Here is to Virginia, "The Old Dominion" State. At last with the young
Confederacy linked her fate. Go search the annals of history back to the
days of Abraham; trace Jewish civilization; compare Greek and Roman
progress; weigh the Crusaders of the Middle Ages and the Reformers of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Then look to the English people who
first wrested the great Magna Charta--the Bill of Civil Rights--and human
freedom from King John, and implanted these principles first in Virginia
with the best blood of England, producing a Washington, a Jefferson, a
Patrick Henry, a Madison, a Monroe, a Marshall, a Tyler, a Wise, a Robert
E. Lee, a Stonewall Jackson--with thousands as high-toned and patriotic.
There she stands superb! With her honor, her chivalry, her patriotism and
valor. Her high standard of civilization, unequaled and unexcelled by any
people in any age, in any land. In the most trying crisis of any age she
bore herself grandly, nobly. As Mother of Presidents and Mother of States.
It was her lot to suffer most of all. For four years invaded by hostile
armies and burdened by her own defenders, in the great struggles that
swayed back and forth. Her homes despoiled, her fields trampled, her sons
slain, and her soil drenched in blood. She was steadfast, generous and
hospitable to the last. She fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and cared
for the sick and bound up the wounded. And not a word of complaint ever
came from a Confederate soldier that she ever failed to do what she could
for him.
Virginia was all this, notwithstanding she was handicapped by negro
slavery, insidiously introduced by Dutch traders. And when it was known
that Africans had sense enough to set plants and worm tobacco, New England
sagacity and enterprise were quick to supply the demand for slaves and to
stock the market until Virginia cried, Hold! Enough! Negro slavery held
her on the low plane of an agricultural State--a producer of cheap raw
products. Yet history shows no example of such progress as was made in the
civilization of the Negro race. George Washington freed his negroes and
turned them loose upon the community. Thomas Jefferson foresaw that a
government could not remain half slave and half free. But the steady
increase in slave property and its broad extension prohibited its ready
abolition. Virginians were not the people to be dictated to by the very
people that had pressed slavery upon her. She stood for the right to
manage her domestic affairs as she pleased, and was quick to resent
outside interference. The clash was inevitable and had to be fought to a
finish. North Carolina, her faithful daughter, loves to honor and cherish
her Alma Mater. As Virginia, so were all the Southern States--brothers all
standing shoulder to shoulder in a common cause.