Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1856-08-21
From the N. Y. Tribune.
To Hon s. R. Adams.

Three distinct divisions of territory occupy
the State of Virginia, namely: Old Virgin
ia, or that part east of the Blue Ridge, facing
Underwater; the Valley, between the Blue
Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains and
New Virginia, or the Western Slope beyond
the Alleghanies. Old Virginia-the dead
empire, with her worn out lands. her effete
population, bearing great names with not
much behind them. and the main seat of the
slave population-giv the law to the whole
State. The Valley, extending from North to
South, with the noble Shenandoah, the south
branch of the Potomac and the upper waters
OF the James, and the Great Kanawha of the
Ohio, running through its fertile borders, is
great tract of productive country with fewer
slaves, and inhabited by people who rely
upon something beside their family names
and the reputation of their ancestors, for a
livelihood; while Western Virginia, having
fewer slaves at all, is sparsely peopled with a
hardy, slowly progressive population, who get
along as well as any provincial people can be
supposed 10 do under an uneasy yoke, gov
arned by masters of whom they know little
and for whom they care less Freed from the
domination Of the slave breeders Of Old Viz.
ginia, the people of the Valley and New Viz
glnia would do passably well, and gradually
ameorate their own condition. slave breed
ing not being with them a main source Of
support.
1t is well known that immense tracts of
WORKOUT land have been abandoned in the
Underwater counties even the biographer of
John Randolph of Roanoke, the late Hugh
Garland, states that within three miles of Pc
ters5urg, on the Appomattox, there is now
good deer hunting in the woods growing ov-
er the fine old agricultural estates OF the
BANDS, the Byrds. and other once renowned
families. That instance is a specimen of
thousands Of others. Decayed and ruined
churches are scattered all over the country in
waste places where foxes bark and owls hoot;
grand old houses, once palatial in magnh.
cenee, are crumbline onIdeserted estates which
are advertised for sale at three to five dollars
an acre, where 'the ship timber growing up.
on them near Underwater will twice pay the
purchase money" Other places there are,
once inclosed and bearing proud crops of
corn, wheat, and tobacco, which now show
but the dllapidated remains Of quiet man.
sion and numerous negro quarters, with few
surrounding acres growing stintod crops Of
corn and sweet potatoes, to feed the slaves on
which the eiIete descendants Of the cavaliers
rely tor fine years crDp TO supply the "slave-
drivers or slave. buyers, and get poor liv-
ing at that. Now aud then, on the broad
river bottoms and other favored spots, good
farm is seen, with an energetic, thriving man
upon 1t, who grows his corn, wheat, and to-
bocco as Christian man should doth ex-
eepiion not the rule. And yet these people,
with big name on their backs. are as proud
III bearing and chiyalrous in language as the
chieI OF Highland clan, with his tartan tat
terdemalions about him, in tho days Of Old
Mortality, and stoop to no labor Of either
head or hand short of an Office under Gov.
ornment 6uano has improved the agricul-