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

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[207] Thayer, to colonize Virginia by free white laborers. He launched out into an ocean — or perhaps mud-puddle would be the apter phrase — of political invective against the “black republicans and abolitionists of the North.” He regarded Mr. Thayer as a braggadocio — a fool — or a political trickster — who merely threatened Virginia for effect at home. He couldn't think he was in earnest. I told him that Stringfellow and Atchison had said that had it not been for Mr. Thayer, and his Emigrant Aid scheme, Kansas ere this would have been a slave State.

“Then, sir,” said the politician, sternly, “if he comes to Virginia with such a reputation, he will be met as he deserves — expelled instantly or strung up.”

He did not believe that a single responsible citizen of Virginia would aid or countenance his scheme of colonization. He did not believe that Virginia had contributed $60,000 of stock to the Company. Mr. Underwood was an impertinent intermeddler; he had been always kindly treated in Virginia, although his free-soil sentiments were known; but, not content with that, he must go to Philadelphia, pretending to be one of us, and, if you please, sent by us to the black republican convention, and make a speech there, indorsing a party whose single idea and basis of organization was hostility to the Southern people and to Southern institutions. Did I suppose the Southern people would endure that? “They repelled him, justly,” said the politician, “as justly as our forefathers would have punished by death a traitor who should go from their camp to assist the British in their efforts to conquer the colonies.”

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