Heading: (African American, 1846)
Author: Crenshaw, Nathaniel C.; and Margaret M. Crew;
Title: Letter of a wealthy family of Virginia Quakers who intended to free their slaves
Place Published: Shrubbery Hill, Richmond, Virginia
Publisher:
Date Published: August 13-14, 1846
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed, 4 pp. with stampless address leaf, to John B. Crenshaw, Hamiltons Store, Loudon County, Virginia. Includes 2 pp. from Nathaniel Crenshaw to his son John; 2 pp. from Margaret Crew, Nathaniel's sister, to John's wife, Rachel; and a short note from M. Bates to her brother John.

Nathaniel Crenshaw had been a soldier in the War of 1812 before becoming a Quaker, thus, a pacifist. He was opposed to slavery on principle, and intended to free all his slaves, sending some to Liberia, and others to northern states, though this letter, mostly about family consequences of his plans to marry his third wife, dates from a time when he was still a benevolent slave owner with a vast tobacco plantation. He speaks of one slave, Isaac, who was to be "suitably hired out", though he was apparently about to be freed and would "soon have to leave the state" under the law requiring freed Blacks to leave Virginia within a year of being emancipated. He also writes about a friendly "contest" within the family about who would "have possession" of another popular slave, named "little aunty".

The recipient of the letter, John Bacon Crenshaw, a young Quaker minister near Richmond, was more forthright about his religious principles than his father. During the Civil War, he would become a leading Confederate spokesman for Quaker conscientious objectors to military service, as well as a more muted Abolitionist, purchasing the freedom of several slaves before the War, and, postwar, claiming, as a conservative Republican, to have "a right to speak as the true friend of the colored man", and helping to found a Quaker Asylum for Colored Orphans.

Hole and tear from seal opening, with no loss of text; good.