Perhaps the best assurance we obtain concerning the fitness of North America for the long-continued residence of Teutonic people may be derived from the consideration of the history of the two American settlements that have remained for about two hundred years without considerable admixture of new European blood. These are the English settlement in Virginia and the French in the region of the St. Lawrence; both these populations have been upon the soil for about two hundred years, with but little addition from their mother countries. In Virginia, essentially the whole of the white blood is English; the only mixture of any moment is from the Pennsylvania Germans, a people of kindred race, and equally long upon the soil. I believe that not less than ninety-five per cent of the white blood,—if I may be allowed this form of expression,—is derived from British soil. We have no statistics concerning the bodily condition of the Virginian people which will enable us to compare them with those of other States. The few recruits in the Federal army who were measured by the Sanitary Commission were mainly from the poorer classes, the oppressed “poor whites,” and are not a fair index of the physical condition of the people of this State. We have only the fact that the Confederate army of northern Virginia, composed in the main of the small farmers of the commonwealth, fought, under Lee and Jackson, a long, stubborn, losing fight, as well as any other men of the race have done. No other test of vigor is so perfect as that which such a struggle gives. Where a people make such men as Jackson, and such men as made Jackson’s career possible, we may be sure that they are not in their decadence.