The people of Virginia in like manner appreciated the situation. "What
madness," wrote Madison, "in the South to look for greater safety in
disunion! It would be worse than jumping out of the frying pan into the
fire. It would be jumping into the fire from fear of the frying pan,
i.e., Northern meddling with slavery."[332]
Governor McDowell, referring to slavery and disunion, said:
"If gentlemen do not see or feel the evil of slavery whilst the
Federal Union lasts, they will see and feel it when it is gone; they
will see and suffer it then in a magnitude of desolating power to
which 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness' would be a blessing."
Referring to the protection afforded slavery by the Federal
Constitution, he said:
"Withdraw but the protecting energies of that instrument and be the
associations into which we shall be thrown what they may—whether
directed by judgment or caprice—our distinct character as a
slaveholding people will still be left—we shall still hold a separate
and adversary interest but hold it under circumstances of aggravated
evil, as the existence of it will disqualify us for defense in the
very degree in which it will expose us to foreign hostility and
wrong."[333]
Robert E. Lee, referring to the same subject, wrote,
"The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the
North, as you say. I feel the aggression and am willing to take every
proper step for redress.... But I can anticipate no greater calamity
than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all
the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything,
but honor, for its preservation."[334]
George W. Summers, speaking in the Virginia Convention of 1861, said:
"What has Virginia to gain by secession and separate action? Nothing
on the territorial question but lose everything. On the fugitive slave
question, she could make no treaties with the North or with England.
In relation to the institution of slavery, which I consider morally,
socially and politically right, she will lose the present protection
and be exposed to border incursions from a foreign government."[335]
John S. Carlile, speaking in the same convention, said:
"I have been a slaveholder from the time I've been able to buy a
slave. I have been a slaveholder not by inheritance but by purchase;
and I believe that slavery is a social, political and religious
blessing.... How long, if you were to dissolve this Union—if you were
to separate the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states, would
African slavery have a foothold in this portion of the land? I venture
the assertion that it would not exist in Virginia five years after the
separation; and nowhere in the Southern States twenty years after. How
could it maintain itself, with the whole civilized world, backed by
what they call their international law, arrayed for its ultimate
extinction with this North, which is now bound to stand by us and to
protect slavery, opposed to us?... And now, Mr. President! in the name
of our illustrious dead, in the name of all the living, in the name of
millions yet unborn, I protest against this wicked effort to destroy
the fairest and freest government on the earth."[336]