During the winter of 1831–1832, undercover abolitionists, powerful colonizationists, and hysterical legislators in Virginia raised their voices against slavery. In the end, proslavery legislators batted away every single antislavery measure, and ended up pushing through an even more harrowing slave code than the one that had been in place. Proslavery legislators repressed the very captives they said were docile, and restricted the education of the very people they argued could not be educated.
