l traditions of the New World.

Yet, as if prophetic of the long political issues of which she was
destined to be the scene of conflict, the colonial star of Virginia was
early obscured by misfortune. When John Smith left her shores for the
last time in 1609, discontent and disaster had already marred the
prospects of the new settlement; and, in half a year, Gates, Somers,
Newport arrived to find but sixty colonists remaining, and they resolved
to abandon the enterprise; but on encountering Delaware, they were
induced to return, and Jamestown was again the scene of life and labor.
Ten years of comparative success ensued; and then one hundred and sixty
poor women were imported for wives, at a cost of about the same number
of pounds of tobacco; but simultaneously with this requisite provision
for domestic growth and comfort, the germ of Virginia's ruin came: a
Dutch vessel entered the James river, bringing twenty African captives,
which were purchased by the colonists. Two years later the Indians made
a destructive foray upon the thriving village; the king became alarmed
at the freedom of political discussion, dissolved the Virginia company,
and appointed a governor and twelve councillors to rule the
province;--the father's policy was followed by Charles the First, many
of whose zealous partisans found a refuge from Cromwell in the province.
At last came the Revolution and the Union. Meantime slavery was dying
out; its abolition was desired; and had free labor then and there
superseded it, far different would have been the destiny of the fair
State; whose western portion affords such a contrast to that wherein
this blight induced improvidence and deterioration, the tokens whereof
were noted by every visitor in the spare and desultory culture of the
soil, the neglected resources, the dilapidated fences and dwellings, and
the absence of that order and comfort which inevitably attaches to
legitimate industry and self-reliance. This melancholy perversion of
great natural advantages was the result of slave breeding for the
Southern market. Otherwise Virginia would have continued the prosperous
development initiated in her colonial days. The exigencies of the cotton
culture, rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which
infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had
thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and
political bane of a region associated with the noblest