Antislavery Feelings and Proslavery Steps: From the Atlantic to the Continental Slave Trade in Virginia, 1619-1820

This dissertation examines the transition from the transatlantic to the transcontinental slave trade in Virginia from the colonial period to the antebellum era. It uses private correspondence and public discourse from various figures in order to explore the way in which contemporaries observed and made sense of this transition. It considers the bearing of economic, political, social, and moral aspects of slavery and the slave trade on Virginian policy toward both. Historians have long pointed to the obvious economic incentives in shutting down transatlantic importation of enslaved Africans for wealthy enslaving Virginians. Often, historians assume a rent-seeking effort to protect or even create a domestic slave trade explains the prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent shift to the transcontinental slave trade. This project argues that Virginian legislators and others invested in the political and economic development of both Virginia and the United States consistently framed their policy toward slavery and the slave trade in terms of their racist desire to control, restrict, and diminish the Black population.