This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[94]
convention of the Slave-labor States, to consider their grievances, and to “take action for their defense.”
He reminded the Virginians of the coincidence of the people of the two States in long cherishing sentiments of disunion.
He pointed to their public acts relative to meditated revolt, under certain contingencies.1 He reminded them of the dangers which had just menaced their State by the raid of John Brown and twenty men, at Harper's Ferry, of the “implacable condition of Northern opinion” concerning Slavery; and the rapid increase of Abolition sentiment in the Free-labor States.
He reminded them that “the South” had a right to demand the repeal of all laws hurtful to Slavery; the “disbanding of every society which was agitating the Northern mind against Southern institutions ;” and the “surrender of the power to amend the Constitution in regard to Slavery,” after it should be amended so as to nationalize the system.
He made an able plea, and closed by saying:--“I have delivered into the keeping of Virginia the cause of the South.”
But the politicians of Virginia, who, like those of South Carolina, had usurped the powers of the people, were averse to the establishment of a Southern Confederacy in which there was to be free trade in slaves brought from Africa; for that free trade would destroy the inter-State trade in slaves, from which the oligarchy of Virginia were receiving an annual income of from twelve millions to twenty millions of dollars.2 The Virginia Legislature, which Mr. Memminger said he found “extremely difficult to see through,” 3 consequently hesitated.
There was also another reason for hesitation, which one of Virginia's ablest, most patriotic, and Union-loving men unhesitatingly avowed to a friend, who wished to enlist him in the revolutionary scheme of South Carolina:--“If a new Confederacy should be formed,” he said, “I could not go with you, for I should use whatever influence I might be able to exert against entering into one with South Carolina, that has been a common brawler and disturber of the peace for the last thirty years, and who would give no security that I would be willing to accept, that she would not be as faithless ”
1 See resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia, in March, 1847, concerning the measure known as the Wilmot Proviso, in relation to Slavery in the region just taken from Mexico.
2 When, as we shall hereafter observe, Virginia hesitated to join the Southern Confederacy, formed at Montgomery, Alabama, in February, 1861, the threat was held out that there should be a clause in the Constitution of the Confederacy prohibiting the importation of slaves from any State not in union with them. The threatened loss of this immense revenue was the most powerful argument used by Virginia politicians in favor of uniting the fortunes of that State with those of the Cotton-growing States. The Richmond papers shamelessly advocated the union of Virginia with those States in the revolt, on the ground, almost solely, that she would otherwise lose the chief source of income for “seventy thousand families of the State,” arising from the sale of boys and girls, men and women. According to a report before me, five thousand slaves were sent South from Richmond, Virginia, over the Petersburg Road, five thousand over the Tennessee Road, and two thousand by other channels, during the year 1860, valued at one thousand dollars each. “Twelve millions of dollars have been received in cash by the State,” said the report.
3 Mr. Memminger, in an autograph letter before me, written to R. B. Rhett, Jr., editor of The Charleston Mercury, and dated “Richmond, Va., January 28, 1860,” revealed some of the difficulties in the way of the success of his treasonable mission. He says:--
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.