rounds 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