Thus dealt by, there was cumulative dissatisfaction in the Southern mind towards the Federal Government, and Southern men began to ask each other, "Should we not be better off out of the Union than we are in it?" Nay, the public discontent rose to such a pitch in consequence of the tariff that nullification was threatened, and the existence of the Union was again seriously imperiled. Dissolution might have ensued had not Virginia stepped in with her wise counsels. She poured oil upon the festering sores in the Southern mind, and did what she could in the interests of peace; but the wound could not be entirely healed: Northern archers had hit too deep.
The Washington Government was fast drifting towards centralization, and the result of all this Federal partiality, of this unequal protection and encouragement, was that New England and the North fattened upon the tribute forced from the South, and prospered as few people have ever done.
But our grievances had not yet culminated. Other difficulties sprung up in quick succession. By the Constitution, a citizen of the South had a right to pursue his fugitive slave into any of the States, apprehend-and bring him back; but so unfriendly had the North become-towards the South, and so regardless of her duties under the Constitution, that Southern citizens, in pursuing and attempting to apprehend runaway negroes in the North, were thrown into gaol, maltreated, and insulted in spite of their rights. Northern people loaded the mails for the South with inflammatory publications inciting the negroes to revolt, and encouraging them to rise up, use the midnight torch, and murder their owners. Like tampering with the negroes was one among the causes which led Virginia into her original proposition to the other Colonists—that they should all, for the common good and common safety, separate themselves from Great Britain and strike for independent existence; which they did. In a resolution unanimously adopted in convention for a declaration of such independence, it was urged that the King's representative in Virginia was "tempting our slaves by every artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against their masters."[1] To counteract the attempt by the New England people to do the like, the Legislatures of Virginia and other Southern States, felt themselves constrained to curtail
- ↑ Resolution of Va. for a Declaration of Independence, unanimously adopted 15th May, 1776, page 1, Code of Va., 1800.
