In 1785, Robert Pleasants, a wealthy tobacco planter, abolitionist, and prominent member of Henrico County’s Quaker community, penned a letter to Virginia’s most famous son, George Washington. Addressing him as “Honour’d General,” Pleasants reflected on the divine favors that had not only granted Washington success in his efforts to secure the United States’ liberty but had also granted Washington a “great reputation among men.” Yet for all of Washington’s grand feats, Pleasants feared that the great man’s legacy was in danger.
The concerned Quaker, or Friend, urged Washington to remember that he had lately risked his life for the glorious cause of liberty. Strange then, Pleasants mused, that he should return home and rest in “a state of ease, dissipation, and extravagance on the labor of slaves.” How could a man such as Washington, Pleasants wondered, a man who had been prepared to lay down his life in the name of liberty, be capable of denying that “inestimable blessing” to those who were “absolutely in [his] power.” By championing emancipation, not only would Washington resolve this glaring hypocrisy, but his efforts would surely be honored as “crowning the great acts of his life.” Pleasants concluded by acknowledging that the “Honour’d General” may find such a frank address from a mere acquaintance to be presumptuous. However, his convictions that the moral health of the retired general and the nation were at stake compelled him to be bold. Washington’s response–if he supplied one at all–is unknown.[i]
If Washington was affronted, he would perhaps have been able to console himself with the knowledge that he was not the only prominent Virginian to receive such a direct note from Pleasants. In 1791, one year after launching the Virginia Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery as a founding member, Pleasants wrote to then Congressman James Madison soliciting his support for a petition to introduce a bill of gradual abolition in the House of Representatives. Perhaps Madison’s apparent ambiguity about slavery’s longevity gave Pleasants reason to believe he would find an ally in his fellow Virginian. Echoing his earlier appeal to Washington’s sense of legacy, Pleasants invited Madison to consider how “noble” it would be for a man such as he, “favored with abilities and influence,” to act as a friend to the “ignorant, injured, and helpless.”[ii] Madison replied to Pleasants that it would not be prudent to introduce the petition as it would constitute a breach of the trust (a “public wound,” in his words) with his many pro-slavery constituents who had put him in office.[iii]