William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

In many Southern States the Negro race began to fall off as soon as the African slave trade was suppressed. The waste of life was great; the power of natural growth was small. Unlike the European, a Negro has no vast and ever-widening vital force. Left to himself he will not multiply as Saxons multiply. But, when the Georgians found it cheaper to buy new slaves than to take care of old ones, Virginia gave her wealth, her intellect, and her possessions to the service of this impious cause. She took to slave-breeding as a business. Slaves multiplied like hogs, and in Virginia they were kept like hogs. They were not taught to read and write. A man. was seldom allowed to marry. In Kentucky a planter hardly ever sold a slave, thinking it mean, if not immoral; and the public feeling of his country was against the trade. But in Virginia no such shame was felt.

Rank was her sin, and stern has been her punishment. Like an enchantress she was taken in her beauty and her shame, and she is laden with the fetters, smitten by the sword, of an inflexible justice.