The Daily Dispatch: April 13, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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The stampede of slave owners from Virginia.

The following is an extract from a private letter written by a prominent citizen of Prince Edward to a gentleman in this city. The letter was written with no design for political effect, but merely the communication of facts that must be distressing to all parties within the limits of our venerated and beloved State:

‘ "It is melancholy to witness the stampede of slaveholders from our midst. I found on my return home, that A. R. Venable and A. C. Carrington, two of our best citizens, (owning fine estates in land and negroes in this county,) have gone South to look for a settlement. Mr. A. G. Green, another of our best citizens, with a considerable estate in land and negroes, starts with his family to-morrow for Texas, never to return; and a number of others, comprising the best of our population, with large estates, are making arrangements to go. If this state of things continues, the slaveholding portion of Virginia will soon be impoverished. What madness, folly and wickedness is it in our Convention, to attempt to force an unnatural and repugnant Union with the Yankee States, to which slaveholders will never submit; and thus drive into exile the best part of our population, who will carry with them the chief subject of taxation, while they leave behind them a debt of $40,000,000 to be paid or repudiated by the impoverished part of the State, without the means of payment."

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