CHAP. XV.] WHITE AND SLAVE LABOR. 207 



whites who live west of the Blue Ridge are about equal in 

 number to those who live east of it ; but the eastern division, or 

 lower country, owns a greater number of slaves, and in right of 

 them has more votes. The western men are talking loudly of 

 a convention to place them on a more equal footing, some even 

 desiring a separation into two states. There has also been a 

 suggestion, that it might be well to allow a single county to 

 declare itself free, without waiting for the emancipation of others. 

 Among other signs of approaching change, I am told that several 

 new settlers from the north have made a practical demonstration 

 that slave labor is less profitable, even east of the Blue Ridge, 

 than that of free whites. As we sailed down the Potomac from 

 Washington, a landed proprietor of Fairfax county pointed out 

 to me some estates in Virginia, on the right bank of the river, in 

 which free had been substituted for slave labor since I was here 

 in 1841. Some farmers came from New Hampshire and Con 

 necticut, and, having bought the land at five dollars an acre, 

 tilled it with their own hands and those of their family, aided in 

 some cases by a few hired whites. To the astonishment of the 

 surrounding planters, before the end of four years, they had raised 

 the value of the soil from five to forty dollars per acre, having 

 introduced for the first time a rotation of corn and green crops, 

 instead of first exhausting the soil, and then letting it lie fallow 

 for years to recover itself. They have also escaped the ruinous 

 expense of feeding large bodies of negroes in those seasons when 

 the harvest is deficient. They do not pretend to indulge in that 

 hospitality for which the old Virginians and North Carolinians 

 were celebrated, who often mortgaged their estates to pay the 

 annual salary of their overseer, till he himself became the pro 

 prietor. The master, in that case, usually migrated with part 

 of his negroes to settle farther south or southwest, introducing 

 into the new states more civilized habits and manners than would 

 have belonged to them had they been entirely peopled by adven 

 turers from the north or from Europe. 



On Sunday, December the 21st, we attended service in a 

 handsome new Episcopal church, called St. Paul s, and heard 

 the rector announce to the congregation that a decision had just 



