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]]