Doc. 99.-the fire and blood of Revolution.
The following was published under the above title in the Charlottesville (Virginia) Review, in April, 1861, before Virginia had passed her ordinance of secession:That is the cue. They propose to give you a taste of Mr. Yancey's medicines. It will be a nice little operation. Sowing wheat is nothing to marking time and walking sentry at two o'clock in the night, under a drizzling rain. Shucking corn is flat, compared to a charge of bayonets. You will also make your arrangements to have your barnyards lit up at night with the fires of the revolution. Set your boots at the head of the bed, for at any moment the same fires may be sputtering and crackling on the roof of your dwelling-house. Glistening bayonets on the south bank of the Potomac in front, burning straw-ricks and burning houses behind you, something worse than that, perhaps, in the shape of death produced by invisible and unconfrontable agencies, the State deprived of its labor, those laborers escaping by hundreds, or sold at half their value in the South, your fields unploughed, your public works ruined, land depressed to the lowest figure, State stocks, insurance stocks, bank stocks, railroad stocks, hawked at a mere song — these would be the immediate effects of the “Fire and sword” which Governor Wise proposes in his speech at Norfolk. A peaceable dissolution of the Union is sometimes suggested. Let us allow that the result could be effected peaceably. The next thing we should want would be a standing army. The John Brown affair cost us three hundred thousand dollars. Make the calculation. You would maintain a line of posts all along your frontier. You would also want a navy, though Norfolk only produces a few fishing-smacks, except the vessels built there by order of the Government. You would pay a Southern President, with all the ordinary government officials. You would pay a diplomatic corps. You would have to pay for an independent Senate and House of Representatives, and for a new Judiciary. Perhaps you think all this would be readily managed. They tell you you are rich. We tell you, that no purely agricultural people ever was rich. The wealth of Philadelphia alone is equal to the entire wealth of the State of Virginia. Take the Post-Office alone. The total receipts from the post-offices in Virginia for 1857-58, were $242,951; the expenditures were $453,848. In South-Carolina, the receipts were $101,145; the expenditures were $248,600. In Alabama, the receipts were $111,092; the expenditures were $248,750. In Mississippi, the receipts were $88,458; the expenditures were $332,508. In Arkansas, the receipts were $385,727; the expenditures were $244,589. How is this deficiency made up now? Part of it is made up thus: The receipts in the State of New-York are $1,438,711; the expenditures are $1,154,141. In Massachusetts, the receipts are $565,633; the expenditures are $425,237. In most of the Northern States there is a deficit. But in all the Southern States the deficit is enormous. The whole Northern deficit is some $800,000. The whole Southern deficit is some $3,000,000. Suppose, however, the civil war disposed of. Suppose the government established. Suppose us with our army, our navy, our fortifications. Suppose us to have survived the shock with some slaves left, and our depreciated lands. What then? We belong to a Southern confederacy. The Cotton States begin an agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, or some coolie system. Our remaining negroes are to compete, if they succeed in their schemes, with the new labor. At all events, we are still to be a section, a section as regards the Cotton States, which has no trade with the other section. We are still to have sectional quarrels. There are still to be charges and counter-charges, aggressions and counter-aggressions. We have not conquered a peace. We have now two sections to plague us. On the frontier we have to guard against the North. On the South we have to meet the extreme views of the Gulf States. After a while, perhaps, Virginia would have lost her slaves, and she, with [438] Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, would be an anti-slavery section in the Southern republic. If any one can find a remedy in a Southern confederacy, we see it with different eyes.
