136 VIRGINIA'S INDUSTRIAL STATUS, 1852 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." These were, want of popular educational facilities, lack of internal improvements, and the existence of slavery.1 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."2 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.' 113 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: 'History of Virginia, Howison, Vol. II, pp. 510-511. 'History of Virginia, Howison, Vol. II, p. 517. 'Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, Meade, Vol. I, p. 90. VIRGINIA'S INDUSTRIAL STATUS, 1856 137 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 thirtynine 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, 138 VIRGINIA'S INDUSTRIAL STATUS, 1856 we find our inheritance so wasted that the eye aches to behold the prospect." 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." 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 statusfinancial and industrial-to which Virginia had been reduced. 1A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, Olmstead, Vol. I, pp. 187-189. 'The Impending Crisis in the South, Helper, p. 90. THE CUSTOM OF BUYING AND SELLING SLAVES- 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." 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 'Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Fiske, Vol. II, p. 191. 140 CHARACTER OF VIRGINIANS, 1860 matter whom, and little matter how, for the protection of slavery and slave property." 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 'Abraham Lincoln, A History, N. & H., Vol. III, p. 413. |