James Smith
Secession
If Va. Secede, Va. Will be the battlefield for this barbarous event. By seceding you will subject yourselves to all the evils which necessarily attend the prosecution of war in its immediate vicinity. How will you like to have detachments of both Northern and Southern troops, marching through your country in all directions, encamping just where they please, digging, breaking and cutting up your land, your fences, your timber, to suit their purposes, taking your best horses for their Cavalry; the best of your other stock for provisions, if they happen to want them. Thus your crops would be exposed to destruction, your defenseless families to rude insults, and should a battle occur, how would you like to have the balls flying around you and your house perhaps riffled, and burnt by an excited and licencious soldiery? Perhaps a number of wounded men quartered upon you? And when it was thought necessary to obstruct the advance of the enemy, to have the bridges on your best roads burnt, and the roads blocked up, your R. Roads torn up and destroyed, and the Cars burnt? Thus, being exposed as victims to both parties, your property - your sons - your servants - would be pressed occasionally into the service of each; perhaps taken as prisoners and executed, and yourselves, should you survive the scene, and "escape with the skin of your teeth," you may think yourself well off. And "if war continues driving away Civil law, for any length of time, packs of marauding banditti will soon be formed, that will rob, plunder, and often kill, as their professed business, and thus the property and lives of all will be exposed to danger. But should Virginia not secede these battleground evils would be avoided by us.
Even Should this unnatural war continue those evils would be removed a respectable distance to the South or West of us, and we would enjoy comparative quiet and prosperity. If Virginia secede, we will be deprived of the pleasure and advantage of getting letters and papers from the P. Office for some time to come; and if a new system should be set a going, its machinery would be less perfect, while it would be more expensive to us than the old one. But if it does not secede, our excellent P. Office accommodations will go on without interruption. If Virginia secede, Slave property will not be as secure as it is at present. You laugh at this, but permit me to explain. You know the boundary between Slave and free territory will be near us, much nearer than the Canada line, and when under separate Governments, how easy it would be for the discontented negro to take himself off, into free territory, where the opposing feelings of the government towards our peculiar institutions would be very likely to guard him from arrest, and we would then have no fugitive Slave law to help us to recover him. The nearness of free institutions would be likely to make our slaves discontented, and the facility with which they could get away, might encourage a great many of them to escape into free territroy; which would render property in Slaves very insecure, especially in the border slave states. But by remaining in the Union, we would retain our Constitutional rights in full force, to manage our own institutions as we please and to pursue our fugitive slaves and reclaim them from any part of the Union.
If Virginia secedes, and separates from the Union; we will be burdened with an immensely increased load of taxes. Recollect, Virginia is now deeply in debt, think of the immense expense we will have to incur, in raising and supporting armies for the war, think of the enormous damage that will be done, in seizing and destroy8ing private, and other property; all which will make a just ___ account against the state, after the war is over; and how can the State settle this account except by levying taxes? And to whom can they levy taxes except on the people of the State? Yes, my fellow citizens, we, who till the earth, or wield the mechanics tools, to earn a little needfull cash, will have to pay over our hard earned quarter to pay up that account, which might now be saved, if we would all vote against secession. And besides this, we would have our new Government to support, which would be as expensive as that of the U. S. with less than half the number of producing hands to support it, and our taxes for this, added to those for the Dr. account, will strip us of every fip (A Spanish silver coin, worth 6 ¼ cents in the U. S. until 1857) we can earn, which we ought to lay out for the good of our families. It is best for us to stick to the Union, we all know our taxes have been high enough there. "But we had better choose the ills we have Than fly to others which we know are greater".
