Richmond, Petersburg and Norfolk are the chief mercantile centres of Eastern Virginia. They are the termini of railroads crossing large agricultural districts, the produce of which is delivered at these points to the cheaper means of transit towards the consumers on the navigable waters. The railroads do not appear to have been designed upon any grand system of giving the greatest facilities to the general commerce of the country, but more with reference to local interest, for, on one side or the other of the direction of their ultimate destination, one gets the impression, by a mere glance at the roads, that the Virginia railroads have been built upon a system of log-rolling. The towns I have mentioned are situated at the natural points for exchange of commodities, and owe their importance simply to this circumstance. In the early colony days it was attempted to force trade to other points than these by legal enactments—privileges and monopolies. Of some of these government-made towns hardly one stone is now left on another, and none of them are places of importance. It is curious to see how the same crude and farcical notions of nullifying the natural laws of trade possessed the minds of the noble fathers of Virginia, as has lately been displayed in the proceedings of Southern Conventions.

The natural advantages of the position of Richmond, with reference to manufactures and trade, I have already described. They were not exceeded any where on the Continent. It was inevitable that there should be an important town on its site, though as yet it is hardly known, except as the Capital of the State. If it had been the recognized policy of its citizens to restrict its growth, it could hardly have been prevented from being a more prosperous town than it is.

Petersburg, half your readers have probably never heard of since they were at school. It is situated at the fall and head of navigation of the Appomattox, as Richmond is on the James, both these rivers having a common outlet to the ocean. Its milling power is great and readily applicable, and it has a very [145] large and productive back country, to which it offers the only outlet or easy place of exchange for the commodities of the rest of the world. It has somewhat the advantage of its rival in directness of communication with the ocean.

Norfolk is the name of the town that the necessities of the maritime world require to exist at the head of Hampton Roads. It was not possible to prevent the existence of some agency here for the transshipment of goods and for supplying the needs of vessels forced to resort to the harbor. Beyond this, and what results from the adjoining naval rendezvous of the nation, there is nothing of Norfolk. Lieut. Maury has lately very well shown what advantages were originally possessed for profitable commerce at this point, in a report the intention of which is to advocate the establishment of a line of steamers hence to Para, the port of the mouth of the Amazon; I have the best wishes for the success of the project in its most important features, and the highest respect for the judgment of Lieut. Maury but it seems to me pertinent to inquire why are the British Government steamers not sent exclusively to Halifax, the nearest port to England, instead of to the more distant and foreign port of New-York? If a Government line of steamers should be established between Para and Norfolk, and should be found in the least degree commercially profitable, how long would it be before another line would be established between New-York and Para, by private enterprise, and then how much business would be left for the Government steamers while they continued to end their voyage at Norfolk? So, too, with regard to a line from Antwerp to Norfolk. Says Lieutenant Maury, however:

Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the Atlantic seaboard. It is midway the Coast. It has a back country of great fertility and resources, and as to approaches to the ocean, there is no harbor from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande that has the same facilities of ingress and egress at all times and in all weathers. * * * * The back country of Norfolk is all that which is drained by the Chesapeake Bay—embracing a line drawn along the ridge between the Delaware and the Chesapeake, thence northerly, including all of Pennsylvania that is in the Valley of the Susquehanna, all of Maryland this side of the mountains, the Valleys of the Potomac, Rappahannock, York and James Rivers, with the Valley of the Roanoke, and a great part of the State of North Carolina, whose only outlet to the sea is by way of Norfolk.

Undoubtedly the original natural advantages of Norfolk were superior to those of New-York, yet if the citizens had always been subject to deadly enervating pestilence, it could not be a more miserable, sorry little seaport town than it is. What little life it has is communicated to it by New-York. A poor whining, ungrateful invalid it is while New-York is a giant, growing in strength, whose prosperity is the prosperity of the country, whose adversity would be felt throughout the land. But you find singularly simple, childlike ideas about commercial success among the people, even the merchants themselves here. The agency by which commodities are transferred from the producer to the consumer, they seem to look upon as a kind of swindling operation; [146] they do not see that the merchant acts a useful part in the community, or that his labor can be other than selfish and malevolent. They speak angrily of New-York, as if it fattened on the country without doing the country any good in return. They have no idea that it is their business that the New-Yorkers are doing, and that whatever tends to facilitate it and make it simple and secure, is an increase of their wealth by diminishing the costs and lessening the losses upon it. They gravely demand of each other why the Government mail steamers should be sent to New-York when New-York has so much business already, and why the nation should build costly Custom Houses, and Post-Offices, and Mints, and sea defences, and collect stores and equipments there, and not at Norfolk, and Petersburg, and Richmond and Danville, and Lynchburg, and Smithtown, and Jones-Cross-Roads? It never seems to occur to them that it is because the country needs them there—because the skill, enterprise and energy of New-York merchants, the confidence of capitalists in New-York merchants, the various facilities for trade offered by New-York merchants, enable them to do the business of the country cheaper and better than it can be done anywhere else (and that thus they can command commerce, and need not petition their legislature or appeal to mean sectional prejudice to obtain it), but all imagine it is by some shrewd Yankee trickery it is done. By the bones of their noble fathers they will set their faces against it, and their faces are not of dough, so they bully their local merchants into buying in dearer markets, and make the country tote its gold on to Philadelphia to be coined, and their Conventions resolve that the world shall come to Norfolk or Richmond, or Smithtown, and that no more cotton shall be sent to England until England will pay a price for it that shall let negroes be worth a thousand dollars a head, &c., &c., &c.

Then, if it is asked why Norfolk, with its immense natural advantages for commerce, has not been able to do their business for them as well as New-York; or why Richmond, with its great natural superiority for manufacturing, has not prospered like Glasgow, or Petersburg like lowell:—why Virginia is not like Pennsylvania, or Kentucky like Ohio?—they will perhaps answer that it is owing to the peculiar tastes they have inherited; “settled mainly (as was Virginia) by the sons of country gentlemen, who brought the love of country life with them across the Atlantic and infused it into the mass of the population, they have ever preferred that life; and the title of a country gentleman, implying the possession of landed estates, has always been esteemed more honorable than any other.” It is simply a matter of taste—an answer which reminds us of Aesop’s fox.

Ask any honest stranger who has been brought into intimate intercourse for a short time with the people, why it is that here has been stagnation and there constant, healthy progress, and he will answer that these people are less enterprising, energetic and sensible in the conduct of their affairs—that they live less in harmony with the laws that govern the accumulation of wealth than those. Ask him how this difference of character should have arisen and he will tell you it is not from the blood but from the education they have received; [147] from the institutions and circumstances they have inherited. It is the old, fettered, barbarian labor system, in relation with which they have been brought up, against which all their enterprise must struggle, and with the chains of which all their ambition must be bound. This conviction is universal in the minds of strangers, and is forced upon one more strongly than it is possible to make you comprehend by a mere statement of isolated facts. You could as well convey an idea of the effect of mist on a landscape by enumerating the number of particles of vapor that obscure it. Give Virginia blood fair play, remove it from the atmosphere of Slavery, and it shows no lack of energy and good sense. What were the pioneers of Kentucky?

It is strange what cowards the Virginians are, that they dare not look this in the face. Strange how contemptibly they bluster in their legislative debates, in their newspapers, and in their bar-rooms, about the “Yankees,” and the “Yorkers,” declaring that they are “swindled out of their legitimate trade,” when the simple truth is, that the Northern merchants do that for them that they are unable to do for themselves. As well might the Chinese be angry with us for sending our clipper ships for their tea, because it is a business that would be more “legitimately” (however less profitably) carried on in junks.

“I have raised hay, potatoes, and cabbages, on my farm in New-York, that found a market in Richmond,” I said to a planter, “but here you have a capital soil for such crops; how is it you don’t supply your own market?” “Well, I should be laughed at if I bothered with such little crops,” he replied. So it is—they leave such little crops to the niggers and Yankees, and then grumble because all the profits of their business go to build “Fifth-avenue palaces,” and “down-east school houses.” They will not bear it any longer, they are going straightway to do something for themselves—what? Establish a dignified State line of steamers to—Antwerp! There’s nothing to be laughed at in that, you observe.

I think the evidence I laid before you in a previous letter will have convinced you that the direct effect of slavery is to increase the cost of production of the most important articles of Virginia commerce, fifty per cent. I will take this opportunity to say what I should have expressed then, that there are not unfrequent instances in which slaves are made to perform agricultural operations in a very admirable and apparently economical manner. But these are rare exceptions and generally occur where but few slaves are kept together, and where they enjoy the confidence of their owner so much as to have acquired something of his interest and pride in their work. In these cases the slave is always noticeably superior to the great mass of his class, and according to the general opinion it would be dangerous to permit any large collected number of them to be equally improved. But I much doubt if the general popular opinion, and the Legislative theory of the State as to this, is correct.

Another great check upon enterprise and most strong bar to all progressive improvement in the State is the absorption of capital in the slave property. This I shall further explain at another time.

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The indirect effect of slavery upon the business character of the State is seen in the general dilatory, unsystematic, indefinite, indistinct and unreliable character of the people as exhibited—on every side.

I have shown you some instances of it on the public conveyances. I recall a few more.

When I took the railroad train at Richmond for Petersburg, the cars were crowded with passengers, and at the time advertised for departure, there was a shriek from the locomotive to intimate it was ready to be off; the train was presently jerked on a few rods; stopped; soon was shoved back; then ahead again, and so we continued “backing and filling” upon the bridge for a half-hour. There was a loss of time, amounting in value, at ordinary men’s wages, to not less than one hundred dollars, to say nothing of broken engagements, and plans interrupted by it among all the passengers, and those who were expecting them. All unnecessary and simply the worst of bad management. And the worst part of it was nobody seemed to care at all about it. Nobody seemed to have calculated on the railroad company’s promises being kept.

There was one man (intoxicated) who was disposed to hold an “indignation meeting” in the car I was in, not, however, with reference to the delay of the train, but to some “unconstitutional” proceedings that he apprehended the House of Delegates was engaged in. At every stoppage of the train, as it was jerked to and fro on the bridge, he would inquire what station we had reached, and how long it would be before we should arrive at Petersburg. As the car was full when he entered, he tried to take a seat in my lap, and when a seat was at length given to him, he put his feet upon the shoulder of the gentleman before him. He made a great disturbance, and at the North would have been immediately expelled from the car; but nobody here seemed to think they had a right to object to such a nuisance, and the conductor, though he several times passed through the car while he was defending the Constitution at the top of his voice, paid no attention to him.

After getting finally off, we were an hour and thirty-five minutes running twenty miles (advertised fast, mail train)—thirteen miles an hour; about twenty minutes being lost at way-stations. At one of these stoppages, smoke was seen issuing from the box of one of the carwheels. The conductor, on observing it, nodded his head sagely, took a chew of tobacco, spat at it, and then shouting “All right—go ahead!” stepped upon the platform. At the next station it was burning furiously; the conductor examined it and called for some water. As the negro brought it to him, he asked him, “Hasn’t got no oil, Columbus?” “No, Sir.” “Well, go ask Mr. ___ for some; this is a screaking so I durstn’t go on. Scott, get some salt, and some of you boys fetch some more water, d’ye hear?” Oil, water and salt were crowded into the box, and after a few minutes we went on again, the box still smoking furiously, and the oil and water boiling in it, till we reached Petersburg. This occurred, I suppose, because it had not been sufficiently or timely oiled. Afterwards, I saw a Negro at the railroad station in Petersburg oiling the wheels of a train, and noticed that [149] after finishing with one, he passed on to the next without elevating the spout of his oiler, so that a stream of fine sperm oil, worth probably $1.50 a gallon, was poured upon the ground all around the train.

A few days after, I was going a short distance into the country, south from Petersburg, by the Wilmington road. Train started ten minutes after time—was an hour and a half running twenty miles, with but one mere crossroad stoppage. I asked the station master about the return train, and was informed that it did not generally get along until half an hour after the advertised time, though lately, sometimes they had been more punctual, and it would not do to calculate on it. It is not bad management necessarily, that the trains are run slowly, for that might be apologized for on the ground of economy, or, on some roads, of safety; but it is, that they are not run with regularity-that nothing can be relied upon with regard to them.

I wished to go from Norfolk on the train, advertised to leave at half-past eight, of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad; was called up an hour too early, and given a cold breakfast with coffee without milk, that I might be in time. A negro was sent to carry my baggage. The station is across the harbor; the ferry boat came in soon after we reached the wharf, but the fires had been neglected, and it took twenty minutes to get up steam enough to cross again. I was anxious lest I should be detained till after the train had left, as the landlord had told me at breakfast there was no time to lose. “Oh, no danger, masser, Baltimore boat aint ben arrive yet—dey wont go widout dat be, suah.” There were several ladies and gentlemen waiting at the station when I reached it, but no signs of a departing train. The ticket-office did not open till after half-past eight. When I had been waiting half an hour longer, I asked a man in the employment of the Company, “Does not this train usually leave before nine o’clock?” “Oh, no sir, ’tis’nt often she starts before ten.” The Baltimore boat arrived at half-past nine, and’ at five minutes of ten—nearly an hour and a half after the time advertised—the train began to move.

Incidents, trifling in themselves, instantly betray to a stranger the bad economy of using enslaved servants. The catastrophe of one such occurred since I began to write this letter. I ordered a fire to be made in my room, as I was going out this morning. On my return, I found a grand fire—the room door having been closed and locked upon it, and, by the way, I had to obtain assistance to open it, the lock being “out of order.” Just now, while I was writing, down tumbled upon the floor and rolled away close to the valance of the bed half a hod-full of ignited coal, that had been so piled up on the diminutive grate, and left without a fender or any guard, that this result was almost inevitable. If I had not returned at the time I did, the house would have been fired and probably an incendiary charged with it, and some Northern Insurance Company made good the loss to the owner. And such carelessness of servants you have constantly to notice. But the constantly occurring delays, and the waste of time and labor that you encounter everywhere, are most annoying and provoking to a stranger.

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The utter want of system and order, almost essential, as it would appear, where slaves are your instruments, is amazing—and when you are not in haste, often amusing. At a hotel, for instance, you go to your room and find no conveniences for washing; ring and ring again, and hear the office-keeper ring again and again. At length two servants appear at your door, get orders and go away. Quarter of an hour afterwards, perhaps, one returns with a pitcher of water, but no towels; and so on. Yet the servants are attentive and anxious to please, (expecting to be “remembered” when you leave). It only results from the want of system and order.

Again, I have had a servant come into my room and make a fire for me to dress by in the morning, then open the window to throw out the slops from the washstands, and walk off with my boots, leaving the window and door both wide open, and forgetting to return my boots until I go down to breakfast without them, the bell-wire being broken. Except in Richmond, I have not seen a negro yet shut a door on leaving a room with a fire in it, unless he was called back to do it.

Until the negro is big enough for his labor to be calculably profitable to his master, he has no training to application or method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Until the children arrive at a working age, they hardly come under the notice of their owner. An inventory of them is taken on the plantations at Christmas; and a planter told me that he had sometimes had them brought in at twelve or thirteen years old, that had escaped the vigilance of the overseer up to that age. The only whipping I have seen in Virginia, has been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to work at that age. They cannot be depended upon a minute out of Sight. You will see how difficult it would be, if it were attempted, to eradicate the indolent, careless, listless habits so formed in youth. The influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought, and providence, I have before sufficiently described to you.

It is impossible that the habits of the whole community should not be influenced by, and be made to accommodate to, these habits of its laborers. It inevitably affects the whole industrial character of the people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the mechanics and trades-people. All of these must have dealings or be in competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence made lower, and become accustomed to, until they are content with slight, false, unsound workmanship. You notice in all classes, vagueness in ideas of cost and value, and injudicious and unnecessary expenditure of labor by thoughtless manner of setting about work. To give you an instance: I had an umbrella broken. I noticed it as I was going out from my hotel during a shower, and stepped into an adjoining locksmith’s to have it repaired. He asked where he should send it when he had done it. “I intended to wait for it,” I answered; “how long is it going to take you, and how much shall you charge?”

“I can’t do it in less than half an hour, Sir, and it will be worth a quarter.”

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“I shouldn’t think it need take you so long, it is merely a rivet to be tightened.”

“I shall have to take it all to pieces, and it will take me all of half an hour.”

“I don’t think you need take it to pieces.”

“Yes I shall—there’s no other way to do it.”

“Then, as I can’t well wait so long, I will not trouble you with it,” and I went into the hotel, and with the fire-poker, did the job myself in less than a minute, as well as he could have done it in a week, and went on my way; saving half an hour and quarter of a dollar, like a “Yankee.”

Virginians laugh at us for such things; but it is plainly because they are indifferent to and above regarding these fractions, that they cannot do their own business with the rest of the world, and all their commerce, as they are constantly most absurdly complaining, only goes to enrich Northern men.

Indolence, inconstancy of will, improvidence, extravagance and reckless carelessness, are almost necessities of their labor system. Is it too much to say, that they are the diseases of their whole body corporate? With the greatest admiration for their many noble qualities, and with gratitude for the hospitality I have received from them, I must say that a stranger visiting them cannot avoid such a conviction.

So it is that Virginia has gone backwards, particularly where the slave system has operated most freely and purely—so that, in the midst of the first settlements, on lands that were once cultivated and richly productive, you may now be invited to hunt, with assurance that there is no lack of wild-turkeys and venison.