The daily Green Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1861-1865, 1861-04-19
GREEN MOUNTAIN FREEMAN, APKlh 49, l0ol.
Virginia.

| SAS ihAeS'
Virginia is making haste in her treason. Though
the telegraph yesterday announced that the Con-
vention would not pass a secession ordinance, II
also brought the intelligence thai she had begun
to war upon the Government property. The
public vessels and arms at the Navy Yard at
Norfolk, Va, have been seized. The arms at
the larper's Ferry Arsenal have been stolen by
the rebels. The rails on the Baltimore 81 Ohio
railroad, near Harper's Ferry, have been torn
up. Virginia has, in fact, seeded, whatever
her Convention may do. She can now only be
kept in the Union, by the strong arm, either of
the Government, or Of the many thousand true
patriots within her borders
Virginia is no doubt making fatal mistake.
Free labor on her soil for fifty years, would make
her hundred times richer in all real wealth
than she is to day. She has undeveloped re-
sources that, in the hands of energetic, untram-
meled, intelligent freemen, would in a few years
cause the hum of industry to mngle with the
sound of waterfalls all along the shores Of her
magnificent rivers. Her sterile fields, wasted
and exhausted by slave labor, would soon be
turned into gardens of fertility. The treasures
buried in her soil would be brought to the light,
and busy marls of trade and commerce would
arise, as by magic, throughout her immense ter
ritory. Her Masons, and Hunters, and Floyds,
would give place to statesmen like those who
have made her name so glorious in the past.
Mount Vernon, the diapidated and barren
estate lief, by her greatest citizen, would nc
longer be dependent upon Northern patriotism
and Northern bounty to rescue it from utter
desolation and ruin, but in the care Of loving
and patriotic freemen, would soon smile like the
garden of God. The free future that now in
vitcs Virginia to lay aside the black tyranny
that is making her desert, desolation and a
reproach among Christian Nations, is richer in
its promise even, than that which lurcd those
who, in pursuit of fortune, two hundred years
ago, sought her shores.
But there is another and quite different fu-
ture before Virginia. If she chooses her lot
with Slavery, and joins the Southern Confed-
eraCy, sne 1uuSC anu Will become mere SnaNDleS
Of human flesh for Southern market. Instead
Of being iIustrious as the g Mother of Presi
dents,' she will be called the mother of slaues
In her new history it shall be said that her year
of greatest rcnown was when ten thousand
stout, healthy, robust groes first saw the light
And she will point to such a year as clarifying
her later history, as its earlier pages were made
:!lustricus by the day that gayc Washington to
the world.
These two futures are to-day before Virginia.
She is where the roads diverge. She is to
choose whether she will 90 with the slave driver
and his host, or whether she will take her place
in the ranks of Freedom, and march triumph
antly forward to a land whose poverty is richer
than the wealth of Slavery, and whose twilight
is brighter than the mid day of sorvitude If
she chooses death when life is offered, her des
truction will be swiftand certain.