Richmond (VA) Dispatch, "Message of the Governor of Virginia, Richmond, December 5, 1859," December 6, 1859

                             MESSAGE OF THE

                       GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA,

                   RICHMOND, DECEMBER 5, 1859. 

...But why do our slaves on the border not take up arms against their masters? We must look firmly at this fact before we take it as a solace. In the answer to that question lies the root of our danger. Masters in border counties now hold their slaves by sufferance. The slave could fly to John Brown much easier than he could come and take him. The slaves at will can liberate themselves by running away. The underground railroad is at their very doors, and they may take the passage when they please. They prefer to remain. John Brown's invasion startled us; but we have been tamely submitting to a greater danger, without confessing it. The plan which silently corrupts and steals our slaves, which sends secret emissaries among us to "stampede" our slaves, which refuses to execute fugitive slave laws, which forms secret societies for mischief, with the motto "alarm to their sleep, fire to their dwellings, and poison to their food and water," and which establishes underground railroads, and depots and rendezvous for invasion, is more dangerous than the invasion by John Brown. Yet the latter excites us, and in the former we have been sleepily acquiescing. It is no solace to me, then, that our border slaves are so liberated already by this exterior asylum, and by this still, silent, stealing system, that they have no need to take up arms for their own liberation. Confederate States as well as individuals have denounced our laws encouraged and facilitated the escape of our slaves, and have made abolition a cancer eating into our very vitals....

   ...We must, then, acknowledge and act on the fact that present relations between the States cannot be permitted longer to exist without abolishing Slavery throughout the United States, or compelling us to defend it by force of arms....

[Editor's Note:  The majority of this article has been omitted from our transcription except for the portions directly mentioning the term "slave stampedes" or some variant.]