In the address of Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College,
delivered in 1847, heretofore quoted from, the author by a mass of
statistics shows how slavery had injured the state by decimating its
white population, paralyzing its agriculture and almost destroying its
manufacturing and commercial interests.
"We esteem it," says Dr. Ruffner, "a sad, a humiliating fact which
should permeate the heart of every Virginian, that from the year
1790 to this time, Virginia has lost more people by emigration than
all the old free states together. Up to 1840, when the last census
was taken, she had lost more by near three hundred thousand.... She
has sent, or we should rather say, she has driven from her soil, at
least one-third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old
states to the new.... It is in the last period of ten years from
1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its
worst effects in the old Southern States.... East Virginia actually
fell off twenty-six thousand in population; and with the exception
of Richmond and one or two other towns, her population continues to
decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with
slavery; she was also the first to reap the full harvest of
destruction."
The author then proceeds to show from the report of Professor George
Tucker, of the University of Virginia, that in New England agriculture
yields an annual value averaging one hundred and eighty dollars per
hand; and the Southern States a hundred and thirty dollars per hand;
and proceeds: "Now it is admitted on all hands that slave labor is
better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry;
and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing."
Referring to the subject of manufactures, and the blighting influence
of slavery thereon, the author says: "Of all the states in this Union,
not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for
manufacturing as our own Virginia both East and West."
Notwithstanding these advantages, the author demonstrates from the
census that the state has scarcely entered upon the work of
manufacturing her raw material. Thus in four leading manufactures, the
output in New York was twenty-one millions, New Jersey, six millions,
and Pennsylvania, sixteen millions in value; while that of Virginia
was two and three-fourths millions. With respect to the commerce of
the state, the author, after pointing out her exceptional advantages
growing out of her fine harbors and numerous rivers, declares:
"That the commerce of our old slave-eaten commonwealth has decayed
and dwindled away to a mere pittance in the general mass of American
trade.
"The value of her exports, which, twenty-five or thirty years ago,
averaged four or five millions a year shrunk by 1842 to two millions
eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and by 1845 to two
million one hundred thousand dollars."
"Her imports from foreign countries were, in the year 1765, valued
at upwards of four millions of dollars; in 1791 they had sunk to two
and one-half millions; in 1821 they had fallen to a little over one
million; in 1827 they had come down to about half this sum; and in
1843 to the half of this again, or about one-quarter of a million;
and here they have stood ever since—at next to nothing."...
"Why should every commercial improvement, every wheel that speeds
the movement of trade, serve but to carry away from the slave states
more and more of their wealth for the benefit of the great Northern
cities? The only cause that can be assigned is that where slavery
prevails, commerce and navigation cannot flourish, and commercial
towns cannot compete with those in the free states."[191]