Chapter V: Part 5

_Will Book No. 9_, p. 421, Clerk's Office, Madison County, Virginia.

Footnote 172:

_Will Book No. 14_, p. 188, Clerk's Office, Henrico County,
Virginia.

Footnote 173:

_Will Book No. 25_, p. 274, Clerk's Office, Fauquier County,
Virginia.

Footnote 174:

_Will Book No. 13_, p. 51, Clerk's Office, Amherst County, Virginia.

Footnote 175:

_Will Book F._, p. 222, Clerk's Office, Culpeper County, Virginia.

Footnote 176:

_Will Book No. 12_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Orange County, Virginia.

Footnote 177:

_Will Book No. 7_, p. 267, Clerk's Office, Fairfax County, Virginia.

Note: Robert E. Lee qualified as executor under this will and
executed in 1862 the necessary papers emancipating the testator's
slaves of whom there were one hundred and ninety-six.

Footnote 178:

_Deed Book No. 39_, p. 344, Clerk's Office, Isle of Wight County,
Virginia.

Footnote 179:

See _Will Book Q._, p. 433, Clerk's Office, Prince William County,
Virginia.

Footnote 180:

_Will Book No. 16_, p. 106, Clerk's Office, Amherst County,
Virginia.

XVIII

THE SMALL NUMBER OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN VIRGINIA
AS COMPARED WITH HER WHOLE WHITE POPULATION

Among the many widespread misconceptions which existed with respect to
slavery in Virginia, was the impression that the great majority of her
citizens were slaveholders; that the slaves were scattered throughout
the state, enriching by their labors every community, and that thus
their emancipation was opposed from purely pecuniary motives. A
presentation of the actual conditions will suffice to demonstrate that
this impression was erroneous. The facts show that the slaveholders
constituted a small minority of the population, and that, with
comparatively few exceptions, the great body of the slaves were to be
found within certain well defined sections of the state.

The United States census for 1860 fixes the white population of
Virginia at 1,047,299 and the number of slaveholders at 52,128.[181]
Admiral Chadwick, in his work, _Causes of the Civil War_, says: "Of
the 52,128 slaveholders in Virginia, one-third held but one or two
slaves; half held one to four; there were but one hundred and fourteen
persons in the whole state who owned as many as a hundred each, and
this out of a population of over a million whites."[182]

Thus, out of a population of over one million, only some 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.

AREA AND POPULATION OF STATE

By this same census the area of Virginia was fixed at 64,770 square
miles, divided into one hundred and forty-eight 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.

"ARROGANT SLAVEHOLDERS"

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 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.

-----

Footnote 181:

_8th Census_, 1860, Vol. on Agriculture, p. 245.

Footnote 182:

_Causes of the Civil War_, American Nation Series, Chadwick, p. 33.

XIX

THE INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY UPON THE PROSPERITY OF VIRGINIA

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."[183]

THE BLIGHT OF SLAVERY UPON VIRGINIA

Again the same author, contrasting the profitable character of slavery
in the Cotton States, with its unprofitableness in Maryland and
Virginia, says: "In the Northern-most of the Southern States slavery
maintained itself, not as an element of prosperity, but as a baneful
inheritance."[184]

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 states—nearly all of them
Western, 75,874 in Ohio alone."[185]

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.

INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF SLAVERY

Among the petitions presented to the Virgina Convention of 1829-30,
was one from the citizens of Staunton, praying the abolition of
slavery.

"We waive," the petition recited, "at present the considerations 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."[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]

It would seem impossible to reconcile the existence of this public
sentiment with the idea that the state had degenerated into "the
mother of slave breeders," and that her people, enamored of the
profits, were given over to the work of rearing and selling slaves.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT, 1832

Against the charge, however, that the abolition of the foreign slave
trade in 1808 and the contemporaneous invention of the cotton gin so
enhanced the market value of slaves as to destroy the sentiment
previously existing in Virginia for their emancipation, we place the
well-attested fact that anti-slavery sentiment did not die at the time
and for the causes specified. The truth is just to the contrary.
Anti-slavery sentiments among the people grew steadily during the next
quarter of a century. The setback which occurred in 1832-33 arose, as
we have seen, from other causes. The existence of the strongest
anti-slavery sentiment at the latter date cannot be questioned. Said
Charles James Faulkner in the great debate in the Virginia Legislature
of 1832: "Sir, I am gratified to perceive that no gentleman has yet
arisen in this hall, the avowed advocate of slavery. The day has gone
by when such a voice could be listened to with patience or even
forbearance."[205]

George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing a half century later, says:
"It may be asserted as positively as anything in history that in the
year 1832 there was nowhere in the world a more enlightened sense of
the wrong and evil of slavery than there was among the public men and
people of Virginia."[206]

Was the anti-slavery sentiment of 1833 a reminiscence or a growth? Had
it simply survived with diminishing strength the fervor of the
Revolution or was it an increasing power which had its origin at that
period? The Rev. Dr. Philip Slaughter writes: "That (1831) was the
culminating point—the flood-tide of anti-slavery feeling which had
been gradually rising for more than a century in Virginia."[207]

Thomas Jefferson Randolph in his speech before the Legislature of 1832
deplored the fact that Mr. Jefferson had not lived: "to see the
revolution of the public mind of Virginia. He has not lived to see a
majority of the House of Delegates in favor of abolition in the
abstract."[208]

Washington and Jefferson have both left on record the fact that the
people of Virginia of the Revolutionary period would not tolerate any
proposal of emancipation. Mr. Randolph in his speech just quoted from
said: "Sixty-two years ago when a proposition was made in the
Legislature of Virginia by one of the oldest, ablest and most
respected members ... to ameliorate the condition of the slaves he was
... denounced as an enemy of his country."

The constitutions of the ante and post-Revolutionary periods in
Virginia all required property qualification as a prerequisite to the
suffrage, and apportioned representation in the General Assembly to
the several cities and counties on the basis of property and white
population, rather than on the latter alone. Under this system, the
slaves being taxed as property, the slaveholders and their counties
exercised a power far in excess of that enjoyed by their brethren in
the non-slaveholding sections. The General Assembly elected every
state official, including the Governor and the judges of the higher
courts, and thus in the hands of that body was lodged complete control
of every department of the state government.

GROWING POWER OF NON-SLAVEHOLDERS

The constitution of 1830 admitted to the suffrage, in addition to
property-owners, only the citizen "who for twelve months next
preceding (the election) has been a housekeeper and head of a family
... and shall have been assessed with a part of the revenue of the
commonwealth within the preceding year and actually paid the same."
But this constitution retained in the hands of the General Assembly
the election of all the state officials, including the Governor, and
continued in force the "mixed basis" in apportioning representatives
among the several cities and counties.[209] With suffrage thus
restricted, with a General Assembly in which property in slaves
secured for the slaveholders and their counties an additional
representation over that of the non-slaveholders, and with every
officer of the state government elected by the Legislature thus
constituted, the political dominance of the slaveholding counties over
the non-slaveholding counties will be readily appreciated. The scheme
was alike inequitable and un-Republican, yet it was not until the
Reform Convention of 1850-51 that white manhood suffrage was
established, the privilege of electing all state officials accorded to
the people, and the changes made with respect to the basis of
representation which would have eventually accorded to all the
counties and cities representation in the General Assembly in
proportion to their white populations.[210] To strip the slaveholding
counties of their political power, to admit on an equal basis to the
suffrage every white man in the commonwealth, and to accord to the
electorate thus constituted the privilege of electing every high state
official did not indicate the growth of pro-slavery sentiment. These
achievements of the Convention were confessedly the most signal
victories for liberty and progress which had marked the history of
Virginia since her liberation from British rule. These fundamental
changes in the constitution and in the relative rights and powers of
the slaveholders and the slaveholding sections, as compared with the
non-slaveholders and non-slaveholding sections, were ratified by the
people by a vote of 75,748 to 11,063—only five counties in the state
out of the one hundred and forty-eight giving majorities in the
negative.[211]

-----

Footnote 197:

_Old Virginia and Her Neighbors_, Fiske, Vol. II, p. 191.

Footnote 198:

_Abraham Lincoln, A History_, N. & H., Vol. III, p. 413.

Footnote 199:

_Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers_, Adams, p. 425.

Footnote 200:

_Thomas H. Benton_, Roosevelt, p. 34.

Footnote 201:

_Robert E. Lee_, Wolseley, p. 12.

Footnote 202:

_History of the United States_, Rhodes, 1904, Vol. III, p. 413.

Footnote 203:

_South Side View of Slavery_, Adams, p. 78.

Footnote 204:

_Abraham Lincoln, Letters, Speeches and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol.
I, p. 194.

Footnote 205:

_Virginia Slavery Debate_, 1832, White.

Footnote 206:

_Life of James Buchanan_, Curtis, 1883, Vol. II, p. 277.

Footnote 207:

_Virginian History of African Colonization_, Slaughter, p. 55.

Footnote 208:

_Slavery Debate_, 1832, White, T. J. Randolph's Speech, p. 13.

Footnote 209:

_Code of Virginia_, 1849, pp. 35 to 45.

Footnote 210:

Article III, Section 1, and Article IV, Section 5, Constitution of
Virginia, 1851.

Footnote 211:

_Representation in Virginia_, Chandler, 1896, p. 7.

XXI

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

Approaching the subject from another side, and reviewing all the
sources of evidence, we may reach certain fairly accurate conclusions.
At the close of the Revolution, Virginia was the largest slaveholding
state in the Union. There soon grew up the conviction that in the
dispersion or colonization beyond her borders of at least a large
portion of this population lay the only method of effectually solving
the slavery and racial problems. In consequence of this condition,
various movements were evolved, some designedly for the attainment of
these objects and others, while without such purpose, yet working to
the same end.

DEPORTATION OF SLAVES FROM VIRGINIA

As we have seen, slaves when emancipated were required to leave the
state within one year from such date. Masters, ex-slaves and
colonization societies were, therefore, all earnest to achieve this
result. Hence arose the first cause for deportation—an influence and
custom which continued up to the Civil War.

The prospects of improving their fortunes by emigrating to the newer
states of Kentucky, Missouri and the South impelled large numbers of
slaveholders to leave Virginia. They carried their slaves with them
and hence arose a second cause which operated to deport each year many
slaves from the state.

The ever increasing difficulty of obtaining (especially on the part of
large slaveholders) any appreciable profit from the labor of their
slaves in the grain and tobacco fields of Virginia induced these
proprietors to purchase cotton and sugar plantations in the South and
thither from time to time to transport their slaves. These
slaveholders did not always emigrate themselves. They simply changed
the situs of their slaves, the latter being often accompanied by the
sons of their masters. Thus a third cause carried annually from
Virginia many hundreds of slaves.

The high prices which slaves commanded on the plantations of the far
South and in the sparsely settled portions of the Southwest engendered
the practice of buying slaves in Virginia and selling them for profit
in those sections. Despite the opprobrium attached to this custom
there were men willing to engage in the traffic and from choice or
necessity there were slaveholders who supplied at least a portion of
the demand. Hence, the fourth cause which contributed to the yearly
deportation of slaves from Virginia.

Neither the United States census nor any other official data avail to
fix the number of slaves which annually went from Virginia for each of
the four several reasons above referred to. It is evident, however,
that, as a rule, publicists not informed as to the conditions have
combined these exportations and attributed them all to the custom of
selling slaves. We are safe in concluding, therefore, that the number
of slaves _sold_ annually from Virginia has been grossly exaggerated;
that the custom was revolting to the moral sense of her people and
maintained against an outraged rather than a sympathetic public
sentiment.

Most of the writers who have laid this damaging accusation at the door
of the Virginia people have not attempted to fortify their position by
authority or data of any kind. Others have and a careful analysis of
the facts submitted will assist in determining the measure of truth
contained in the original charge.

ESTIMATE OF WILLIAM HENRY SMITH

The recent work, _A Political History of Slavery_, by William Henry
Smith, will serve to illustrate the character of publications last
referred to. The author after pointing out that the Cotton and Rice
Producing States looked to the older commonwealth for supplies of
laborers, proceeds:

"Mr. Mercer, one of the ablest of the members of that remarkable
Convention (the Virginia Convention of 1829-30) said that the tables
of the natural growth of the slave population demonstrated ... that
an annual revenue of not less than a million and a half of dollars
had been derived from the exportation of a part of that increase.
Seven years later the _Virginia Times_ published an estimate of the
money arising from the sale of slaves exported during the year 1836
making the aggregate $24,000,000.00, which showed the enormous
profitableness of slave breeding."[212]

In support of this conclusion the author appends to his text three
notes, as follows:

First: "The _Times_ gave the whole number exported at 120,000 of
whom 80,000 were taken out of the state by their owners who removed
to new states and 40,000 were sold to dealers. The average price per
head was $600." (_Niles Register_, Vol. LI, p. 83.)

Second: "In the Legislature of Virginia in 1832 Thomas Jefferson
Randolph declared that Virginia had been converted into 'one grand
menagerie where men are reared for the market like oxen for the
shambles.' This was confirmed by Mr. Gholson, another member." (See
Reports in the _Richmond Whig_, 1832.)

Third: "In Virginia and other grain-growing states the blacks do not
support themselves, and the only profit their masters derive from
them is, repulsive as the idea may justly seem, in breeding them,
like other live stock, for the more Southern states." (American
Colonization Society, 1833.)

SPEECH OF MR. MERCER

An examination of the speech made by Mr. Mercer on the occasion
referred to, will show that he was answering the slaveholders' charge
that they paid upon their slaves more than their just proportion of
taxes, when compared with the amount paid by the land-owners of the
state; he pointed out that for the four years following 1820 the land
tax averaged $181,000.00 per annum and the slave tax $159,000.00, but
for the current year (1829) the land tax amounted to $175,000.00 and
the slave tax $97,000.00. "These facts," said Mr. Mercer, "bear me out
in the position that in the current year the capital in slaves is
taxed less than that in land." The census showed an increase in the
number of slaves still in the hands of their Virginia masters, while
the "tables of the natural growth of this population" also
demonstrated that large numbers must have been exported beyond the
state. The portion of increase in the slave population, thus exported,
Mr. Mercer estimated at a value of one and a half million dollars per
annum. It will be observed that he makes no attempt to distribute this
exportation between the various classes heretofore referred to.
Indeed, the averment that "the tables of the natural growth of the
slave population" demonstrated that an annual revenue of any specific
sum had been derived from their exportation is, of course, inaccurate.
The tables referred to simply indicate the normal rate of increase and
the consequent number of slaves which must have been exported. Whether
the excess had been emancipated, or carried, or sent, or sold by their
masters did not, of course, appear. Mr. Mercer was not discussing the
slave trade—he was pointing out the increase in the number of slaves
which should normally accrue to their masters and the consequent
reasonableness of the tax imposed upon them as compared with that
assessed against the lands.

It is believed that this explanation of the subject of Mr. Mercer's
speech will qualify the conclusion which Mr. Smith has drawn from the
statement cited in his text.

ESTIMATE OF VIRGINIA TIMES

The author next refers to an "estimate of the money arising from the
sale of slaves during the year 1836—making the aggregate
$24,000,000.00." This estimate is cited as that of the _Virginia
Times_ and an explanation of how the figures are arrived at is set out
by the author in the first of the three notes above quoted.

By reference to Volume LI of _Niles' Register_, page 83, in which the
extract from the _Virginia Times_ appears, it will be seen that the
latter paper does not attempt any discussion of the subject, any
marshalling of statistics or any conclusions of its own drawn
therefrom. It simply recites in an item of ten lines—that—"We have
heard intelligent men estimate the number of slaves exported from
Virginia within the last twelve months at 120,000." The item further
recites that of this number "not more than one-third have been sold,
the others having been carried by their owners, who have removed,
which would leave in the state the sum of $24,000,000.00 arising from
the sale of slaves."

THE SALE OF SLAVES EXAGGERATED

"We have heard intelligent men estimate" is a somewhat different
statement from that of the author's text in which the _Virginia Times_
is made to fix the exportation for the year 1836 at 120,000, 40,000 of
whom were sold to dealers. How little value, however, can be attached
to "the estimate" will be appreciated when we recall that an
exportation of 120,000 slaves per annum would in four years have
depopulated the state of every single slave. The census showed that
there were 469,758 slaves in Virginia in 1830 and 490,865 in 1860. By
no possible process of computation can the Virginians of the period
from 1830 to 1840 be charged with "the enormous profitableness of
slave-breeding," arising from annual sales of 40,000 slaves, and a
quarter of a century later their descendants be convicted of the crime
of fighting to perpetuate the traffic. There would have been no slaves
from which the commerce could have derived a supply.

In his second note, Mr. Smith makes a quotation from the speech of Mr.
Randolph in the Virginia Legislature of 1832 wherein the latter is
made to declare "that Virginia had been converted into one grand
menagerie where men are reared for the market like oxen for the
shambles."

By reference to the whole sentence and its exact quotation it will
appear that Mr. Randolph's statement was not intended to warrant the
conclusion here sought to be conveyed. Mr. Randolph said:

"How can an honourable mind, a patriot and a lover of his country,
bear to see this ancient Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble
devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty,
converted into one grand menagerie where men are to be reared for
market like oxen for the shambles?"[213]

In the third note Mr. Smith cites an extract from the report of the
"American Colonization Society, 1833."

MR. SMITH'S ERRONEOUS CITATIONS

A careful examination of the report of the American Colonization
Society, submitted at its meeting 1833, fails to show any such
statement—or any phrases or sentiments from which such an accusation
could be inferred. The report in its whole tenor and contents is just
to the contrary. Thus at page 16, referring to the condition of public
sentiment in Virginia, it says:

"That mighty evil (slavery) beneath which the minds of men had bowed
in despair, has been looked at as no longer incurable. A remedy has
been proposed; the sentiments of humanity, the secret wishes of the
heart on this momentous topic have found a voice and the wide air
has rung with it."

Again, at page 17 it says: "Nearly half the colonists in Liberia have
emigrated from Virginia; and many citizens of that state have sought
aid from the Society for removing thither their liberated slaves
during the last year."[214]

A like inspection of the reports of the Society for the years from
1827 to 1837 inclusive shows no such statement as that cited by Mr.
Smith in his footnote. The leading officers of the Society were
Virginians and its work had their cordial sympathy and co-operation.
Mr. Smith has evidently accepted the statement of some other writer
without examining for himself the original sources of
information.[215]

-----

Footnote 212:

_A Political History of Slavery_, William Henry Smith, 1903, Vol. I,
p. 3.

Footnote 213:

_Slavery Debate_, Virginia Legislature, 1833, Speech of T. J.
Randolph, p. 13.

Footnote 214:

_Report of American Colonization Society_ presented January 20,
1833, pp. 16 and 17.

Footnote 215:

Professor Hart, of Harvard University, in his recent work, _Slavery
and Abolition_, says:

"The fact that some thousands of negroes every year left the Border
States for the South seemed to show that there was profit in keeping
them alive; but recent investigation seems to establish that the
greater number of these negroes were taken in a body by the men who
owned them to settle in other states." (_Slavery and Abolition_,
Hart, p. 124).

XXII

SMALL PROPORTION OF SLAVEHOLDERS AMONG VIRGINIA SOLDIERS

The accusation that the people of Virginia of the Civil War period
stood ready to fight "no matter whom and little matter how, for the
protection of slavery and slave property," because of the profits
derived from the inter-state slave trade, would seem to acquit those
Virginians who derived no benefit from the traffic. We have seen, from
the facts heretofore presented, what a small proportion of the people
of Virginia were owners of slaves; and all available data indicate a
still less proportion of slaveholders among the soldiers which the
state contributed to the armies of the Southern Confederacy.

Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, says: "Out of 12,500,000
persons, in the slave-holding communities in 1860, only about 384,000
persons—or one in thirty-three—was a slaveholder."[216]

The same author estimates that each slaveholder was the head of a
family and that, therefore, 350,000 white families in the South, out
of a total of 1,800,000, owned slaves; though 77,000 of these families
owned only one slave each, and 200,000 of the remaining owned less
than ten slaves each.[217]

The author is, of course, in error in assuming that every slaveholder
was the head of a family. Doubtless in a large majority of cases such
was the fact. The Federal census, however, from which his first
figures are taken, is correct in showing the exact number owning
slaves. This number included men, women and children, and, not
infrequently, a number of persons were part owners of the same slave
or slaves, and yet each was enumerated as a slaveholder.

Admiral Chadwick's analysis of the census returns for Virginia shows
that of the 52,128 slaveholders in the state, one-third held but one
or two slaves, half one to four, and that but one hundred and fourteen
persons held as many as one hundred each. He also points out the fact
that the great majority of the soldiers in the ranks of the
Confederate Armies, from Virginia and the South, possessed no such
interest.

SLAVEHOLDERS IN THE RANKS

From a mass of data bearing more directly upon the number of
slaveholders in the ranks of the Virginia soldiers, we select two
citations:

Major Robert Stiles, late a prominent member of the Richmond Bar,
referring to the personnel of the Richmond Howitzers (of which he was
a member) and the motives which impelled them to fight, writes:

"Why did they volunteer? For what did they give their lives?...
Surely, it was not for slavery they fought. The great majority of
them had never owned a slave, and had little or no interest in the
institution. My own father, for example, had freed his slaves long
years before."[218]

This command was composed of representatives of the leading families
in the city of Richmond, at that time the largest slaveholding city in
the state. Here one would expect to find the slaveholding soldiers.

Dr. Hunter McGuire, the medical director of the Stonewall Brigade, has
left on record his estimate of the number of slaveholders in the ranks
of that command—which, being drawn from all portions of the state,
was more representative of the citizenship of Virginia, East and West: