subjects.
So this is why they put that into the Constitution of the State of Virginia. Because the king was vetoing anti-slavery laws and forcing slavery on the colonies, essentialy by extention forcing slavery on the United States. This routine vetoing or ignoring of colonial laws because it wasn't seen by the king as in his best interest was fairly common and let's not forget, the vetoing of anti-slaving laws also was in the first draft of the Declaration:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Because the king kept interfering with early American abolitionism, the United States was created with 13 slave states. Slavery was an inherited institution from the British Empire in part because of vetos. The United States did not ask for this. Had the colonies been left to their own devices it is a very real possibility that at least one of those 13 colonies (most likely Pennsylvania, second most likely Massachusetts) would have been free-soil states prior to Independence being declared. That is, the U.S. would've been born 1 or 2 free-soil, 11 or 12 slave states. Virginia was not the only one which faced a kingly veto of this kind which is likely why there were only 2 objectioners to that specific entry in the original Declaration. 11 colonies agreed, the 2 that disagreed were South Carolina and Georgia.
The Virginia Constitution contains one more item of note that has relevance. One of the grievances listed in the State Constitution says:
by endeavouring to prevent the population of our Country, and, for that purpose, obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners
The Virginians saw what the king was doing, preventing artisans, craftsmen, and other highly skilled people from coming to the colonies - at least Virginia itself. And instead, the king was promoting menial laborers. Now obviously some might say that sounds like something we see today with the border but let's put that aside. The Virginians wanted people who had already gone through their apprenticeships and were ready to be leaders in a growing or hopefully vibrant economy. So while the Virginians did start out pointing out the obvious inhumanity of enslaving other humans, we can very easily bring it back to economics. This is a simple fact of life right here: The man who can secure your server and encrypt your sensitive customer data from theft is simply a more useful employee than the person who can only answer your phone in the lobby. Its a harsh way to word it but it is a simple fact of comparing skilled craftsmen to menial laborers of any kind. Welders or street sweepers, one is obviously of more value. It just is.
One last cleanup item here. There are some historians who I have seen that have stated that the 1776 Virginia Constitution was Thomas Jefferson's creation. To be honest it probably was but I do not know one way or the other. Let's just keep in mind that state constitutions do not become ratified as the Constitution because one man voted yes for it to be so. Everybody in the Virginia House of Burgesses agreed to this or at least, a large enough majority agreed that it met established thresholds. And why wouldn't the Burgesses agree? What were they agreeing to? What did the text of the veto itself actually say? Well we have that too. It says:
It is therefore our will and pleasure, that you do not upon pain of our highest displeasure, give your Assent for the future without our Royal permission first obtained, to any Law or Laws, by which the additional Duty of five per Cent, upon Slaves imported, imposed by the last mentioned Law, Shall be further continued; or to any Law or Laws whatever, by which the Duties of ten per Cent upon Slaves imported into our said Colony, payable by Laws last Antecedent to the Seventh day of November 1769, Shall upon any Pretence be increased, or by which the Importation of Slave shall be in any respect prohibited or obstructed.
But it's just a tariff!(some naysayers might say) The Virginians were not actually abolishing anything, or are they? Prohibitive was the king's own word, and exclude was the Virginians' word. I didn't make the rules yet both sides knew exactly what was going on here, it wasn't just so as to put a small speed bump. So let's summarize and conclude.
Did the Virginians try to put a stop to slaving? Yes.
Did the king veto that law? Yes.
These are simple facts.
What exactly would the burgesses have disagreed with? Surely not this. That's why the king's veto of anti-slavery laws made it into the ratified Constitution for the State of Virginia, in 1776. Because slavery was forced on us against our will.
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They have my ear, that is for sure.
Ping to no reply needed.
You ought to consider reading the text of this Constitution though.
Why is that in the text of the Virginia Constitution?
Good post, thx PA
“These things are good for me, the King, and what you need is irrelevant so your laws are irrelevant and vetoed”
Sort of like what’s happening now in the UK, where the citizens want to stop illegal aliens from invading their country, but the king (Prime Minister) veto’s it.
The political leaders of the UK are against it’s own people. That is a fact.
I grew up in Virginia, and was taught all this from fifth grade elementary school..... When I was a sophomore in high school, my family was transferred to Pennsylvania, I spent the next two years fighting tooth and nail against the lies taught up north. Unfortunately, public education is now managed by the federal government, and the entire country is raised on these lies. Thank you so much for posting this, I hope everyone here will read it, and do their own damn research, and hopefully learn the truth. The damage is done, but until the truth is accepted, this country will NEVER heal. Someone flag that Simpson idiot to make sure he sees this.
bookmark
I know this is reactive, but I swear if you put the word Democrats in the above sentence it would be accurate to what has happened and continues to happen.
"The Democrats of the United States are against their own people."
That is very impressive. I confess I was unaware of it.
Very strange, then, that, after independence, slavery was not banned either in the US or Virginia.
Not for 2 generations and, in part, took a very bloody war to do so.
After Independence it was too late.
The proper time to abolish slavery was prior to Independence.
The states before the revolution were independent ao some would have abolished slavery but never all 13.
The American colonies were not allowed to transport slaves from Africa. That was a British, Dutch and Portugese franchise and most slaves went to the Carribbean and South American plantations were they were consumed. In North America the climate didn’t kill them.
The british restricted a lot of movement to the American colonies to support their economy. Spring steel was one so clocks made here had to use English steel or had to be wound evryday like my Chauncey Jerome clock.
This truly is a communist plot. The communists want to weaken America. A main cause of revolutions is lack of justice in the courts and legal system.
bookmark
Bkmk
George Mason
a little fuzzy on this
but I believe Queen Anne in signing a peace treaty with spain was able to get a 300 year monopoly on transporting spain’s slaves
Historical bookmark
This is a piece of supporting evidence for the fact that white people of that era did *NOT* want black people in their society. Many will read that as a rejection of slavery, but the wording implies it is a rejection of black people, which fits with other things i've read over the years.
"but when we consider that it greatly retards the Settlement of the Colonies with more useful Inhabitants,"
"More useful inhabitants"? Do they mean white people? Other Europeans? More supporting evidence that they did not want black people among them.
Because the king kept interfering with early American abolitionism,...
You can read it that way, and for some people of that era, this is likely true, but for most, I think, the great objection is to bringing black people into their communities. They didn't want them.
I've read that a lot of the people of that era considered them "evil", "Unclean" "of the devil", and "punished by God". People were very religious back then, and they were prone to believing all sorts of things that we wouldn't accept nowadays.
You only want to look at Pollyanna versions of history. You ignore anything that is ugly.
I wish I could, but I have much experience with human nature, and it is usually a mistake to impart noble motives to people when so much of what they do indicates they will be a snake if given half a chance.
If that had been the plan, we would have abolished it when England did, because we would still be part of them.
"Many will read that as a rejection of slavery, but the wording implies it is a rejection of black people, which fits with other things i've read over the years."
It was still something the Virginians wanted, and the king vetoed it. That makes it that the King is mistreating Southerners. But that doesn't matter to you since I'm just "painting the king" and you choose the king over the south.
"Do they mean"
I already stated that welders are more valuable than street sweepers. Nothing left for me here.
"I think, the great objection is to bringing black people into their communities. They didn't want them."
Yeah, ok, whatever. This is me at the height of my boredom.
The Virginians didn't want the blacks, whatever you say. It's still the king vetoed their law and the king cannot be said to have done anything else but mistreated the South.
"You ignore anything that is ugly."
Calling someone a slave owning abolitionist is remarkably realist, as is calling some Briton a slave trading abolitionist. It's pure realism. It accepts the bad, accepts that they changed their minds, and accepts that they went on to do the good thing. Realism. Learn it, love it, live it as Rush would say.
You know I guess there is still one small detail left that piques my interest.
Why is it ok for you that the King mistreated the South but its outrageous that that dictator Lincoln mistreated the South?
?????
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