Notes on the Anti-Slavery Movement in 19th Century Virginia

I came across an intriguing statement in a local history book called Regards to Broadway. It says that the Brethren Church met in 1857 in Virginia to decide what it would require of any slaveholders desiring to become members. They agreed that the converts would first give up "ownership" of their slaves. However they should continue to provide work, food, and clothes, until "suitable and lawful provision" could allow them the opportunity to become independent.

This reminded me that the Pritchard family in Kernstown gave up slave-holding in (or by) 1859, as I mentioned in a post last year about Kernstown and Winchester. Whether they did this for religious reasons I don't know.

Details on the Brethren Church and it's opposition to slavery can be found at a page called "Who are the Dunkers." There were other churches in the south that opposed slavery, and a book called Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement points out that many churches encouraged members to move west out of Virginia and the Carolinas in order to avoid the evil of slavery. Unfortunately, this movement took anti-slavery voters out of Virginia, perhaps enough so that the various measures that came up in the state legislature aimed at eliminating slavery did not pass.

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