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Virginia's most prominent statesman had a profound influence on the American Founding. Of the first five presidents elected, four of them were Virginians. Old Dominion thus held an influential position in the Union. The Founders held a reluctant tolerance of slavery, yet every leading Founder believed that slavery was wrong. They based this argument on the natural rights all men, all humans, possessed. With a natural rights understanding of the American Founding, it is an inescapable conclusion that slavery is a violation of those rights. However, the Founders expressed their distaste of the peculiar institution in different ways. All wrote privately about their aversion of the institution, and some took unmistakable public positions. Several also found ways to demonstrate implicitly their opinion about slavery. Because of its influential position, the political direction of Old Dominion was a bellwether for the Union. During the 1829-1832, in two instances, Virginians debated the future of slavery in their state. First, in the Constitutional Convention in 1829-30 they debated the existence of natural rights and whether those rights were a guide for statesmanship. During this convention there was an attack on natural rights that set the stage for the next great deliberation over slavery. Second, they explicitly discussed ending slavery in the House of Delegates after the Nat Turner insurrection in 1831-32. The Delegates of the day rejected the emancipation of the slaves as a moral and political necessity. Virginians had the opportunity to place slavery on the road to gradual extinction. They had an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of liberty, but ultimately that argument lost. The forces of self-interest defeated those who articulated the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This was solidified when Thomas Roderick Dew wrote his review of the debates in the House of Delegates. As a result of his arguments, the pro-slavery argument proceeded apace in Virginia with Dew being instrument
This is the only modern comprehensive constitutional history of any state, and as a history of Virgina, it is one of the oldest and most complex. Virginia's state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, which was established in July 1619, making it the oldest current lawmaking body in North America. Brent Tarter's Constitutional History of Virginia covers over three hundred years of Virginia's legislative policy, from colony to statehood, revealing its political and legal backstory. From the very beginning in 1606, when James I chartered the Virginia Company to establish a commercial outpost on the Atlantic coast of North America, through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the fundamental constitutions of the colony and state of Virginia have evolved and changed as the demographic, economic, political, and cultural characteristics of Virginia changed. Elements of the colonial constitution influenced the character of the state's first constitution in 1776, and changing relationships between the people and their government, as well as relationships between the state and federal governments, have influenced how the state's constitution has evolved. Tarter explores that evolution and taps into its relevance to the people who have lived and still live in Virginia.
A history of the Virginia Convention of 1776 and biographies of the participants.