Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of ’76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades.  The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to ten per cent. per decade.  Documents in this later period, reverting to the colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission.  Liberations on a large scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued.  John Randolph’s will set free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted 160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P.  Custis of Virginia liberated his two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11]

[Footnote 9:  Garland, Life of Randolph, II, 150, 151.]

[Footnote 10:  Niles’ Register, LXIII, 245.]

Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made provisions to bring it after the lapse of years.  Prominent among these were three Louisianians.  Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts:  ten and twenty slaves respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of Saturday afternoons.  This labor was to be done in McDonogh’s own service, and he was to keep account of their earnings.  They were entitled to draw upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must draw theirs pro rata, thereby postponing the common day of liberation.  Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the rest.  The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with their late master’s benediction.  In concluding his public narration in the premises McDonogh wrote:  “They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of their fathers.  I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14]