- mond could as profitably manufacture all cotton and woollen goods as
Lowell, or any other town in New England. Why should not Lynchburg, with all her promised facility of getting coal and pig metal, manufacture all articles of iron and steel just as cheaply, and yet as profitably, as any portion of the Northern States? Why should not every town and village on the line of every railroad in the State, erect their shops, in which they may manufacture a thousand articles of daily consumption, just as good and cheap as they may be made anywhere? * * *
"Dependent upon Europe and the North for almost every yard of cloth, and every coat, and boot, and hat we wear; for our axes, scythes, tubs, and buckets—in short, for everything except our bread and meat!—it must occur to the South that if our relations with the North should ever be severed—and how soon they may be, none can know (may God avert it long!)—we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our forests, plough our fields, nor mow our meadows. In fact, we would be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at even prospectively. And yet, with all these things staring us in the face, we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold."
At the Convention for the formation of the Virginia State
Agricultural Society, in 1852, the draft of an address to the
farmers of the State was read, approved, and once adopted by
the Convention. The vote by which it was adopted was soon
afterwards reconsidered, and it was again approved and adopted.
A second time it was reconsidered; and finally it was rejected,
on the ground that there were admissions in it that would feed
the fanaticism of the Abolitionists. No one argued against it on
the ground of the falsity or inaccuracy of these admissions.
Twenty of the most respectable proprietors in the State, immediately
afterwards, believing it to contain "matter of grave import,"
which should not be suppressed for such a reason, united
in requesting a copy of it for publication. In the note of these
gentlemen to the author, they express the belief that Virginia
now "possesses the richest soil, most genial climate, and
cheapest labour on earth." The author of the address, in his
reply, says: "Fanaticism is a fool for whose vagaries I am not
responsible. I am a pro-slavery man—I believe it, at this time,
impossible to abolish it, and not desirable if it were possible."
The address was accordingly published, and I make the following extracts from it:—
