New York (NY) Daily Tribune, March 18, 1857

   In spite of that high price of breadstuffs for some years past, of which the Virginia planters, by reason of their nearness to tide-waters, have been able to reap advantages so superior to those of the Western farmers; in spite of the introduction of the use of guano as a means of fertilizing their worn-out lands; in spite of efforts to excite the industry and revive the prosperity of the State by an extensive system of internal improvements for which large advances have been made from the State Treasury, in addition to heavy subscriptions by private citizens; in spite even of an unprecedented rise in the market value of slaves––the leading product of Virginia––which seems to be rapidly bringing up the price to the mark fixed by Governor Wise; in spite of all these things, that alarming decline, a remedy for which the State doctors of Virginia have long been in search, still continues to go on unabated, and still continues to draw forth endless jeremiads from the newspapers of the Ancient Dominion. The unfinished and unproductive public works have burdened the State with a heavy debt, involving the necessity of heavy taxation to pay the interest, with no prospect of every discharging the principal, and still less of finishing the works and getting any adequate return for the outlay thus far made, and the still greater outlay necessary to complete them. In addition to this oppressive public debt, the planters themselves, in spite of the high prices of grain and negroes, are overburdened with private debts. In fact, the price of negroes is altogether too high to justify the application of such costly labor to the exhausted lands of Virginia. Accordingly, the papers inform us of a negro stampede from all parts of the State––the negro trade being exceedingly brisk, and many numbers moving off with their force, to escape Virginia taxes and Virginia executions, and all in hopes to apply their black labor more profitably to a less exhausted soil. The Petersburg Express notices "the unusual number of slaves constantly passing through Petersburg on their way south;" while The Montgomery Mail informs us that the number of slaves carried by the Alabama boats down the river for New Orleans and coming principally by railroad from North Carolina and Virginia, is "large beyond all precedent." 

   While slaveholders and their slaves are thus abandoning a State, large tracts of which they have reduced to a desert, while other large tracts of it were never fertile enough to admit of cultivation after their exposure and unproductive system, arrangements are being made between certain large Virginia landholders and certain enterprising Northern gentlemen for the introduction into that State of free-labor colonists, and the cultivation by their names of the lands which the slaveholders have abandoned or neglected. It needs but half an eye to see that this is the only possible chance for the resuscitation of Virginia. If the Virginia railroads are ever to be rendered profitable, it can only be by the establishment of a free-labor population along their lines, to supply them with passengers and traffic. If the debts of Virginia are ever to be paid, and that repudiation attended which some of her politicians are already beginning openly to advocate as the only alternative to starvation, it can only be by imparting to her industry a vigor and a thrift not to be heard except where the soil is toiled by intelligent free labor. Here are enterprising and spirited citizens of other States volunteering to do that for Virginia which she has proved utterly unable to do for herself––to cultivate her soil, to revive her industry, to furnish business for her railroads, and to help save her from the repudiation with which she is driven by poverty to threaten her creditors. One would think that such immigrants, having such objects in view, might have at least a hearty welcome. The Richmond Whig, on the contrary, greets them with a dog-in-the-manger howl, which is highly characteristic. Even the deserted plantations have, in the estimation of The Whig, a certain African odor about them, by which they are made too precious to be cultivated by these Abolition scoundrels, who "in the course of a few years" might "effect, by the introduction of a horde of Abolitionist voters, the abolition of Slavery in the State of Virginia." If the slaves cannot be kept in the State––if they are all run off South, some in the way of trade, others in the way of repudiation––The Whig will still delight itself with the memory of the past––will still find consolation in preventing Virginia from being desecrated by free labor. Take the following as a specimen of the tirades into which that paper breaks out:

   "We have sadly mistaken the character of the Virginia people, if they will ever permit the colonizing among them of a vile and viperous set of Abolitionists, who imprudently and defiantly announce their intention beforehand of revolutionizing our social organization, and establishing upon its ruins the corrupt, dangerous, anarchy-producing system of free society which prevails in the Northern States. Enough of virtue and courage yet exists in the bosoms of our citizens to prevent so injurious and alarming a consummation. And we admonish in advance the ringleaders of this movement, and their silly and unprincipled course, that the people of Virginia will meet them on the confines of the State and drive them back with sword in hand, if they attempt to settle among us with any such object in view as that to which we have been adverted."

   The "quiet" of Virginia is not to be disturbed––its atmosphere is not to be contaminated by any such Abolition emigrants. The mere idea excites in the bosom of The Whig "only feelings of indignation and revenge." Rather let the fiends of Virginia remain uncultivated––rather let her railroads continue unfinished and unproductive––rather let the payment of her public debt be repudiated––than to have her industry revived and her credit saved by these "vile and viperous Abolitionists" and their horrible system of free society. The very bones which Slavery has picked clean are too good to be thrown to these Abolition dogs. If the landholders of Virginia think so, of course they can keep their waste and worn-out lands to themselves.