St. George Tucker

St. George Tucker was a judge in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and a professor of law at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1796 he published a long pamphlet called A Dissertation on Slavery in which he proposed a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in Virginia. Ultimately, Tucker’s pamphlet had little impact, and his proposals were never enacted in Virginia, but his arguments provide insight into why some Southerners opposed slavery.

In arguing for gradual emancipation, Tucker was motivated primarily by the fear of slave insurrection and violence. Like many Southerners, he had been greatly influenced by slave insurrections in the French colony of St. Dominique (now Haiti), which began in 1791 and ultimately led to the independence of Haiti and the abolition of slavery there. One feature of Tucker...