provoked a sudden revulsion of feeling in the South, and brought about a state of opinion which aimed to maintain slavery by texts of scripture, by the examples of other nations, by the teachings of Christ and his apostles, by the assumed relations of races, by the supposed laws of public economy, and the alleged requirements of a southern clime. He promoted, by an effect as inevitable as the nature of man, a purpose to defend slavery through an increase of its political power, to which a multiplication of slave States would make a large addition. He thus sowed the wind, and, left to another generation to reap the whirlwind. These assertions must not be left unsupported by proof, and the proof is at hand. In all periods of our history, prior to the civil war, Virginia exercised great influence over the whole slaveholding region. I have said that she was on the verge of emancipation when the first anti-slavery society was organized in the North; and although half a century has since elapsed, there are those living who, like myself, can recollect that she was so. But to others the fact must be attested by proof. It may be asserted as positively as anything in history that, in the year 1832, there was nowhere in the world a more enlightened sense of the wrong and the evil of slavery, than there was among the public men and the people of Virginia. The movement against it was spontaneous. It reached the general assembly by petitions which evinced that the policy and justice of emancipation had taken a strong hold on the convictions of portions of the people of the State, whom no external influence had then reached, and who, therefore, had free scope. Any Virginian could place himself at the head of this movement without incurring hostility or jealousy, and it was a grandson of Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson Randolph, by whom the leading part in it was assumed.