James Redpath, The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States.

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[109] manifest, might be traced to a difference of climate, or other causes distinct from slavery itself, permit me to refer him to the two States of Kentucky and Ohio. No difference of soil, no diversity of climate, no diversity in the original settlement of those two States can account for the remarkable disproportion in their natural advancement. Separated by a river alone, they seem to have been purposely and providentially designed to exhibit in their future histories, the difference which naturally results from a country free, and a country afflicted with the curse of slavery. The same may be said of the two States of Missouri and Illinois.

Surely this is satisfactory testimony?

Thomas J. Randolph spoke next, and in the same strain as the preceding speakers.

Is slavery a curse?

Marshall, Barry, Randolph, Faulkner, and Chandler answer in the affirmative; and thus replies Mr. James McDowell, junior, the delegate from Rockbridge:

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Slavery a Leprosy.

“Sir, if our ancestors had exerted the firmness, which, under greater obligations we ourselves are called on to exert, Virginia would not, at this day, have been mourning over the legacy of weakness, and of sorrow that has been left her; she would not have been thrust down — down — in a still lowering relation to the subordinate post which she occupies in the Confederacy, whose career she has led; she would not be withering under the leprosy which is piercing her to her heart.”

Again: