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

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[200] fields, carefully and scientifically cultivated; while slavery, where the national funds have not assisted it, has placed negro cabins only, or ordinary country-houses, to tell of the existence and abode of Saxon civilization.

After doling out to the captain of the boat, each of us, the sum of thirteen cents, we were landed at the wharf of Alexandria; and our feet, ankle deep in mud, stood on the here miry, ill-paved, but sacred soil of the Old Dominion.

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First impressions.

Presently, we entered a Virginia omnibus — of Virginia manufacture — lined and with seats of the very coarsest carpeting — with panels dirty, glass dirty, and filthy floor — drove through dirty, ill-paved streets, seeing dirty negro slaves and dirty white idlers — the only population visible — and were halted in front of the City Hotel. The omnibus and its surroundings had so affected my physical organization, that I immediately called for a bath. But I found that there is not a public bath in all Alexandria. It rained heavily still. Blue-spirited, I sat down in the bar-room, and read the papers.

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The county papers.

Alexandria supports two daily papers, the Sentinel (Democratic) and Gazette, (American). Both languish so decidedly that a “consolidation,” would not make one flourishing journal. Of a number of paragraphs, significant as indications of the overwhelming success of slave society, the present state of Virginia and its cause, or as curiosities of the Southern press and people, I subjoin the extracts following:

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