Among the petitions presented to the Virgina Convention of 1829-30,
was one from the citizens of Staunton, praying the abolition of
slavery.
"We waive," the petition recited, "at present the considerations of
religion and humanity, which belong to this momentous subject, and
present it as a naked question of policy, wisdom and safety.... We
affirm that the possession and management of slaves form a source of
endless vexation and misery within the house, and a waste and drain
on the farm; ... that the waste of the products of the land, nay, of
the land itself is bringing poverty upon all its inhabitants; that
this poverty and the supineness of our population either prevent the
institution of schools through the country or keep them in the most
languid and inefficient condition; and that the same causes must
obviously paralyze all our schemes and efforts for the needful
improvement of the country....
"It is conceded on all hands that Virginia is in a state of moral
and political retrogression among the states of the Confederacy....
We humbly suggest our belief, that the slavery which exists, and
which, with gigantic strides, is gaining ground amongst us, is, in
truth, the great efficient cause of the multiple evils which we all
deplore. We cannot conceive that there is any other cause
sufficiently operative to paralyze the energies of a people so
magnanimous, to neutralize the blessings of Providence, included in
the gift of a land so happy in its soil, its climate, its minerals
and its waters and to annul the manifold advantages of our
Republican freedom and geographical position. If Virginia has
already fallen from the high estate, and if we have assigned the
true cause of her fall, it is with utmost anxiety that we look
forward to the future, to the fatal termination of the scene."[186]
To show that the views here expressed by the citizens of Staunton were
not peculiar to the people of that locality we insert extracts from
speeches made two years later by representatives in the Virginia
Legislature, from counties as widely separated as Fauquier and
Rockbridge, Berkeley and Buckingham.
Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier County, speaking in 1832, in the Virginia
House of Delegates, said:
"Our towns are stationary, our villages almost everywhere declining
and the general aspect of the country marks the course of a
wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the
soil, and care not how much it is impoverished. Public improvements
are neglected, and the entire continent does not present a region
for which Nature has done so much and art so little. If cultivated
by free labor, the soil of Virginia is capable of sustaining a dense
population among whom labor would be honourable, and where the busy
hum of men would tell that all were happy and that all were
free."[187]