Part 11

"It is conceded on all hands that Virginia is in a state of moral and political retrogression among the states of the Confederacy.... We humbly suggest our belief, that the slavery which exists, and which, with gigantic strides, is gaining ground amongst us, is, in truth, the great efficient cause of the multiple evils which we all deplore. We cannot conceive that there is any other cause sufficiently operative to paralyze the energies of a people so magnanimous, to neutralize the blessings of Providence, included in the gift of a land so happy in its soil, its climate, its minerals and its waters and to annul the manifold advantages of our Republican freedom and geographical position. If Virginia has already fallen from the high estate, and if we have assigned the true cause of her fall, it is with utmost anxiety that we look forward to the future, to the fatal termination of the scene."[186]

To show that the views here expressed by the citizens of Staunton were not peculiar to the people of that locality we insert extracts from speeches made two years later by representatives in the Virginia Legislature, from counties as widely separated as Fauquier and Rockbridge, Berkeley and Buckingham.

Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier County, speaking in 1832, in the Virginia House of Delegates, said:

"Our towns are stationary, our villages almost everywhere declining and the general aspect of the country marks the course of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the soil, and care not how much it is impoverished. Public improvements are neglected, and the entire continent does not present a region for which Nature has done so much and art so little. If cultivated by free labor, the soil of Virginia is capable of sustaining a dense population among whom labor would be honourable, and where the busy hum of men would tell that all were happy and that all were free."[187]

VIEWS OF FAULKNER AND BOLLING

In the same debate, Charles J. Faulkner, of Berkeley County, said:

"Sir, if there be one who concurs with that gentleman, (Mr. Gholson, of Brunswick) in the harmless character of that institution, let me request him to compare conditions of the slaveholding portion of this commonwealth, barren, desolate and seared, as it were, by the avenging hand of Heaven, with the descriptions which we have of this same country from those who first broke its virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to the withering, blasting effects of slavery."[188]

Philip A. Bolling, of Buckingham County, said:

"If we turn our eyes to that part of the country which lies below the mountains, and particularly below the falls of the rivers, it seems as if some judgment from Heaven had poured over it and scarred it; fields once cultivated are now waste and desolate; the eye is no longer cheered by the rich verdure that decked it in other days; no, sir, but fatigued by an interminable wilderness of worn out, gullied, piney old fields."[189]

VIEWS OF McDOWELL AND HARRISON

James McDowell, in the same debate, said:

"Sir, it is true of Virginia, not merely that she has not advanced, but that in many respects she has greatly declined; and what have we got as a compensation for this decline? As a compensation for this disparity between what Virginia is and what she might have been? Nothing but the right of property in the very beings who have brought this disparity upon us. This is our pay; this is what we have gotten to remunerate us for our delinquent prosperity; to repay us for our desolated fields; our torpid enterprise; and in this dark day of our humbled importance, to sustain our hopes and to soothe our pride as a people."[190]

Jesse Burton Harrison, in an article published in the _American Quarterly Review_, December, 1832, sets out at length the poverty of Virginia, and the disastrous effects of slavery upon her industrial development.

"What," says Mr. Harrison, "is now the productive value of an estate of lands and negroes in Virginia? We state as a result of extensive inquiries, embracing the last fifteen years, that a very great portion of the larger plantations, with from fifty to one hundred slaves, actually bring their proprietors in debt at the end of the short term of years, notwithstanding what would once, in Virginia, have been deemed very sheer economy; that much the larger part of the considerable land-owners are content if they barely meet their plantation expenses without a loss of capital, and that those who make any profit, it will, in none but rare instances, average more than one to one and a half per cent, on the capital invested. The case is not materially varied with the smaller proprietors. Mr. Randolph of Roanoke, whose sayings have so generally the raciness and truth of proverbs, has repeatedly said in Congress that the time was coming when the masters would run away from their slaves, and be advertised by them in the public papers.... Of the white emigrants from Virginia, at least half are hard working who carry away with them little beside their tools and a stout heart of hope. The mechanics' trades have failed to give them bread. Commerce, she has little, shipping none, and it is a fact that the very staple of the state, tobacco, is not exported by her own capital. The state does virtually a commission business in it. All the sources of prosperity, moral and economical, are deadened; there is general discontent with one's lot; in some of the first settled and choicest part of her territory symptoms are not wanting of desolate antiquity. And all this in youthful America, and in Virginia too, the fairest region of America and with a race of people inferior to none in the world in its capacity to constitute a prosperous nation."

VIEWS OF HENRY RUFFNER

In the address of Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College, delivered in 1847, heretofore quoted from, the author by a mass of statistics shows how slavery had injured the state by decimating its white population, paralyzing its agriculture and almost destroying its manufacturing and commercial interests.

"We esteem it," says Dr. Ruffner, "a sad, a humiliating fact which should permeate the heart of every Virginian, that from the year 1790 to this time, Virginia has lost more people by emigration than all the old free states together. Up to 1840, when the last census was taken, she had lost more by near three hundred thousand.... She has sent, or we should rather say, she has driven from her soil, at least one-third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new.... It is in the last period of ten years from 1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its worst effects in the old Southern States.... East Virginia actually fell off twenty-six thousand in population; and with the exception of Richmond and one or two other towns, her population continues to decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she was also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction."

The author then proceeds to show from the report of Professor George Tucker, of the University of Virginia, that in New England agriculture yields an annual value averaging one hundred and eighty dollars per hand; and the Southern States a hundred and thirty dollars per hand; and proceeds: "Now it is admitted on all hands that slave labor is better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry; and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing."

Referring to the subject of manufactures, and the blighting influence of slavery thereon, the author says: "Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia both East and West."

Notwithstanding these advantages, the author demonstrates from the census that the state has scarcely entered upon the work of manufacturing her raw material. Thus in four leading manufactures, the output in New York was twenty-one millions, New Jersey, six millions, and Pennsylvania, sixteen millions in value; while that of Virginia was two and three-fourths millions. With respect to the commerce of the state, the author, after pointing out her exceptional advantages growing out of her fine harbors and numerous rivers, declares:

"That the commerce of our old slave-eaten commonwealth has decayed and dwindled away to a mere pittance in the general mass of American trade.

"The value of her exports, which, twenty-five or thirty years ago, averaged four or five millions a year shrunk by 1842 to two millions eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and by 1845 to two million one hundred thousand dollars."

"Her imports from foreign countries were, in the year 1765, valued at upwards of four millions of dollars; in 1791 they had sunk to two and one-half millions; in 1821 they had fallen to a little over one million; in 1827 they had come down to about half this sum; and in 1843 to the half of this again, or about one-quarter of a million; and here they have stood ever since—at next to nothing."...

"Why should every commercial improvement, every wheel that speeds the movement of trade, serve but to carry away from the slave states more and more of their wealth for the benefit of the great Northern cities? The only cause that can be assigned is that where slavery prevails, commerce and navigation cannot flourish, and commercial towns cannot compete with those in the free states."[191]

VIEWS OF R. R. HOWISON

R. R. Howison, in his _History of Virginia_, published in 1848, replying to the question whether the state has prospered: "As her physical resources would warrant us in expecting: has she held her place in the great march of American States during the present century?" answers:

"It has long been the sad conviction of her most enlightened children that these questions must be answered in the negative.... It must, therefore, be regarded as a truth, but too fully established, that Virginia has fallen below her duty; that she has been indolent while others have been laborious; that she has been content to avoid a movement positively retrograde while others have gone rapidly forward. Her motion compared with that of Massachusetts and Ohio might, in familiar terms, be likened to the heavy stage coach of the past century, competing with the fine steam car of the present.

"For this sluggishness and imbecility many causes might be assigned, ... but there are three sources in which, as we believe, the evil dispositions of our state so naturally flow that they ought to receive special notice."

VIRGINIA'S INDUSTRIAL STATUS, 1852

These were, want of popular educational facilities, lack of internal improvements, and the existence of slavery.[192] The author says:

"The last and most important cause unfavorably affecting Virginia which we shall mention is the existence of slavery within her bounds. We have already seen the origin and progress of this institution. As to its evils, we have nothing new to offer; they have long been felt and acknowledged by the most sagacious minds in our state."[193]

Bishop Meade, in a note to his history, _Old Churches, Ministers and Families in Virginia_, published in 1857, referring to the injurious effects of slavery upon Virginia's agricultural development, says: "That the agriculture of Virginia has suffered in times past from the use of slaves, we think most evident from the deserted fields, impoverished estates and emigrating population."[194]

In 1852, the Virginia Agricultural Society was organized, having among its membership and founders, the foremost planters and citizens of the state. From an address issued at the time, we make the following compilations and extracts:

After reciting that Virginia was a community of farmers—eight-tenths of her industry being expended upon the soil, the address proceeds to point out that out of thirty-nine millions of acres she tills only a little over ten millions; that New York, on the other hand, with twenty-nine and a half millions, has subdued to the plough twelve and a quarter; while Massachusetts has reclaimed from the forests, quarry and marsh, two and one-tenth out of her little territory of five millions of acres; that the live stock of Virginia was worth only $3.31 for every arable acre; the live stock of New York, $6.07; and the live stock of Massachusetts, $4.52; that the proportion of hay for the same quantity of land was eighty-one pounds for Virginia, six hundred and seventy-nine pounds for New York, and six hundred and eighty-four pounds for Massachusetts; that whilst the population of Virginia had increased during the previous ten years in a ratio of eleven to sixty-six, New York had increased twenty-seven to fifty-two, and Massachusetts thirty-four to eighty-one. The address then proceeds:

"In the above figures, carefully selected from the data of authentic documents, we find no cause for self-gratulation, but some food for meditation. They are not without use to those who would improve the future by the past. They show that we have not done our part in the bringing of land into cultivation; that notwithstanding natural advantages which greatly exceed those of the two states drawn into parallel with Virginia, we are yet behind them both....

"When we contemplate our field of labor and the work we have done in it, we cannot but observe the sad contrast between capacity and achievement. With a widespread domain, with a kindly soil, with a climate whose sun radiates fertility and whose very dews distill abundance, we find our inheritance so wasted that the eye aches to behold the prospect."[195]

Henry A. Wise, in the canvass of 1856, preliminary to his election to the office of Governor, depicted the financial and industrial conditions then existing in Virginia.

"Commerce," said he, "has long ago spread her sails and sailed away from you. You have not, as yet, dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths; you have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough in the way of manufacture to clothe your own slaves. You have no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone upon the single power of agriculture—and such agriculture! Your sedge patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth has scarred the very bosom of mother earth."[196]

It will be observed that neither the authors of the address issued by the Agricultural Society of Virginia, nor Governor Wise, attribute the poverty and backwardness of Virginia to the institution of slavery. Their statements, however, are none the less valuable as showing the status—financial and industrial—to which Virginia had been reduced.

Footnote 183:

_History of United States_, Bancroft, Vol. VI, p. 179.

Footnote 184:

_Idem_, p. 262.

Footnote 185:

_Causes of Civil War_, Chadwick, p. 35.

Footnote 186:

_Niles' Register_, Vol. XXXVI, No. 932, p. 356.

Footnote 187:

_Virginia Slavery Debate_, 1832, White, Speech of Thomas Marshall, p. 6.

Footnote 188:

_Idem_, Speech of Charles J. Faulkner, p. 7.

Footnote 189:

_Virginia Slavery Debate_, 1832, White, Speech of Philip A. Bolling, p. 14.

Footnote 190:

_Idem_, Speech of James McDowell, p. 18.

Footnote 191:

_The Ruffner Pamphlet._

Footnote 192:

_History of Virginia_, Howison, Vol. II, pp. 510-511.

Footnote 193:

_History of Virginia_, Howison, Vol. II, p. 517.

Footnote 194:

_Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia_, Meade, Vol. I, p. 90.

Footnote 195:

_A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States_, Olmstead, Vol. I, pp. 187-189.

Footnote 196:

_The Impending Crisis in the South_, Helper, p. 90.

XX

THE CUSTOM OF BUYING AND SELLING SLAVES— VIRGINIA'S ATTITUDE

But it is charged that while slavery was unprofitable in Virginia, as a system of labor, yet the state had become a "breeding ground" where slaves were reared and sold for profit and that the advantages accruing from this traffic had destroyed all sentiment in favor of emancipation, and so lowered the moral standards of the people that, in 1861, they stood ready to fight for the maintenance of slavery and the inter-state slave trade.

Mr. Fiske says:

"The life of the anti-slavery party in Virginia was short. After the abolition of the African slave trade in 1808 had increased the demand for Virginia-bred slaves in the states farther south, the very idea of emancipation faded out of memory."[197]

The biographers of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, say:

"The condition of Virginia had become anomalous; it was little understood by the North and still less by her own citizens.... She still deemed she was the mother of Presidents: whereas she had degenerated into being like other Border States, the mother of slave breeders and of an annual crop of black-skinned chattels to be sold to the cotton, rice, and sugar planters of her neighboring commonwealths.... However counterfeit logic or mental reservations concealed it, the underlying feeling was to fight, no matter whom, and little matter how, for the protection of slavery and slave property."[198]

CHARACTER OF VIRGINIANS, 1860

Let us apply to these charges what in lieu of a better term we will call the law of probabilities. Is it probable that the anti-slavery sentiments alluded to as being so strong in Virginia immediately succeeding the Revolution would have perished as early as 1808, simply because slaves had appreciated in value? While Washington and Henry and Mason died prior to 1808, yet their great compatriots Jefferson, Marshall, Madison and Monroe lived to dates long subsequent, filling the highest positions in the gift of the state and nation.

Will it be seriously urged that these men and others, of only less prominence, lost their influence with their countrymen because of the debasing influences of the domestic slave trade?

Again, it may be questioned whether between the date indicated, and the outbreak of the Civil War, the Virginians had so further degenerated as to stand ready to fight for slavery and property in slaves. While Virginia, in the period of the Civil War, presented no statesmen comparable to those of the Revolution, yet in all the elements of inspiring manhood, valor, sacrifice and devotion, her people were not one whit behind their ancestors. The debasing effects of "slave breeding" had not corrupted the great body of her people: if so, how can we account for the bearing of Virginians at Gettysburg, and on other fields of test only less heroic? Speaking of their part in that historic battle, Charles Francis Adams says:

"If in all recorded warfare there is a deed of arms, the name and memory of which the descendants of those who participated therein should not wish to see obliterated from any record, be it historian's page or battle flag, it was the advance of Pickett's Virginian Division across the wide valley of death in front of Cemetery Ridge. I know in all recorded warfare of no finer, no more sustained and deadly feat of arms."[199]

CHARACTER OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS

What of the Cadets at the Battle of New Market? Were those young heroes the sons of "slave breeders" and nurtured in homes darkened by such a debasing practice? What of the spirit and bearing of the great body of Virginia soldiers who followed Lee, and what place shall they and their commander take in the estimation of the world's best thought and conscience? President Roosevelt says:

"The world has never seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee, and their leader will undoubtedly rank as, without any exception, the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth."[200]

What of Lee's character as a man, aside from his genius as a soldier? Lord Wolseley says:

"I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mould, and made of different and of finer metal than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, and very few of whom I have read, are worthy to be classed. I have met but two men who realized my ideas of what a true hero should be; my friend, Charles Gordon was one, General Lee was the other."[201]

RHODES' ESTIMATE OF LEE

James Ford Rhodes says:

"A careful survey of his (Lee's) character and life must lead the student of men and affairs to see that the course he took was, from his point of view, and judged by his inexorable and pure conscience, the path of duty to which a high sense of honor called him. Could we share the thoughts of that high-minded man as he paced the broad pillared veranda of his stately Arlington house, his eyes glancing across the river at the flag of his country waving over the dome of the capitol, and then resting on the soil of his native Virginia, we should be willing now to recognize in him one of the finest products of American Life."[202]

If such were the character of the Virginians of the Civil War period, is it reasonable to speak of their "degeneracy" under the debasing influence of "slave breeding" and "the slave trade?" "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"

Again, how was it possible that this system of breeding slaves for market could have so established itself in Virginia, and inspired the great body of her citizenship with a willingness to fight for its maintenance, in view of the existence of a public opinion which pursued with relentless ostracism the men who engaged in the traffic? For no offense was the public opinion of Virginia so merciless as for that of buying and selling slaves. More than for any other crime, the disgrace of its guilt passed beyond the offender to his innocent offspring. The existence of this public sentiment is an historic fact of unquestioned verity.

HOSTILITY TO NEGRO-TRADERS

Writing in 1854, Reverend Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, who visited Virginia in that year, says: "Negro traders are the abhorrence of all flesh. Even their descendants where they are known, and the property acquired in the traffic, have a blot upon them."[203]

Abraham Lincoln, speaking on the 16th of October, 1854, at Peoria, Illinois, says:

"Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native tyrants known as a slave-dealer. He watches your necessities and crawls up to buy your slaves at a speculative price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him, but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly; you do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children.... If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family."[204]