In the decades following the American Revolution, some prominent Virginians explored the gradual abolition of slavery, influenced by revolutionary ideals of liberty, economic changes that made slavery less profitable in parts of the state, and examples of gradual emancipation in the North. A 1782 law permitting private manumission facilitated limited antislavery action, and during the 1780s and 1790s, several plans for gradual abolition circulated. These proposals varied widely: Thomas Jefferson’s plan combined emancipation with racial separation through colonization; an anonymous writer known as A.C. called for immediate abolition but retained long-term indentured labor; Ferdinando Fairfax advocated voluntary manumission followed by colonization abroad; and St. George Tucker offered a highly detailed scheme that would free some enslaved people over generations while restricting their civil rights to encourage emigration. Despite moral, religious, and economic arguments against slavery, none of these plans gained sufficient legislative support. By the early nineteenth century, fears of slave rebellion and entrenched racial prejudice undermined abolitionist sentiment, and after a brief, renewed debate following Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, Virginia’s General Assembly abandoned emancipation entirely as proslavery views hardened.
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