officers to assist the Southern citizen in the capture of runaways, and hindering him from doing it himself. At length things came to such a pass that a Southern gentleman, notwithstanding his right, dared not when he went to the North, either on business or pleasure, to carry with him, as he formerly did, a body servant. More harsh still—delicate mothers and emaciated invalids with their nurses, though driven from their Southern homes, as they often are, by pestilence or plague, dared not seek refuge in the more bracing climates of the North; they were liable to be mobbed and to see their servants taken away by force, and when that was done, they found that Northern laws afforded no protection. In short, our people had no longer equal rights in a common country.
Finally, the aggressive and fanatical spirit of the North ran to such a pitch against us, that just before the Southern people began to feel that patience and forbearance were both exhausted, a band of raiders, fitted out and equipped in the North, came down upon Virginia with sword and spear in hand. They commenced in the dead of night to murder our citizens, to arm the slaves, encouraging them to rise up, burn and rob, kill and slay throughout the South. The ringleader was caught, tried and hung. Northern people regarded him as a martyr in a righteous cause. His body was carried to the North; they paid homage to his remains, sang pæans to his memory, and amidst jeers and taunts for Virginia, which to this day are reverberated through the halls of Congress, enrolled his name as one who had deserved well of his country.
These acts were highly calculated to keep the Southern mind in a faverish state and in an unfriendly mood; and there were other influences at work to excite sectional feelings and begat just indignation among the Southern people. The North was commercial, the South agricultural. Through their fast-sailing packets and steamers, Northern people were in constant communication with foreign nations; the South, rarely, except through the North. Northern men and Northern society took advantage of this circumstance to our prejudice. They defamed the South and abused the European mind with libels and slanders and evil reports against us of a heinous character. They represented Southern people as a lawless and violent set, where men and women were without shame. They asserted, with all the effrontery of impudent falsehood, that the chief occupation of the gentlemen of Virginia was the breeding of slaves like cattle for the more Southern markets. To this day the whole south is suffering under this defamation of character;
