a great
career as a commercial and manufacturing State. Her rivers on the
eastern slope connected her interior with the largest and finest
harbor on the Atlantic coast of North America, and her jurisdiction
extended over an empire beyond the Alleghanies. Her climate was
salubrious, and so temperate as to forbid the plea always used in
justification of negro slavery in the Cotton States, that the white
man could not perform agricultural labor. A recognition of Virginia's
true destiny would point to Northern alliances and Northern
sympathies. Mr. Hunter's sympathies were by birth and rearing with
the South. The alliances he sought looked towards the Gulf and
not towards the Lakes. Any measure which was displeasing to South
Carolina or Alabama was displeasing to Mr. Hunter, and he gave no
heed to what might be the relations of Virginia with the New England,
Middle, and Western States. He measured the policy of Virginia by
the policy of States whose geographical position, whose soil,
climate, products, and capacities were totally different from hers.
By Mr. Hunter's policy, Virginia could sell only slaves to the
South. A more enlightened view would have enabled Virginia to
furnish a large proportion of the fabrics which the Southern States
were compelled to purchase in communities far to the north of her.
Mr. Hunter was no doubt entirely honest in this course. He was
upright in all his personal and political relations, but he could
not forget that he was born a Southern man and a slave-holder. He
had a full measure of that pride in his State so deeply cherished
by Virginians. At the outset of his public career he became
associated with Mr. Calhoun, and early imbibed the doctrines of
that illustrious senator, who seldom failed to fascinate the young
men who fell within the sphere of his personal influence.

Mr. Hunter therefore naturally opposed the new tariff, and under
his lead all action upon it was defeated for the session. This
conclusion was undoubtedly brought about by considerations outside
of the legitimate scope of the real question at issue. The struggle
for the Presidency was in progress, and any concession by the slave
States on the tariff question would weaken the Democratic party
in the section where its chief strength lay, and would correspondingly
increase the prestige of Lincoln's supporters in the North and of
Mr. Fillmore's followers in the South. Mr. Hunter had himself just
received a st