the privileges of the slave, to increase the patrols, and for the public safety to enact severe laws against the black man. This grated upon the generous feelings of our people the more, because they were thus compelled in self-defence to spread hateful laws upon the Statute-book of the State. It was a shaft that sank deep and rankled long; it brought to mind Colonial times, and put into Southern heads the idea of another separation. But this was not all. Societies were formed in the North to encourage our negroes to escape and to harbour the runaways; emissaries came down to inveigle them away; and while the evil-minded among them were engaged in this, the Northern States aided and abetted, by passing Acts prohibiting their officers to assist the Southern citizens in the capture of runaways, and hindering him from doing it himself. At length things came to such a pass, that no Southern gentleman, notwithstanding his right, dared, when he went to the North either on business or pleasure, to carry with him, as he formerly did, a body-servant. More harsh still—delicate mothers and invalids with their nurses, though driven from their Southern home, as they often are, by pestilence or plague, dared not seek refuge in the more bracing summer climates of the North; they were liable to be, mobbed, to see their servants taken away by force, and, when that was done, they found that Northern laws afforded no protection. In short, our people had no longer equal rights in a common country.
Finally, the aggressive and fanatical spirit of the North came to such a pitch against us, that, just before the Southern people began to feel that patience and forbearance were both exhausted, a band of raiders, fitted out and equipped in the North, came down upon Virginia with sword and spear in hand. They commenced in the dead of night to murder our citizens, to arm the slaves, encouraging them to rise up, burn and riot, kill and slay through the land. The ringleader was caught, tried, and hung. Northern people regarded him as a martyr in a righteous cause. His body was carried to the North for ovation; they paid homage to his remains, sang pæans to his memory, and amidst jeers and taunts for Virginia, which to this day was reverberated through the halls of Congress, enrolled his name as one who deserved well of his country.
These acts were well calculated to keep the Southern mind in a highly feverish state and in an unfriendly mood; and there
