values did not surpass ninety millions, and slaves had fallen in
value to one hundred and fifty dollars. [Footnote: Va. Const. Conv.,
Debates (1829-1830), 178; Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 26.]

In a speech in the Virginia House of Delegates, in 1832, Thomas
Marshall [Footnote: Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 24, cited from
Richmond Enquirer, February, 2, 1832.] asserted that the whole
agricultural product of Virginia did not exceed in value the exports
of eighty or ninety years before, when it contained not one-sixth of
the population. In his judgment, the greater proportion of the
larger plantations, with from fifty to one hundred slaves, brought
the proprietors into debt, and rarely did a plantation yield one and
a half per cent. profit on the capital. So great had become the
depression that Randolph prophesied that the time was coming when
the masters would run away from the slaves and be advertised by them
in the public papers. [Footnote: Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 26.]

It was in this period that Thomas Jefferson fell into such financial
embarrassments that he was obliged to request of the legislature of
Virginia permission to dispose of property by lottery to pay his
debts, and that a subscription was taken up to relieve his distress.
[Footnote: Randall, Jefferson, III., 527, 561.] At the same time,
Madison, having vainly tried to get a loan from the United States
Bank, was forced to dispose of some of his lands and stocks;
[Footnote: Hunt, Madison, 380.] and Monroe, at the close of his term
of office, found himself financially ruined. He gave up Oak Hill and
spent his declining years with his son-in-law in New York City. The
old-time tide-water mansions, where, in an earlier day, everybody
kept open house, gradually fell into decay.