William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at
Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's
proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years.
In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which
in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful
slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this,
however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not
in my disposition."[24]
[Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile
books, Virginia State Library.]
Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills.
Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament
in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a
free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave,
of an advanced age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was
prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters would
be much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed
these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them
with unflagging kindness.
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