  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." 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." 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." 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 "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. "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." 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." 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 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." 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 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 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: "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." 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 "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. "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." 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." 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: "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, 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 status—financial and industrial—to which Virginia had been reduced.
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