We return to say that when our fathers tried to find out how to get rid of the blacks, it did not occur to them to solve the question as our Northern friends had done by sales to the South. Nor could we further imitate them in contemplating with indifference such consequences of abolition as now confront us. The fact that all this history, of date subsequent to 1808, is omitted in both of the books quoted proves that it is not an accidental result of Mr. Fiske's misleading love for a rounded period. Our teachers should not allow our children to think of this venerable State as a mere negro "breeding ground," or of her people as won from other thoughts while gloating over the money value of the blacks.
Mr. Fiske apparently does not know that during these very years the African Colonization Society, laboring to effect these very objects, had among its vice-presidents General John Mason, of Virginia, son of George Mason, and father of Senator James M. Mason; also General Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, who, about the year 1825, introduced in Congress the resolution declaring the slave trade "piratical warfare," and, at his own expense, visited various European countries, seeking to have them reach the same decision. These gentlemen should hardly be denounced as mere slave-breeders. In Mr. Fiske's country he is not very familiar with individual acts of emancipation; nor does he know how many Virginians, long after 1808, manumitted their slaves—among them John Randolph of Roanoke, whose executor, Bishop Meade, located them in the beautiful region where now stands the town of Xenia, Ohio; giving them good homes, of which the neighboring whites shortly dispossessed them. Many, many such cases marked the time to "the fifties," when, as all men know, the end of emancipation in Virginia came about through the "pious" interference of the Northern Abolitionist. In consequence of which a Virginian, manumitting his slaves, in effect, gave the weight of his influence to the sentiment represented by the destroyers of our peace, and so felt that he must at least suspend his purpose lest he should become an ally of the enemies of the State. This is the exact truth of the situation with respect to that matter. Mr. Fiske's writings teach us the opposite. Our children, taught by him, would neither learn
