Virginia has uttered
her complaints aloud. As yet, however, nothing has been done even there,
save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free
colored inhabitants of the state. Is this a remedy?
But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on
condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible,
forcibly if necessary.
Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote
period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her
unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy
apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
It is a fact, strongly insisted upon by our Southern brethren as a reason
for the perpetuation of slavery, that their climate and peculiar
agriculture will not admit of hard labor on the part of the whites; that
amidst the fatal malaria of the rice plantations the white man is almost
annually visited by the country fever; that few of the white overseers of
these plantations reach the middle period of ordinary life; that the
owners are compelled to fly from their estates as the hot season
approaches, without being able to return until the first frosts have
fallen.
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