The Portland daily press., 1879-11-12

statements presented. The facts we sub
join are as old as this country, but they are
written in such bold and enduring letters
that the dullest can understand, and only
the most ignorant braggadocio would dare
to ignore.
OF the ancestry OF Generals Grant, Sher-
man and Sheridan, who are alluded to III
that article as dragged from the Sums
y elevated from the very gutter, we
shall not speak. 1t is well known that the
two former are descendants of respectable
and honored Connecticut families, whose
ancestry can be traced back to the first emf
grant Anybody familiar with genealogy
knows where to look for the publication con-
tanning all the information about these two
families. How much can be said of Wash
ington and jefferson? Our first President
couldn't tell anything about his family ante
cedents, and for twenty years that distin-
guished antiquarian, Col. Chester, has been
trying to hang his ancestral hat upon some
English family peg. A parish register kind
ly gave the public information about the
date OF Jeffersons birth of which he was
silent. These considerations are small,
however, and we opine that the names OF
Grant, Sherman and Sheridan will survive
the blank cartridges of these venomous
quili-drivers.
Of all the Southern idealists, the Virgin
ian pre-eminently lays to his soul the fiat
tering JUNCTION that he is the accumulated
quintessence of the worlds chivalry. In no
case is the assumption more daphanous
and. nowhere can the student of history
probe to the depths with greater ease than in
the great tobacco State The early annals
of this province are full of social details so
revolving and so unparalleled in the history
of the colonization of this continent, that
the veriest tyro can drag out enough from
cursory dredging to bury its pretensions
fathoms deep. Let us examine and read a
few of the opinions of writers before our
times, whose words we shall quote, the ital
les being our own.
DR.. VIM. Douglass in his history of V!r-
ginia, (pub. 1749) Vol. l., part l., page lis
says, Virginia and Maryland have been for
transported criminals" Again he says p.
60,
"Our Plantations in America, Ne,g Eng
land ercepted have been generally settled:
l. By malcontents with the Administration
from time to time; 2, By fraudulent debt
ors as a refuge from their creditors; and by
convicts or criminals who preferred Trans
portation rather than Death.'
How that tendency to cheat creditors has
survived the shock of time. To-day we
find the descendants of these self-same
fraudulent Debtors in the very act of re-
pudiating honorable obligations! The I'M
erring die Of inheritance has stamped on the
innermost fibre of their being that dishonest
tendency which crops out in the present
breed of ''Readjusters."
From Campbell's History of Virginia we
select at random the following extracts,
relative to the early condition of the province
1919. ''The colonies at length enjoyed the
blessings of property and the society OF wo-
men, The wives were sold to the colonies
for one hundred and twenty pounds of to-
bacco.' 1921. A commercial letter an
nounces, ''we send you a shipment, one
widow and eleven maids for wives for the
people of Virginia. Il Is s There are
nearly fifty more that are shortly to come.
1861. "a majority Of the House of Bur-
gesses are said TO have come over at first as
servants
And now the seventh and eighth genera
tions of this delightful combination of con-
victs, servants and auctioneered women
speak of the North as ga people y
ancestry"l
Hugh Jones in ''Present State of Virgin
ia" (pub. 1924 p. ia, writes: ''But for
the generality, the persons who have been
sent to Virginia or have transported them
selves thither hare been and are the poorest,
idlest and worst of mankind, the refuse of
Great Britain and Ireland and the outcast Of
the people"
The author of "a Tour through British
Plantations London Magazine, 1867 says
of Virginia, ''Tnere was no less than ninety
young women of healthful constitution and
unspotted reputation sent out 10 be married
to the planters, instead of the diseased and
profligate strumpets, as is nor the ridicu-
lous practice"
John Hammond adds his testimony CEN
tury earlier in ''Leah and Rachel" an ac-
count of the Virginia Plantation published
in London 1856 In vigorous phrase he calls
it "a nest of rogues. whores, dssolute and
rocking persons
And the present boasting descendants Of
this choice assimilation of criminals and
profigates prate about the North and its
crude and uncultured civilizatione'
In the ''Memoir of James Fontaine," a
Virginia Huguenot, published in 1856, is
printed letter bearing date Mar. ?, 1856,
where we read: ''This country swarms with
mulatto bastards, and these mulattoes, if
but three generations removed from the
black father or mother, may, by law, inter-
marry with the white people, and actually
do ereyy day."
An author above quoted says in addition:
''Several of the best planters or their ances-
tors, have been originally of the concict
class, and therefore are much to be praised
and esteemed for forsaking their old
courses A sentiment in which we hearth
ly concur, but think that their representa-
tives in this generation are rather premature
in saying that ''the majority of decency
has its headquarters at the
South!
To show how far this degrading infusion
had permeated that section of the country,
Lang in his ''History of Transportation es
Inmates at $4,000 the number of eonvicts,
male and female, rebels, felons, traitors,
strumpets and vicious characters who were
emptied into the Southern colonies before
1913.
And thus we might so on, quoting similar
specimens of descriptive nature, but these
will suffice for our purpose, to show the gen.
eral character of her early civilization. The
half has not been told, and many points of a
statistical nature could still farther cinch
the vice which history has clamped around
~, H. x.,tt1 {l,n