Gradual Emancipation Proposal
After eight years as a judge on the General Court, Tucker wrote A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia, which he then submitted to the General Assembly of Virginia. It was first published as a pamphlet in 1796 and was later appended to his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries. He said that the abolition of slavery was of "the first importance, not only to (Virginians') moral character and domestic peace, but even to our political salvation."
Tucker engaged in a considerable amount of research for the Dissertation. He wrote a number of legal scholars and practitioners in the Northern states to ask how they had ended slavery or planned to end it. Tucker's Dissertation was also likely one of the first extensively-researched treatises on the history of slavery in the British North American colonies, as well as a comprehensive description of the law of slavery in Virginia at the time.
Read more about this topic: St. George Tucker
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