nation which Mr. Mason would have shared to the full had he been alive. The inference that Virginians of the two periods were not of one mind, both as to the slave trade and Yankee interference, is absolutely false, and should not be suggested to Southern children.
UNSAVORY WORDS.
On that same 191st page Virginians are told that there was once "a short-lived emancipation party" in their State, but that "after the final suppression of the slave-trade in 1808 and the consequent increased demand for Virginia-bred slaves, the thought of emancipation vanished from the memory of man." The same offensive suggestion is made in almost the same language, "the breeding of slaves * * * such a profitable occupation in Virginia" in his "Critical Period," etc., page 73, and again on page 266, where we are told that when the inventions of Arkwright, Cartwright, and Whitney so greatly increased the value of cotton, there resulted a great demand for slaves "from Virginia as a breeding ground, and the Abolitionist Party in that State thereupon disappeared, leaving her to join in the odious struggle for introducing slavery into the national domain." In both passages we quote him, perhaps, a little roughly; in his pages all this is handsomely expressed, for Mr, Fiske's style is very fine, as you may learn from some of his friends. It would, however, be difficult to discover anywhere, pen pictures so advantageously incomplete—advantageously incomplete, because a statement of the facts would not have represented, as do these most slanderous sentences, a mere race of slave-breeders easily sacrificing their convictions for the value of slave property and ready to fight for it when occasion should arise.
UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.
It is impossible to consider these passages without becoming convinced of the utter unreliability of this historian when speaking of slavery, the causes of the war, or the rights asserted by the South. It was to be supposed that in writing Virginia history he would at least consult Virginia documents. He should not assume that all Virginians are equally careless, or as ignorant of
