AMONG all the States of the Union, not one has a history more interesting than Virginia, for her annals are full of strangely poetic incident, from the world-famous idyll of Pocahontas to the tragic stories still fresh in our own memories; and from the fertile seaboard to the rich mountain valleys of her western border, there is scarcely a field or village that has not its tale to tell. More than one great name, "familiar in our mouths as household words," belongs in the catalogue of Virginia's children; and although to-day her greatness is a thing of the past and the future, yet that future promises such certainty as is more than guaranteed by her natural advantages and the brave and willing temper of her people. In the history of this State, there arose, long years ago, an unnatural relation between two races, which furnished a problem, dealt with by statesmen, philanthropists, and fanatics, and finally solved by God himself, in his own time, and his own way; and it is with an outgrowth of that problem and its solution that this little book has to do. The introduction of negroes into the country as slaves was made at a time when only a few minds, here and there, had any true conception of the rights of individuals, or could put a fair interpretation upon that higher law which makes us our brothers' keepers; and the virgin soil and relaxing climate of the South made slavery so temptingly easy and profitable as to insure its continuance until a Power stronger than humanity interfered to bring it to an end. In no part of the United States can the history of negro slavery, from its origin to its extinction, be more clearly traced than in Virginia; and as that State was chosen as the scene of bitterest struggle, so it seems likely to attain the earliest and highest development, for within its borders are now being fairly tested the possibilities of, the African race, and the results to them and the whites of the new relations of freedom. It is not too much to say that throughout the history of slavery in Virginia, there runs a strain of poetic justice, which is absolutely dramatic, robbing facts of their dryness and interweaving the prosaic details of life with the elements of tragedy. Nowhere has there been greater prosperity, nowhere has there been greater suffering, and many a page might be filled with the record of the changes which a century has wrought, of the old things that have passed away, and the new hopes that are blossoming for the future; and in writing this brief story of an experiment which is just now being tried upon Virginian soil, there will be an earnest attempt to offer such testimony of the capacity of a hitherto enslaved race, and of the intelligent and generous action of their whilom owners, as shall not be altogether valueless.
