Robert Pleasants (1723–1801) was an American
educator and
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
. He was born in
Henrico County, Virginia and became a plantation owner and operator of Robert Pleasants & Co., a consignment
tobacco
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
exporting company. His father, John Pleasants, also a Quaker and member of the Curles Neck Meeting, wrote a will asking his heirs to free over 500 slaves when they reached 30 years of age. Contacts with the anti-slavery advocate
Anthony Benezet
Anthony Benezet, born Antoine Bénézet (January 31, 1713May 3, 1784), was a French-American abolitionist and educator who was active in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the early American abolitionists, Benezet founded one of the world's fir ...
and what became the
Pennsylvania Abolition Society
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society. It was founded April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and held four meetings. Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initia ...
in 1774, spurred their commitment to the abolitionist movement.
However, testamentary manumission provisions were illegal in Virginia when John Pleasants died in 1771. Robert Pleasants lobbied Virginia legislators to allow manumissions, and when such became legal in 1782, freed his slaves, then hired them as paid laborers and provided for their education.
Robert Pleasants also hired
John Marshall and initiated
Pleasants v Pleasants as executor of his father's will and on behalf of the slaves that his siblings failed to free despite the will's provision. They won before Chancellor
George Wythe
George Wythe (; December 3, 1726 – June 8, 1806) was an American academic, scholar and judge who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The first of the seven signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence from ...
, but his ruling was greatly restricted by the Court of Appeals led by
Edmund Pendleton
Edmund Pendleton (September 9, 1721 – October 23, 1803) was an American planter, politician, lawyer, and judge. He served in the Virginia legislature before and during the American Revolutionary War, rising to the position of speaker. Pendleto ...
. Pleasants ended up giving about 78 former slaves over 350 acres of land, and by 1801 founded the Gravelly Hill School, the first educational institution for free blacks in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
.
[“History and Archives,” Richmond Friends Meeting (Quakers)]
/ref> The Civil War Battle of Glendale
The Battle of Glendale, also known as the Battle of Frayser's Farm, Frazier's Farm, Nelson's Farm, Charles City Crossroads, New Market Road, or Riddell's Shop, took place on June 30, 1862, in Henrico County, Virginia, on the sixth day of the Sev ...
was fought on the property, part of which was eventually rebuilt as the Gravel Hill Baptist Church.
Robert Pleasants was also one of the founders of the short-lived Virginia Abolition Society, and served as its president in 1790. The society disbanded after Virginia passed a law in 1798 forbidding abolitionists from sitting on juries in freedom suit
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or ter ...
cases.
Meanwhile, Pleasants submitted numerous petitions to the Virginia state government and the U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...
calling for the end of the slave trade. The most famous, from 1791, is now at the Library of Virginia
The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and ...
. Many of Pleasants' letters to George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
and Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, planter, politician and orator known for declaring to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): " Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first a ...
regarding the legality and morality of slavery still survive. Some of the founders replied to Pleasants, affirming their own distaste for the "peculiar institution." The Swem Library at the College of William and Mary holds many of Pleasants' papers.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pleasants, Robert
1723 births
1801 deaths
African-American history of Virginia
American slave owners
American educators
American abolitionists
American Quakers
Quaker abolitionists
History of slavery in Virginia
History of Virginia
Legal history of Virginia
People from Henrico County, Virginia
Quakerism in Virginia
Quaker slave owners