Robert Pleasants

Who was Robert Pleasants?

Robert Pleasants was an American educator and abolitionist. He was born in Henrico County, Virginia and became a plantation owner and operator of Robert Pleasants & Co., a consignment tobacco exporting company. His father, John Pleasants, also a Quaker and member of the Curles Neck Meeting, wrote a will asking his heirs to free over 500 slaves when they reached 30 years of age. Contacts with the anti-slavery advocate Anthony Benezet and what became the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1774, spurred their commitment to the abolitionist movement.

However, testamentary manumission provisions were illegal in Virginia when John Pleasants died in 1771. Robert Pleasants lobbied Virginia legislators to allow manumissions, and when such became legal in 1782, freed his slaves, then hired them as paid laborers and provided for their education.

Robert Pleasants also hired John Marshall and initiated Pleasants v Pleasants as executor of his father's will and on behalf of the slaves that his siblings failed to free despite the will's provision. They won before Chancellor George Wythe, but his ruling was greatly restricted by the Court of Appeals led by Edmund Pendleton.