The clog that has stayed the march of her people, the incubus that has weighed down her enterprise, strangled her commerce, kept sealed her exhaustless fountains of mineral wealth, and paralyzed her arts, manufactures and improvement, is NEGRO SLAVERY.
Tappan identifies slavery as the primary obstacle to Virginia's economic progress and development.
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No other cause can be assigned than slavery, which drives from your borders many of the virtuous and enterprising, and at the same time deters emigrants from other States and from foreign countries from settling among you.
The power of the slaveholders, as we have already showed you, depends on the acquiescence of the major part of the white inhabitants in their domination.
You are told, much of the wealth is invested in negroes--yet it obviously is a wealth that impoverishes; and no stronger evidence of the truth of this assertion is needed, than the comparative price of land in the free and slave States.
It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively to the rich.