CHAPTER XXXVII

FAREWELL ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS,
JUNE 19TH, 1877

HEN the General Assembly adjourned in the spring of 1877, Mr. Stuart's fourth consecutive term of service in that body ended. He was in his seventy-first year, and his health was infirm. He therefore determined to retire finally from public life. He had intended to deliver a public address to his constituents and give an account of his stewardship, but he had been prevented from doing so by ill health, and he therefore decided to publish his address in the Staunton Spectator, on June 19th, 1877. In it he gave a most interesting account of the condition of the country when he was first elected a member of the Legislature in 1836. In that day there were no railroads and few passable wagon roads. The only mode of transporting the products of the farm to market was the slow and expensive road wagon, and the only public vehicles for carrying passengers were the stage coaches. Mr. Stuart showed the amount of money the State had expended upon internal improvements and upon charitable and educational institutions prior to 1861. He traced the origin of the public debt, contracted mainly for these objects; outlined what had been attempted toward the adjustment of the debt between Virginia and West Virginia; and finally showed what part of the debt Virginia had assumed as her just proportion, and what the Legislature during his service therein had done to increase the revenue of the State in order to meet the expenses of the government and the interest on the debt. The address closed with the declaration that the debt was a just one, and with an eloquent appeal to his constituents, the last he was ever to make to

them, not to pause in the discharge of an honest duty and suffer the taint of repudiation to rest upon the proud escutcheon of the State. The address was as follows:

"To the People of Augusta County:

"Fellow-Citizens,-It was my wish at the close of the last session of the General Assembly, to make a public address to you at the courthouse, on some suitable occasion, for the three-fold purpose of returning to you, in person, my sincere thanks for the many evidences of confidence and kindness which I have received at your hands; of explaining what I had aimed to do, as one of your delegates, for the last four years in the General Assembly; and of announcing to you my determination to decline being a candidate for re-election. But, as the condition of my health disabled me from speaking at the April or May terms of our court, and my engagements, as Rector of the University of Virginia, will now require me to be absent at the June court, I have concluded to make my address to you through the press.

"Forty-one years ago I was first called, by your fathers, under very flattering circumstances, to represent the County of Augusta in the House of Delegates. I was then an active young man, and was chosen because of my known devotion to the cause of internal improvement. It is difficult for men of the present generation to realize the condition of things. which existed in our country forty years ago. Then the only mode of transporting our agricultural products to market was by cumbrous and expensive roadwagons, and the only public vehicles for the conveyance of passengers, from place to place, were the old-fashioned stages.

"The flour, whiskey, bacon and other products of the county were hauled either directly to Richmond or to Scottsville, whence they were sent by the James River Canal to Richmond. The average load was from twelve to fifteen barrels of flour, and from a ton and a half to two tons of merchandise. A trip to Richmond and back occupied about two weeks, and to Scottsville, from five to eight days. The cost of hauling flour to market varied with the condition of

the roads from a dollar to a dollar and a half, and other things in proportion. The cost of getting the products of our farms to market was generally from twenty to thirtythree per cent of what they would bring in market. The hauling was not only slow and expensive, but it was attended with personal exposure to the wagoner and great injury to the horse and wagon. In winter and early spring the roads were almost, and sometimes altogether, impassable. It often happened, therefore, that when the farmers and their teams were at leisure, they could not be employed in hauling their produce to market, and when the roads became passable the time for preparing for spring crops was at hand.

"The consequence of this condition of things was that all products of the farm brought very low prices. I have known flour to sell in Staunton as low as $2.50 per barrel, and it rarely brought more than $4.00 or $5.00. Butter, poultry, eggs, etc., brought little more than one-half the present prices. If a rise in prices took place in Richmond or Baltimore, we could not avail ourselves of it because we could not deliver our commodities promptly in market.

"The return trade, in groceries and dry goods, was burthened with similar difficulties. Our merchants went to market for goods twice a year, generally about the first of April and September, and their goods were delivered at heavy cost for freight and insurance, in from three to five weeks after they were purchased; the farmers who bought them were obliged to pay all these high charges, in the form of increased prices.

"To give you some idea of the facilities of traveling which existed in those days, I will refer to my own experience in getting from Staunton to Richmond in December, 1836. I left my house in Staunton in the stage, at two o'clock in the morning, and after a laborious day's travel, walking up the mountain at Rockfish Gap, and, after we got into the red lands of Albemarle, occasionally assisting in prizing the coach out of the mud with fence rails, we arrived at Charlottesville after night. The second day, we left Charlottesville at two o'clock in the morning and, after

a laborious journey of fifteen hours, arrived at Wilmington in Fluvanna. The third day we left Wilmington at twelve o'clock at night, and arrived at Richmond an hour or two after dark. According to my best recollection, the stage fare was eleven or twelve dollars, and the cost of eight meals and two night's lodgings, at fifty cents each, was five dollars, making the aggregate cost of the trip sixteen or seventeen dollars.

"Other parts of the State labored under still greater difficulties. Until 1839 there was no passable wagon road from Staunton to what is now Highland or Pendleton Counties. The tow, linen, maple sugar, bees-wax, deer-skins and dried fruit, which were then the principal marketable commodities of that country, were brought to Staunton on pack horses.

"In many of the tobacco counties, the condition of things was no better. Men are now living who remember when the tobacco of many sections was packed in tight hogsheads, into the ends of which spikes were driven, to which shafts were attached, and they were thus drawn or rather rolled by mules to market.

"It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise, that the people should become impatient of the intolerable evils and inconveniences under which they labored, and seek relief from them by improved and cheaper means of transportation and travel by turnpikes, canals, and railroads.

"I was personally cognizant of these grievances, and I was commissioned as one of the representatives of Augusta to urge the Legislature to provide for the construction of the desired improvements. It was known that we had no money in the Treasury to pay the cost of constructing them, nor were the people in a condition to bear very heavy taxation. But they believed that the construction of these works would increase the value of their lands, and of the products of their farms, and thereby enable them to pay the taxes necessary to meet the interest on the money borrowed to construct them.

"In the session of 1836-'7, Gen. Kenton Harper was my

colleague. We labored earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to get relief for our people. In the sessions of 1837-'8 and 1838-'9 (Gen. Harper having declined a re-election), Mr. Wm. Kinney was my colleague. At an early day in the session. of 1838, I moved a reference of the general subject of improvement to a committee, and I was selected by that committee to prepare a report on the subject. I, accordingly, did prepare a report, which will be found among the documents of 1838. In that report, I indicated almost all the great lines of improvement which have since been constructed. A long and able debate ensued on the adoption of that report, but the general scheme was defeated by a small majority. Not disheartened by defeat, Mr. Kinney and I brought forward and succeeded in carrying as separate and independent measures, the Valley Macadam Road, from Winchester to Abingdon, and the Staunton and Parkersburg Road, through the mountains, from Staunton to the Ohio River. The State paid the entire cost ($250,000) of the latter road and agreed to subscribe three-fifths of the stock of the Valley Turnpike.

"We also succeeded in having the Deaf and Dumb Institution established at Staunton, and in obtaining liberal appropriations for the enlargement of the buildings and grounds of the Lunatic Asylum and adding to the comfort of its inmates. The aggregate cost of these works has probably exceeded a million of dollars. This money was borrowed by the Board of Public Works, on a pledge of the faith of the State, that she would pay the interest semiannually and ultimately redeem the principal.

"At this early day, railroads had recently been introduced, and our people did not know much about them. The first railroad in America was a short road built in Massachusetts about 1827. The idea then prevailed that it was impossible to overcome high grades with a railway; and if a man, at that time, had spoken of tunnelling the Blue Ridge, he would have been regarded as a madman.

"By degrees, however, the sentiment in favor of railroads