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.