126 AREA AND POPULATION OF STATE fifty odd thousand men, women and children, were slaveholders, one-third of whom held only one or two slaves. If to the slaveholders be added such a number as would fairly represent those who were indirectly interested in a pecuniary way in slavery, the fact remains, that the overwhelming majority possessed no such incentive to support the institution. By this same census the area of Virginia was fixed at 64,770 square miles, divided into one hundred and fortyeight counties. By an analysis of the census returns, it will appear that in the portion of the state lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, embracing eighty counties and 37,992 square miles, there were 596,293 whites and only 66,766 slaves; while in the remaining sixty-eight counties containing 26,778 square miles, there were only 451,006 whites and 424,099 slaves. Even with respect to this last mentioned portion of the state the slaves were not evenly distributed but were congested in certain well defined localities. Thus of the 424,099 slaves in the sixty-eight counties lying east of the Blue Ridge, 173,109 were in twenty-two counties situated between James River and the North Carolina border known as the "Black Belt," the white population of which was only 128,303. The foregoing facts have an important bearing upon the statement so often found in the writings of historians and publicists, that the white population of Virginia and the South was composed in large measure of "slaveholders, arrogant and rich," and "poor whites," and that in the Civil War the former fought to defend their property interests in slaves, and the latter from a deep-seated fear that emancipation would reduce them to the social level of the blacks. It would seem impossible for such conditions to exist in counties and cities where the whites "ARROGANT SLAVEHOLDERS" 127 largely outnumbered the blacks. Arrogant slaveholders,' counting their slaves by the scores and dominating the social and economic fortunes of their white neighbors, could be found only in sections where the slaves greatly outnumbered the whites. While agriculture was undoubtedly the pursuit in which a great majority of the people of Virginia was engaged, yet this majority was not made up of "arrogant slaveholders" and "poor whites." The United States census showed that the great body of her white people were small farmers, wage-earners, mechanics, merchants and professional men, with some not inconsiderable number of miners, fishermen and employees in manufactories. The prosperous, among this more numerous element of her population, had little or no pecuniary interests in slave property, while the poorer classes entertained as little fear for the preservation of their social status from the abolition of slavery, as they had pecuniary stake in its maintenance. THE INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY UPON THE FROM the foregoing statistics it appears that the slaveholders of Virginia constituted a small minority of her population, and that the slaves themselves were so grouped that the pecuniary advantage of their presence to the state -if any such advantage existed-was limited to certain well defined portions of her territory. That the institution of slavery, however, was a positive disadvantage to the material prosperity of Virginia is proved by the fact that free states, not half so richly endowed with natural resources, had far outstripped her in wealth and population, and also that as between the white and the slave sections of the commonwealth, the former were more prosperous. Mr. Bancroft, writing in 1856, affirmed the truth of this position. "Washington," he says, "was the director of his community of black people in their labor, mainly for their own subsistence. For the market, they produced scarcely anything but a 'little wheat'; and after a season of drought even their own support had to be eked out from other resources, so that with all his method and good judgment he, like Madison of a later day, and in accord with common experience in Virginia, found that where negroes continued on the same land, and they and all their increase were maintained upon it, their owner would become more and more embarrassed or impoverished." 'History of United States, Bancroft, Vol. VI, p. 179. THE BLIGHT OF SLAVERY UPON VIRGINIA 129 Again the same author, contrasting the profitable character of slavery in the Cotton States, with its unprofitableness in Maryland and Virginia, says: "In the Northernmost of the Southern States slavery maintained itself, not as an element of prosperity, but as a baneful inheritance." In no way were the injurious effects of slavery more potent or more manifest than in retarding the growth of the white population of the state. The presence of the institution not only turned the tide of immigration from Virginia, but, during the three decades preceding the Civil War, it promoted a steady exodus of the whites from the slaveholding sections. Admiral Chadwick records that, "Nearly 400,000 Virginians were, in 1860, living in other statesnearly all of them Western, 75,874 in Ohio alone." Not only are the foregoing recitals true but it is equally true that their direful import was profoundly appreciated. Not all the people of Virginia lived in a Fool's Paradise. They balanced the known burdens of slavery against the anticipated burdens of emancipation-they compared the dangers and losses of present conditions with the problems of a future in which the slaves would be free, yet still in their midst; but by no calculation could the continuance of slavery be upheld because of the pecuniary benefits derived from its existence. The published sentiments of Virginians during the three decades immediately preceding the Civil War will serve to confirm this position. Among the petitions presented to the Virginia Convention of 1829-30, was one from the citizens of Staunton, praying the abolition of slavery. "We waive," the petition recited, "at present the con 1Idem, p. 262. 'Causes of Civil War, Chadwick, p. 35. 130 INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY siderations of religion and humanity, which belong to this momentous subject, and present it as a naked question of policy, wisdom and safety. ... We affirm that the possession and management of slaves form a source of endless vexation and misery within the house, and a waste and drain on the farm; that the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself is bringing poverty upon all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the supineness of our population either prevent the institution of schools through the country or keep them in the most languid and inefficient condition; and that the same causes must obviously paralyze all our schemes and efforts for the needful improvement of the country. "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." 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. Niles' Register, Vol. XXXVI, No. 932, p. 356. |