unregarded members of their movement.
In the statement that Piet Retief sent to the Grahamstown Journal to
explain their decision, he said that they hoped that the British government
would "allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in future." He
added: "We are resolved, wherever we go, that we will uphold the just
principles of liberty; but, whilst we will take care that no one shall be held
in a state of slavery, it is our determination
to maintain such regulations as
may suppress crime, and preserve proper relations between master and
servant.l'"! That is to say, they intended to recreate the social and economic
structure of the eighteenth-century
Cape Colony, but-to
ward off British
reprisals-they
disclaimed
the practice of overt slavery. Retief's niece,
Anna Steenkamp, made this clear in her memoirs. Referring to die eman-
cipation of the slaves she wrote: "It is not so much their freedom that drove
us to such lengths, as their being placed on an equal footing with Chris-
tians, contrary to the laws of God and the natural distinction of race and
religion, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow down
beneath such a yoke; wherefore we rather withdrew in order thus to pre-
serve our doctrines in purity."42
During