If the people of the North thus regarded their few negroes as a
dangerous and perplexing element, how much more should the people of
Virginia hesitate in face of the conditions and problems which
confronted them? If Indiana and Illinois, with populations of over
three million whites and less than twenty thousand blacks, felt
constrained to deny free negroes the right to enter their states, how
much more should their sister, Virginia, with only one million whites
and nearly a half million black slaves, fear to add to her already
large free negro population?