The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-06-07
SATURDAY EvEN'G, JUNE 7, 1873.
The Spirit that should Animate
EiPoinlans.

such a country, and at such period of the
worlds history; and he had reason to in
dulge the patriotic sentiment, inasmuch as
he was contemporary with Newton, Locke,
Clarke and host of other illustrious
names, hardly less conspicuous than
those which made the reign of
Elizabeth so brilliant, and renowned in his
tory. But what had the author of the
Spectator said, had his lines been cast in
our own era, with all the wonderful dscov-
cries in science and the mechanic arts
superadded to the illumination Of his own
day? Would he not have exclaimed,
with all the sincerity which marked his ex-
ultation over the age of Newton and
Locke, that had he been allowed to select
the period in which to spend his
days on earth, none would have been
preferred to our own age and country?
Certainly the opening prospects of our own
country were never more bright, and even
the future of Virginia, scourged and DESC
lated as she has been under the institutions
of oppression and the maxims of tyranny
in the past, was never more gratifying in
prospect to the liberal and patriotic mind
than at the present moment, while under
going the great moral and social renovation
that awaits her.
Where shall we find state upon which
the beneficence of Providence has smiled
more abundantly, in spite of the .jaundced
vision of prejudice and antipathy which
has so long afflicted her ? Her splendid
soil and climate, her varied resources and
productions, her inexhaustible mines of
mineral wealth, her magnificent system of
navigable rivers, her mountains teeming
with untold wealth, her vallies roll
ing in luxuriance, her forests
aftiuent with timber, her springs redundant
with liie-giving influences, what more could
we wish or desire in the way of material
blessing from the benignity of heaven,
extending all these things to us? And vet
we find generation of GROWERS among us,
who evince so little fortitude that they arc
ready to despair of all rational enjoyment,
because the day has gone by when negroes
can be bought and sold an Virginia! Was
there ever so insane folly, SO reckless and
intolerant a madness as this We can
pity the poor, weak human understand
in5 that fails to comprehend grander and
more glorious future for Virginia, under
the benign influences of Liberty, than
when one half of the people born upon
her soil clanked the chain and chafed un-
der the collar Of scrvitude. 1t was not
the dependence aid vassalage imposed
upon the negro that made the institution
of slavery so calling in its effects upon
the neck of Virginia it was the retroac-
tive influence of that bondage, striking
back from the imposed degradation
and inflicting wounds deeper than
1t gave, that crippled the energies of the
state, vitiated her political maxims, re-
stricted her commerce and manufactures.
robbed her Of the true predominance she
should have maintained in the Union, and,
worst of all, made her people the slaves of
a sytem which her own calumnators and
villifers had imposed upon her in the first
instance, with scarcely stain of the insti-
tuition originally affecting her own gar
ments.
But men are always more or less affected
by the conditions of society in which they
are placed. The social atmosphere they
breathe may be a pestience to corrupt and
destroy, or a pure and bracipg air to
strengthen and infuse new moral and intel
lectual vigor. Had the moral atmosphere
of Virginia not been charged with the pes
tllential breath Of slavery, the lightning
bolt of war had never descended to seourge
and to purify. This impending bolt is
what he2 ablest statesmen foresaw,
and earnestly sought to guard against
in the earlier days OF the republic, and
had not meddlesome Yankee schoolmas-
ter Whitfield out the model OF
cotton-gin, thereby advancing the
price of the negro from three
hundred and fifty to fifteen hundred and
two thousand dollars, Virginia had purified
her own moral atmosphere and become the
foremost state of the Union long before
the late civil war, if she had not entirely
ayerted the calamito us consequences of
that unhappy conflict.
How idle then 10 bewail the
fate of an institution which as never
source Of strength. but only of weakness,
to our people. With minds invigorated
and enlarged by the contemplation Of in-
eVitable events, let us move forward to the
opening future of Virginia, abandoning all
such idle twaddle as that of ssplacng
the bottom rail on top" or Infringing the
dominant race under the supremacy of
the negro" Are our rights and
Liberties endangered by giving the negro a
fair chance for distinction in the grand
race that is before us? Is he to be the
eternal bugaboo of the white man, as if
four millions of this people could outstrip
in the race nearly forty millions of whites?
Strike off these ignominious shac6les, more
degrading to us than were ever the worst
badges of servitude to the negro, and let
Virginia craftsmanship stand up once more
unresTaned by the fiat Of bigotry and in
tolerance, and, with mistaken fortitude