This volume discusses the general opposition to the institution of slavery which prevailed throughout the South, and in Virginia in particular, prior to the rise of Abolition fanaticism in the North in the 1830s. Evidence is presented in the first and second part of the book to show that Virginia in her colonial condition sought on several occasions to prohibit the further importation of slaves within her borders and that immediately upon her independence from Great Britain, she was the very first commonwealth on Earth to legislate against the trade. The third and fourth parts prove that Virginia did not secede from the Union with a desire to destroy it, or with hostility to the ideals of its founders, but rather in response to the unconstitutional usurpations of the general Government and the attempt of the Lincoln Administration to subjugate the Southern States.