CHAPTER V.

THE GOOD NORTHERN LADY'S LETTER FROM THE SOUTH.

"No haughty gesture marks his gait,

No pompous tone his word;

No studied attitude is seen,

No palling nonsense heard;

He'll suit his bearing to the hour,

Laugh, listen, learn, or teach.

With joyous freedom in his mirth,

And candor in his speech."--ELIZA COOK.

[My friend, A. Freeman North, having read the foregoing, returned it

with a hasty note, in pencil, saying, "Please send me the Aunt's reply,

if you have it, or can procure it." I accordingly sent it, and we have

it here.]

MY DEAR NEPHEW,--

Your letter came while we had gone into the country for a fortnight.

Hattie is much improved, and I trust will soon be well. I gave her your

letter to read. She told me that she could not find it in her heart to

wonder at you for it; for once she should probably have written very

much in the same strain.

It was Easter Monday afternoon when our steamboat reached the wharf. We

took an open carriage and drove toward the hotel. As we reached the

centre of the city, the place seemed to be full of colored people, who

evidently had just come out of their meeting-houses. This was our first

view of the blacks. Our driver had to stop frequently while they were

crossing the streets, and we had full opportunity to enjoy the sight.

Hattie exclaimed, after looking at them a few moments,--

"Why, Uncle, they are human beings!"

"What did you suppose they were?" said he.

"Uncle," said she, "these cannot be slaves. Where do you suppose the

yokes are?"

"Now, Hattie," said he, "you were not so simple as to suppose that they

wore yokes, like wild cows and swine."

"Why," said she, "our papers are always telling about their being

'reduced to a level with brutes,' and every Sabbath since I was a child,

it seems to me, I have heard the prayer, 'Break every yoke!' Last Sabbath

our minister, you remember, said, 'Abraham was a slave-holder, David a

murderer, and Peter lied and swore.' Why, Uncle, these black people look

like gentlemen and ladies! If slave-holders are like murderers and

thieves, these cannot be their slaves!"

"Ask that elderly gentleman," said your Uncle. He was stopping for our

carriage to pass,--a portly man, with a ruffled shirt, and a

rich-looking cane, the end of which he kept on the ground, holding the

top of it at some distance from him.

"Please, sir, will you tell me if these are the slaves?" said Hattie.

He looked round, while he kept his arm and the top of his cane

describing large arcs of a circle.

"They are our colored people, Miss," said he, exchanging a smile with

your Uncle and me.

"Well, sir," said Hattie, more earnestly than before, "are they

slaves?"

He politely nodded assent, but was apparently interested by something

which caught his eye. He then took out a snuff-box, and, looking round

about him while opening it, said,--

"Some of them dress too much, Miss,--too much, altogether."

"Kid gloves of all colors," said Hattie, soliloquizing. "Red morocco

Bibles and hymn-books. What a white cloud of a turban! Part of the

choir, I take it,--those, with their singing-books. Elegant spruce young

fellow, isn't he, Aunt? with the violoncello. Venerable old couple,

there! over eighty, both of them. Well," continued Hattie, "I will give

up, if these are the slaves."

"Don't make up your mind too suddenly," said your Uncle; "you will see

other things."

"Uncle," said she, "what I have seen here in fifteen minutes shows me

that at least one half of that which I have learned at the North about

the slaves is false. Our novels and newspapers are all the time

misleading us."

"And yet," said your Uncle, "perhaps everything they say may be true by

itself; it may have happened."

"Why, Aunt," said she, "such a load is gone from my mind since looking

upon these colored people that I feel almost well. Why, there's a

wedding!" said she. "Driver, do stop! Uncle, please let us go in."

They left me, and went into a meeting-house, where a black bridegroom,

in a blue broadcloth suit, white waistcoat, kid gloves, patent-leather

shoes, and white hose, and an ebony bride, in white muslin caught up

with jessamines, and a myrtle wreath on her head, had gone in, followed

by a train of colored people. The white people, invited guests, it

seems, were already assembled. The sexton told your Uncle that the

parties were servants, each to a respectable family. This was a new

picture to Hattie. She said that in looking back to the steamboat, an

hour ago, the revelations made to her by what she had seen and heard, in

that short time, all new, all surprising and delightful, afforded her

some idea of the sensations of a soul after it has been one hour within

the veil. We sat in the carriage, and saw the procession pass out, when

the choir, who had been in the church before the wedding, practising

tunes, resumed their singing.

"Now the idea," said Hattie, after we had listened awhile, "that they

can forget that they are slaves long enough to meet and practise

psalm-tunes!"

"You evidently think," said your Uncle, "that they would not sing the

Lord's songs, if this were to them a strange land."

"They certainly have not hung their harps upon the willows by these

rivers of Babylon," said Hattie.

"Why, some of our people at the North are to-day writhing in anguish,

because of these slaves, and are imprecating God's vengeance, and

praying that the slaves may get their liberty, even by violence, while

the slaves themselves are practising psalm-tunes!"--

"And getting married," said your Uncle.

"Yes, Sir," said Hattie, "and this week our ---- paper will come to us

from New York loaded with articles about 'bondage' and 'sum of all

villanies,' and 'poor, toil-worn slaves.' Toil-worn! I never saw such a

lively set of people. Do see that little mite of a round black child, in

black jacket and pants; he looks like a drop of ink; Oh, isn't he

cunning! Little boy! what is your"--

"Come, come!" said your Uncle, "you are getting too much excited; you

will pay for all this to-morrow with one of your headaches."

But a new surprise awaited us. The driver stopped opposite a large,

plain-looking building, and told us that we had better step in. On

entering, we involuntarily started back, for I never saw a house more

densely filled; and all were blacks. It was a sable cloud; but the sun

was in it. The choir were singing a select piece. The principal

_soprano_, an elegant-looking black girl, dressed in perfect taste, held

her book from her in her very small hand covered with a straw-colored

glove. The singing was charming. We asked a white-headed negro in the

vestibule what was going on.

"Why, it is Easter Monday, Missis."

"Is this an Episcopal church?"

"No; Baptist."

"What are all these people here for?" said your Uncle.

"Why, to worship, Sir, I hope. It's holiday."

"Do they go to church, holidays?"

"Why," said he, with a smile and bow, "some of the best of 'em, p'raps."

We returned to the carriage.

"Think," said your uncle, "of two thousand people at the North spending

a part of 'Artillery Election Day' in Boston, for example, in going to

church!"

"Well," said Hattie, "if I were not to live another day, I would bless

God for having let me live to see these things. I am so glad to find

people happy who I had supposed were weeping and wailing."

We admonished her that she had not seen the whole of slavery.

A very interesting coincidence happened to us the next day. We took tea

at Rev. Mr. ----'s. A splendid bride-cake adorned the table. As Hattie

was admiring the ornaments on the cake, the lady of the clergyman smiled

and said,--

"This is from a colored wedding."

Sure enough, that black bride whom we saw the day before had sent her

minister's wife this loaf. Said Miss ----, "I was hurrying to get a silk

dress made last week, but my dressmaker put me off, because she was

working for Phillis B.'s wedding."

We both gave a glance at Hattie. She sat gazing at Miss ----, her lips

partly open, her eyes moistened,--a picture in which delight and

incredulity were in pleasant strife.

* * * * *

We have been in the interior a fortnight. One thing filled me with

astonishment, soon after I came here, namely, to find widow ladies and

their daughters, all through the interior of Southern States, living

remote from other habitations, surrounded by twenty, fifty, or a hundred

slaves. Hattie and I spent a week with a widow lady, whose head slave

was her overseer. There was not a white man within a mile of the house.

More than twenty black men, slaves, were in the negro quarter. I awoke

the first night, and said to Hattie,--

"Do you know that you are 'sleeping on a volcano'?"

"What do you mean, Aunt? You frighten me."

"Well, it will not make an eruption to-night," said I. "We will examine

into it to-morrow."

At breakfast I asked the lady how she dared to live so. I told her that

we at the North generally fancied Southern people sleeping on their

arms, expecting any night to be murdered by their slaves.

"It ought to be so, ought it not?" said she, "according to your Northern

theory of slavery; and it may get to be so, if your people persist in

some of their ways. My only fear is of some white men who live about two

miles off. I keep two of my men-servants in the house at night as a

protection against white depredators."

"But," said Hattie, "there have been insurrections. Are you not afraid

that your slaves will rise and assert their liberty?"

The lady smiled and was evidently hesitating whether to answer seriously

or not, when Hattie continued,--

"Aunt! now I see what you meant by our sleeping on a volcano."

"Yes," said I, "we at the North often speak of you Southerners as

sleeping on a volcano. Our idea is that the blacks here are prisoners,

stealing about in a sulky mood, vengeance brooding in their hearts, and

that they wait for their time of deliverance, as prisoners in our

state-prison watch their chance to escape."

"Well," said she, "believe I am the only slave on the premises. I am

sure that no one but myself is watching for a chance to escape. I would

run away from these people if I could. But what shall I do with them? I

am not willing to sell them, for when I have hinted at leaving, there is

such entreaty for me to remain, and such demonstrations of affection and

attachment, that I give it up.

"Here," said she, "are seven house-servants, large and small, to do work

which at the North a man and two capable girls would easily do. I have

to devise ways to subdivide work and give each a share. My husband

carried it so far that he had one boy to black boots and another shoes,

and these two 'bureaus' were kept separate."

"Oh," said I, "what a curse slavery is to you!"

"As to that," said she, "it is the negroes who are a curse, not their

slavery. So long as they are on the same soil with us, the subordination

which slavery establishes makes it the least of two evils. If there is

any curse in the case, it is the blacks themselves, not their slavery.

Were it not for their enslavement to us, we should hate them and drive

them away, like Indiana and Illinois and Oregon and Kansas. Now we

cherish them, and their interests are ours.

"Two distinct races," said she, "never have been able to live together

unless one was subordinate and dependent. This, you know, all history

teaches. Your fanatics say it should not be so; they talk about liberty,

equality, and fraternity, and put guns and pikes into the hands of the

inferior race, here, to help them 'rise in the scale of being,' as they

term it. What God means to accomplish in this matter of slavery I do not

see.

"Suppose, merely for illustration," said she, "that cotton should be

superseded. Vast numbers of our slaves might then be useless here. What

would become of them? We should implore the North to relieve us of them,

in part. Then would rise up the Northern antipathy to the negro,

stronger, probably, in the abolitionist than in the pro-slavery man; and

as we sought to remove the negroes northward and westward, the Free

States would invoke the Supreme Court, and the Dred Scott decision, and

then we should see, with a witness, whether the black man has 'any

rights' on free soil 'which the' original settlers 'are bound to

respect.' Think of bleeding Kansas, even, refusing to incorporate

negro-suffrage in her constitution, when left free to follow the

dictates of common sense, and a wise self-interest. I sometimes think

that that one thing, as a philosophical fact, is worth all the trouble

which Kansas has cost. It cannot be 'unholy prejudice against color.' It

is human nature asserting the laws which God has established in it.

"I never," said she, "find abolitionists quoting the whole of the verse

which says: 'and hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth.'"

"What," said I, "do they leave out?"

"'And hath fixed the bounds of their habitations,' are some of the next

words," said she.

But you will tire of this. I will resume my story. I will only say that

I told the lady that some of my gentleman friends would call her a

strong-minded woman.

* * * * *

Your letter made me think of something which happened to a lady, a

fellow-traveller of ours, a few weeks, ago. She came here to visit a

lady whose husband owns one hundred and fifty slaves. The morning after

she reached the plantation, as she told me, she was awaked by the

cracking of whips. She listened; human voices, raised above the ordinary

pitch, were mingling with the sounds. She lay till she could endure it

no longer. Coming down to the piazza, she saw a white man mending a

harness on a horse. "Those whips," said she, inquiringly,--"they have

rather interfered with my peace. Any of the colored people been doing

wrong?" He hesitated, and kept on fixing his harness, till, finally, he

turned round,--for he had been standing with his back to her and, as she

supposed, to hide his chagrin at being questioned on so trying a

subject. "Truth is, Madam," said he, taking a large piece of tobacco and

a knife from his pocket, and helping himself slowly,--"truth is, we have

so much of this work to do, we have to begin early. Sorry it disturbed

you;" and he gathered up the reins and drove off.

The whips kept up their racket. "Here," said she to herself, "is the

house of Bondage. How can I spend a month here?" She thought that she

would peep round the house. Yet she feared that she should be considered

as intruding into things which she had better not meddle with. But the

screams became so fearful that she could no longer restrain herself. She

rushed round the corner of the house, and came full against a black

woman rinsing some fustian clothes in a tub near the rain-spout. "Do

dear tell me," said she, "what they are doing to those people. Who is

whipping them? What have they done?" The black woman stopped, and looked

round without taking her hands from her tub, and then said, as she went

on rinsing, "Lorfull help you, Missis, dem's de young uns scaring de

birds out of de grain."

What bliss there was to her in that moment of relief! Six or eight

little negroes were sauntering about at their morning work, each having

a rude whip, with tape for a snapper, interrupting the hungry birds at

their breakfast.

I expected to see a wretched, down-trodden, alms-house looking set of

creatures; for the word _slave_, and all the changes which are rung on

that word, made me think only of people who are convicts, such as you

see in the state-prison yard at Charlestown, Mass. I never expected that

they would look me in the face, but would skulk by me as a spy or enemy.

A Christian heart is overjoyed to find what religion and society have

done for these colored people. If one who had never heard of "slavery"

should be set down here, the Northern idea of "bondage" would not soon

occur to him.

In the Presbytery which includes Charleston, S.C., there are two

thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine church-members, and of these one

thousand six hundred-and thirty-seven, more than one half, are colored.

In State Street, Mobile, there is a colored Methodist Church who pay

their minister, from their own money, twelve hundred dollars a year. Not

long since they took up a voluntary contribution for Home Missions,

amounting to one hundred and twenty dollars. Their preacher was sent by

the Conference, according to rotation, into another field, and the

blacks presented him with a valuable suit of clothes.

You see things here, good and evil, side by side, and mixed up together,

one thing counterbalancing another. If you reason theoretically upon

this subject, as you do "about the moon," to quote from your letter, it

is enough to make one almost a lunatic, and I do not wonder that some of

our good people at the North, who pore over this subject in this way,

are on the borders of insanity.

My great mistake at the North with regard to this subject of slavery

was, I reasoned about it in the abstract, instead of considering it in

connection with those who are slaves under our laws, bound up with us in

our civil constitution. Things might be true or false, right or wrong,

in connection with the enslavement of a race who had never been slaves,

which cannot be applied to the colored people of the South. Hence, the

arguments and the appeals founded on the wrongfulness of reducing you or

me to slavery are obviously misapplied when used to urge the

emancipation of these slaves. Moreover, my thoughts about slavery were

governed by my associations with the word _slave_, in its worst sense.

This is wholly wrong, and it is the source of most of our mistakes on

this subject.

Dreadful things happen here to some of the slaves in the hands of

passionate men. One slave who had run away was caught, and was beaten

for a long time, and melted turpentine was then poured upon his wounds.

He lingered for several hours. But the horror and execration which this

deed met with were no greater at the North than at the South. It cannot

be denied that slavery, as well as marriage, affords peculiar

provocations and facilities for cruel deeds,--according to the doctrine

of your friend and fellow-Sophomore. But in which section there is the

more of unpunished wickedness, I am slow to pronounce, for I do not wish

to condemn my own people, nor to justify others in their sins. An

excellent minister in Cincinnati not long since preached a sermon on

murder, in which he stated that "during his residence in that city,

there had been more than one hundred murders, or an average of two a

month, while in no instance had the perpetrator been executed." Reading

lately of a husband at the North throwing oil of vitriol from a bottle,

filled for the purpose, over his wife's face and neck, and of a Northern

clergyman feeding his young wife, as she sat on his knee, with apple on

which he had sprinkled arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were

not about the same everywhere. The theoretical right of a master, in

certain cases, to put his slave to death, without judge or jury, is

controlled by the self-interest of the owner who, of course, does not

recklessly destroy his own property. The slave-codes are no just

exponent of the actual state of things in slavery. For example,--by law

a master may not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week.

This has a barbarous look. But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of

the land you certainly would not be reminded of the "peck of corn,"

except by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below which if

an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be

prosecuted. Hence the "peck of corn." By the will of an eminent citizen

at the North, establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the

pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market value, at the

time, of a bushel of wheat. This is a fair standard for the unit of

measure.

In arguing with one who should insist that the abuses in slavery are a

reason for breaking up the institution in this country, I should feel

justified in maintaining that there are as many instances of a happy

relation between, master and servant in the Southern country as there

are happy marriages in the same number of households anywhere. Let there

be four millions of an inferior, dependent race mixed up with a superior

race, anywhere on earth, and of course, while human nature is what it

is, there will be hardships, wrong-doings, oppressions, and barbarisms.

At the North, we get scraps of anguish in the newspapers relating to

hardships at the South; and many pore upon them till they make

themselves half-crazed. All the circumstances serving to qualify the

narrative are sometimes withheld, and the stories are told with dramatic

art. There is sorrow enough everywhere to furnish material for such kind

of writing, especially to those who make it their calling, or find it

for their interest, to publish it. But the goings-on of life, at the

South, with its alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of

an oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference of

color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness and mercy which

Christianity and a well-ordered state of society provide, we at the

North do not see. Nor do our people consider that running away, and the

complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and

restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that

every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a

prison-ship.

While at the North, I remember reading an article, signed with initials,

in a prominent Massachusetts magazine, which contained this sentence:

"Arsenic is universally in possession of the negroes; but it is

considered the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the

fact should be kept as secret as possible." This was brought very

powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in

Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary's shop, a

tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden

mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work.

Now, I thought with myself, as I stood and enjoyed the sight, what a

palpable and eloquent, though undesigned and silent, refutation that is,

of all such Northern chimeras. If poisons are mixed with articles of

food or medicine by the negroes with any noticeable frequency, the sign

of a negro compounding medicines for public sale would surely be, to

customers, the most detersive sign which an apothecary could erect over

his premises. That little incident, and things like it, which are

meeting you at every turn, show the state of things here to be in

pleasing contrast to the horrors with which the imaginations of many of

us Northerners are peopled. I find, in the "Charleston Mercury," a good

cut of this "negro and golden mortar," and I send it to you as an

appropriate answer to much of your letter.

Our landlord, driving us about the country the other day, and needing

silver change, came to a gang of slaves in a field, and cried out,

"Boys, got any silver for a five dollar gold piece?" Several hands went

into as many pockets, at once, and a lively fellow among them getting

the start, jumped over the fence, and changed the money. I had been here

a month when I received your letter, and when I read it I at first

laughed as heartily, I suspect, as "the pro-slavery Senior" did. Then I

pitied you, and I pitied myself for my own former ignorance, and I

pitied very many of our Northern people, and, not the least, such

persons as poor "Isaiah," who I know are honest, but are grievously

misled. The word slavery is, to us, an awful word. Very much of our

anti-slavery feeling is a perfectly natural instinct. You cannot see

Java sparrows in a cage, nor even a mother-hen tied to her coop, without

a lurking wish to give them liberty. On thinking of being "a slave," we

immediately make the case our own, and imagine what it would be for us

to be in bondage to the will of another. We cannot easily be convinced

that this is not exactly parallel with being one of the slaves at the

South, nor that to be a slave does not have these things for its

inseparable conditions, which, we imagine, are always obtruding their

direful visages; namely, "auction-block," "overseer," "whip,"

"chattelism," "separations," "down-trodden," "cattle." Hence it is easy

for orators and preachers to work on our sympathies. There are scattered

facts enough to justify any tale which any public speaker chooses to

relate. I confess that my respect for many of our Northern people has

not risen, as I see them from this point of view. They ought not to be

so easily duped, so ready to believe evil, so quickly carried away by

partial representations, and so unwilling to take comprehensive views of

such a subject as this. I condemn myself in speaking thus; I partly

blame the novel-writers, and the editors of party papers, and political

leaders. But we ought at the North to understand this subject better,

to listen willingly to information from great and good men who have

spent their lives among the slaves, and to discriminate between the evil

and the good. The result may be that we shall not change our inbred

views, nor cease to dissent from those who advocate slavery as a

necessary means of civilization in its highest forms; but we shall

certainly differ from those who declare it to be, practically, an

unmitigated curse to all concerned. I am often made to wish that the

Southerners could be relieved of our Northern hostility and its effects

upon them, just to see them laboring, as they then would, to correct

certain evils which ought to be redressed. We are all apt to neglect our

duty, more or less, when we are suffering abuse.

Educate this people, some years longer, in the way in which they are

going on, and they cannot be slaves in any objectionable sense. Tens of

thousands of them, now, are not slaves in any such sense, and they never

can be; they could not be recklessly sold at auction; the owners would

revolt at it, and those in want of servants would meet with great

competition in obtaining such as these. A church-member who should

separate husband and wife for no fault, would be disciplined at the

South as surely as for inhumanity at the North. But oh, we say at the

North, only to think, that all those fine-looking people whom Hattie saw

from the barouche, that Monday afternoon, were liable on Tuesday morning

to have their kid gloves and finery taken from them, and to be marched

off to the auction-block! Hence our commiseration. And it is a most

groundless commiseration.

One thing is especially impressed on my mind. There being sins and evils

in slavery, as all confess, there are men and women here who are

perfectly competent to manage them without our help. There is nothing

that seems to me more offensive than our self-righteousness, as I must

call it, at the North, in exalting ourselves above our fathers and

brethren of all Christian denominations at the South; as though there

were no conscience, no Christian sensibility, no piety here, but it must

all be supplied from the North. When I hear these Southern ministers

preach and pray, and see them laboring for the colored people, and then

think of our designation of ourselves at the North, "friends of the

slave," and remember that all our anti-slavery influence has been

positively injurious to the best interests of the slave at the South, I

have frequently been led to exclaim, What an inestimable blessing it

would be to this colored race, and to our whole land, if anti-slavery,

in the offensive sense of that word, could at once and forever cease!

and I have as often questioned in my own mind whether slavery has not

been, and is not now, the occasion of more sin at the North than at the

South, and whether we at the North are not more displeasing in the sight

of God for the things which are said and done there, in connection with

anti-slavery, than the South with all the sins and evils incident to

slave-holding. I am coming to this belief.

The people who most frequently excite my commiseration are the free

blacks. They are "scattered and peeled." The Free States dread their

coming; they cannot rise in the Slave States. Even the slaves look down

upon them, sometimes. "Who are you?" said a slave to a free black, in my

hearing; "you don't belong to anybody!" Some States have given them

notice to quit, within a specified time, or they must be sold. Some here

insist that slavery is the only proper condition for the blacks, and

they would reduce them back to bondage. Others remonstrate at this as

cruel. Surely it is a choice of evils for them, to be free, or to be

slaves, if they remain here. There is one thought that affords a ray of

consolation,--they are better off, in either condition, than they once

were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind that their relation to

the whites, even in bondage, is, as the general rule, mercy to them,

while they are on the same soil with the whites. Allow it to be

theoretically wrong to be a slave,--it is, under existing circumstances,

protection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement which has yet

been proposed. I have not sufficient patience to argue with those, North

or South, who contend for slavery as a normal condition. I should be

called at the North "pro-slavery;" but the North is in a passion on this

subject. I am not, and I never can be, an advocate for this relation, in

itself, but as a present necessity.

I once heard a speaker at an anti-slavery meeting at home say, "They

tell us how elevated the blacks are, how intelligent, how pious; that

shows how fit they are for freedom, how wrong it is to hold such people

in bondage. As much as you raise the slaves in our opinion, you deepen

the guilt of the slave-holder."

This used to dwell much on my mind. I see the thing differently now. You

remember your Uncle Enoch, from Madras, who made your first Malay kite.

I remember a fable which he told you when he was flying the kite for the

first time. "A kite," he said, "high in the air, reasoned thus: If,

notwithstanding this string, I fly so high, what would I not do, if I

could break away! It gave a dash and became free, and was soon in the

woods." I do not mean to strain the comparison; but, certainly, a

_string_ has raised, and now keeps up, the colored race, here. How they

would do, if the string were cut, let wiser heads than mine decide.

They cannot have my scissors, at present.

The way to be friends of the slave, I now see, is to be the real friends

of their masters, and to pray that the influences of truth and love may

fill their hearts. Where this is the case, the slaves, as a laboring

class, are better off than any separate class of laboring people on

earth, both for this world and the next.

As to setting them free at once and indiscriminately, it would be as

unjust to them as it originally was to steal them from Africa. So it

appears to me. What God means to do with them, no one can tell. That He

has been doing a marvellous work of mercy for the poor creatures is

manifest. They were slaves at home; they have changed their situation to

their benefit. I have made up my mind to leave this great problem--the

destiny of the blacks--to my Maker, and, in the mean time, pray in

behalf of the owners, that they may have a heart to act toward them

according to the golden rule. I am glad that I am not oppressed with the

responsibility of ownership. Those who assume it should be encouraged by

us to treat their charge as a trust committed to them for a season. I do

not argue, much less plead, for the continuance of this system; it may

be abolished very soon, but that is with Providence. I have acquired no

feelings toward the institution which would not lead me to rejoice in

emancipation the moment that it would be for the good of the colored

people.

You are looking for my letter to furnish you with details of horrors in

slavery. Wherever poor human nature is, there you will find imperfection

and sin; and of course power over others is always liable to great

abuses. If I were to follow the plan of those who collect the horrors

of slavery and spread them out before our Northern friends, but should

gather merely the beautiful and touching incidents which I meet with,

and which are related to me, I could make people think that slavery is

not an evil. But I have not seen an intelligent Southerner who,

admitting all that we had said about the happiness of the slaves as a

class, did not go far beyond me in declaring that the presence of a

subject, abject race, cannot fail to be an evil. There is not an

ultraist at the North, whom, if he had their confidence, and were not

put in antagonism to him, the Southerners could not make ashamed, and

put to silence, by telling him evil things about slavery, which he had

never contemplated, and by admitting most fully things which he would

expect them to deny. But they are placed in a false position by his

clamor and anger, which set them against him and his doctrines. They

say, "Allowing all that the North asserts, here are the colored people

on our hands; what are we to do with them?" Not one of the Northern

"friends of the slave," nor all of them together, have ever proposed a

feasible plan with regard to the disposal of the slaves, which would be

kind or even humane to the blacks. Moreover, theoretical arguments

against slavery, and representations of it, from many quarters, are so

palpably wrong, that replies to them and refutations are counted by us

at the North as defences of "oppression;" which they were never designed

to be. I am surprised at the extent and depth of real anti-slavery

feeling at the South. Sometimes I question whether Providence is not

permitting the antagonism of the North and South to continue just to

compel the South to hold these colored people in connection with

themselves for their good, until God's purposes of mercy for them are

accomplished, and "the time, times and half a time" of their captivity

is fulfilled. If Northern resistance to slavery had ceased, perhaps the

South would have rid herself of the blacks sooner than would have been

for their good.

I hope that you will not think me "a strong-minded woman" in what I here

repeat to you of the opinions and expressions which I have gathered in

listening to the conversation of intelligent people on this subject. I

write these things for your instruction, and also as memoranda for my

own future use.

It is a cherished idea with many excellent people that the time will

come when there will not be a slave in this land, nor on the earth. If

they mean by this that the time will come when every man in every face

will see a brother and a friend, it is certainly true. But if they mean

by it that ownership in man will come to an end, their opinion and

prophecy are as good as those of men who should undertake to differ from

them, and no better; while both would be entirely presumptuous in being

positive on such a subject. Some people seem to think that, in the good

time coming, it is as though we should dwell out-of-doors, among flowers

and fruits, with few wants, these being supplied by the spontaneous

offerings of nature.

Others, however, suppose that we shall still need some to shovel, take

care of horses, work over the fire the greater part of the day in

preparing food, go of errands, and, in short, be a serving class. They

suppose that the same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and

wisdom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to men, will,

in the same sovereign way, create men and women with such degrees of

capacity and susceptibility as will lead inevitably to their being

superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love

and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness to all

concerned.

This being so, none of us will venture to say that no one of the

existing races of men will, to the end of time, be of such gentle,

dependent natures as to find their highest happiness and welfare in

being, generally, in the capacity of servants. Some of all races, we do

not object, may be servants to the end of time. No one will say to his

Maker that it will be unjust for Him to put a whole race of men forever

in that serving condition, making them, according to their capacity,

most happy in being so. For "Who hath been His counsellor?" That the

Africans are under a cloud of God's mysterious providence, no one

denies. I will not dictate to my Maker when He shall remove that cloud,

while I still endeavor to mitigate the effects of it upon my

fellow-creatures, the blacks. I do not know that he may not perpetuate,

to the end of time, a relationship of dependency to other races in this

African race. I know nothing about it. But I always feel impelled to say

these things, when I hear good men confidently predicting that ownership

in man will soon and forever come to an end. I reply, It may be in the

highest measure necessary to the happiness of the human family, at its

best estate, that one race, or that races, should be in the relation of

inferiors, finding their very best advantage in the relative place which

a sovereign God has assigned them in the scale of intelligence, by

holding that relation to the end of time. Of course it would cease to be

a curse; it would become one of those subordinate parts in the great

orchestral music of life which subdue and soften it for the highest

effect. If any one gets angry at such an idea, I leave him to his

folly; for he is angry without a cause at me, who have, in this idea,

expressed no wish that it may be true; and he is angry that his Maker

should do a thing which contradicts his pet notions about "freedom." But

the singular fact of slavery in this land, continued and defended under

all political changes, and now having the prospect of being more firmly

established than ever by means of our great national commotion on this

subject, is enough to make a serious mind reflect whether it be wholly

the work of Satan, or whether the providence of God be not concerned in

this great and difficult problem.

It is certainly remarkable that religion, which once gained such a

footing in Africa, so soon and entirely died out there, but that the

Africans, transported to our land, are of all races the most susceptible

to religious influences. If we should visit a foreign missionary field,

and learn that the mission had been blessed to the extent which has

characterized the labors of Christians at the South for their slaves, of

whom, according to the "Educational Journal," Forsyth, Ga., there are

now four hundred and sixty-five thousand connected with the churches of

all denominations, we should regard it as the chief of all the works of

God in connection with modern missions. It is this providential and

Christian view of slavery which quiets my mind. Now, suppose that,

contemplating a foreign missionary field where such results should be

found, one should object: "But there are evils there; people do not all

treat their dependants as they ought; hardships, cruelties, and some

barbarisms remain;"--we should not, I apprehend, proceed to scuttle such

a ship to drown the vermin. But I can see that Satan must be in great

wrath to find himself spoiled of so many subjects. One stronger than he

has brought here hundreds of thousands, who, in Africa, would have

perished forever, but who are now civilized and Christianized. Satan

would be glad, I think, to see American slavery come to an end. We have

no right to go and steal people in order to convert them; the salvation

of these slaves will not, in one iota, extenuate the guilt and

punishment of those who were engaged in the slave-trade. But "the wrath

of men shall praise Thee." In the writings of anti-slavery men I do not

remember to have met with cordial acknowledgments of what religion has

done for the slaves at the South. They coldly admit the fact, but often

they speak disparagingly of the negro's religion, which is full as good

as that of converts in our foreign missionary fields, as good, judging

from some things in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, as that of some

converts to whom he wrote. Our Northern anti-slavery people cannot bear

to have anything good discovered or praised in connection with slavery.

My own hopeful persuasion is, that great and marvellous works of Divine

Providence and grace are in reserve for the African people in their own

land, and that we are to prove to have been their educators. Most

sincerely do I hope, however, that the number of scholars and future

propagators of religion and civilization, imported here from Africa,

will not need to be increased, considering that one hundred and fifty

per cent. of deaths by violence take place in procuring a given number

of slaves. This is but one objection; others are sufficiently obvious.

Both parts of that passage of Scripture are exceedingly interesting:

"Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands

unto God." Egypt, the basest of kingdoms, shall yet send forth

first-rate men; and Ethiopia, even, shall be the worshipper of God. I

hope that these prophecies, though fulfilled once, are yet to have their

great accomplishment. This is my persuasion, and I trust that every

nation will be independent; but I shall not discard the Bible, if my

interpretation and hope should fail. Ethiopia is certainly stretching

out her hands unto God in our Southern country.

Hattie received some papers for children from a young friend at the

North, last week. After attending the colored Sabbath-school in ----,

and teaching a class of nicely-dressed, bright little "slave" girls, and

hearing the school sing their beautiful songs, with melodious voices,

such as, I can truly say, I never heard surpassed at the North, and

after looking upon the teachers, who represented the very flower of

Southern society, the superintendent being a man who would adorn any

station, you cannot fully conceive with what feelings I read, in one of

Hattie's little papers from the North, these lines, set to music for the

use of Northern children:

"I dwell where the sun shines gayly and bright,

Where flowers of rich beauty are ever in sight;

Here blooms the magnolia, here orange-trees wave;

But oh, not for _me_,--I'm a poor little slave.

"They say 'Sunny South' is the name of my home;

'Tis here that your robins and blue-birds are come,

While snows cover nests up, and angry winds rave;

_They_ may rest here,--not _I_; _I'm_ a poor little slave.

"Here beautiful mothers, 'mid splendors untold.

Their fairy-like babes to their fond bosoms fold;

My mammy's worked out, and lies here in the grave;

There's none to kiss _me_,--I'm a poor little slave.

"I've heard mistress telling her sweet little son,

What Jesus, the loving, for children has done;

Perhaps little black ones he also will save;

I ask him to take _me_, a poor little slave!"

No wonder, Gustavus, that you write such letters as your last, fed and

nourished as you are on such things as this. I took it with me that

evening to a missionary party at the house of Judge ----. I read the

lines. The ladies said nothing for a time, till at last one said to me,

"Such things have helped us in seceding." The Judge took the lines,

looked them over, and, smiling, handed them back to me, saying, "Madam,

is Massachusetts a dark place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the

dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh,"

said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now,"

said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign.

I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one

whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under

a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were

"under," in the Senior's room, but I said, "I have a nephew in a New

England college who has the Northern evil very badly. But he is so very

kind. Set him to write poetry about the South and he would produce just

such lamentable stanzas." Nothing will cure these fancies, about oranges

and magnolias not blooming for the little negroes, so well as to bring

these good people where they can see them pelting one another with

oranges, such as these poets never dreamed of, and making money by

selling magnolias to passengers at the railway stations.

"Here beautiful mothers, 'mid splendors untold," etc. I went with the

wife of a planter to her "Maternal Association" of slave-mothers. She

gathers the fifteen mothers among her servants once a fortnight, and

spends an afternoon talking to them about the education of their

children, and reading to them; and when she knelt with them and prayed,

I cried so all the time that I hardly heard anything. Oh what a tale of

love was that Maternal Association! "Here beautiful mothers 'mid

splendors untold," etc.;--those words kept themselves in my thoughts.

Now tell this to some great "friend of the slave," in Massachusetts, and

what will he say?--"All very good, I dare say; hope she will go a little

further, and give those fifteen their liberty." I sometimes say, "Must I

go back to the North, and hear and read such things?"

Yes, it is such things as these, simple and inconsiderable as you may

deem them, which are dividing us irreconcilably, and breaking up the

Union. It is not Messrs. ----, nor their frenzy, but it is Christian

brethren who allow their Sabbath-school children, for example, to say

and sing, "I've heard mistress telling her sweet little son, what Jesus,

the loving, for children has done," making the impression that such a

Christian mother leaves a colored child in her house, without

instruction, to draw the inference, if it will, that Jesus, perhaps,

will love a "poor little slave!" There are no words to depict the

feeling of injustice and cruelty which this conveys to the hearts of our

Christian friends at the South. "Let us go out of the Union!" they cry,

in their blind grief; but where will they go? for while our Northern

people write and publish and sing and teach their children to sing such

things, we can have nothing but mutual hatred, and perhaps exterminating

wars. We must change. If our Northern people would discriminate, and,

while retaining all their natural feelings against oppression and

man-stealing, would admit that "ownership in man" is not necessarily

oppression nor man-stealing, they would do themselves justice and

contribute to the peace of the country. "But O!" they say, "look at the

iniquitous _system_. If separating families, and destroying marriage,

and liberty to chastise at pleasure, and to kill, are not _sin_, what is

sin?" So they impute the _system_, and everything in it, to the people

who live under it. How a system can be a sin, it would puzzle some of

them, who say that all sin consists in action, to explain. And when they

came to look into the system itself, they would find, that if slavery is

to exist, some laws regulating it are, of necessity, self-protective,

and must be coercive. Even in Illinois, it is enacted that a black man

shall not be a witness against a white man. But if the slaves could

swear in court, every one sees that the whites must be at the mercy of

their servants. The testimony of the honest among them is procured,

though indirectly, and it has weight with juries; but it is a wise

provision to exclude them as sworn witnesses. So of other things, which

theoretically are oppressive, but practically right; while many things

in the system which are rigorous are as little used as the equipments in

an arsenal in times of peace.

When you quote John Wesley's words and apply them to the South: "Slavery

is the sum of all villanies," you unconsciously utter a fearful slander.

Whatever may have been true of British slavery, in foreign plantations,

in Wesley's day, the good man never would utter such words about our

Southern people could he see and enjoy that which gladdens every

Christian heart. If slavery be, necessarily, "the sum of all villanies,"

as you and many use the expression, the relation cannot exist without

making each slave-holder a villain, in all the degrees of villany. You

will do well to look into the cant phrases of "freedom," before you

indulge in the use of them. The bishops and clergy of the noble army of

Methodists in the South would not sustain their great chief in applying

the phrase in question to the actual state of things in the Southern

country. Wesley used those words concerning slavery in foreign colonies;

he had not seen it mixed up with society in England, as it is in the

South.

Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them also with what they

would be in Africa, or if set free, to remain in connection with the

whites, slavery is not a curse. To be free is, of course, in itself a

blessing. But it depends on many things whether, under existing

circumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse. Our people

generally insist that it must be, and therefore that it is. Here they

are mistaken, as I now view the subject. The British people and the

French, looking at the blacks in a colony, settle the question of

emancipation in their own minds without much difficulty. But it would be

found to be a different thing to emancipate the colored race, to live

side by side with the English people in the mother-country. In that

case, a contest between the two races for the possession of power, and

innumerable offences and practical difficulties, would, in time, lead to

the extermination, or expatriation, of one of the two races, or to their

intermarriage, if the universal history of such conjunction of races is

any guide.

I do not wonder that the good lady with the "marsh-mallow" exclaimed so

at your groundless commiseration of the sick among the slaves. You have

no more idea of the practical relation between the whites and the

blacks, the owners and the slaves, than most of the English people, who

have never been here, have of our Federal and State relations.

I will tell you an incident which I know to be literally true.

A lady from a free state was visiting at the South. Calling upon a

married lady, a near relative of one who has been Vice-President of the

United States, she found her with a little sick black babe at her

breast.

The Northern lady started with astonishment. I am not informed whether

she was what is called among us a "friend of the slave;" the eminent

lady friend whom she visited certainly was such, in the best sense. The

Northern lady's feelings of repugnance would not be found to be peculiar

to her among our Northern people. The little babe died on the lap of the

Southern lady.

So you see that there are more things here than are dreamed of in your

philosophy. When you stigmatize the Southerners as oppressors, my only

consolation for you is that you know not what you do. Imagine, now, the

Rev. Mr. Blank, at the North, relating that little incident: "Behold and

see this monstrous picture of infinite hypocrisy: The Slave-power with a

slave at its breast! Yes, rather than lose one or two hundred dollars'

worth of human "property," a distinguished lady slave-holder will give

her nourishment to a slave-infant. So they fatten the accursed system

out of their own bodies and souls." Such is a fair specimen of this

man's frenzy; and there are multitudes all over the Free States who will

listen to such language and applaud it. But how cruel it is, how low and

wicked! I pray Heaven to deliver you from being an abolitionist in the

cast of your mind, your temper, and spirit. Nothing gives me such an

idea of the world of despair as when I read ultra anti-slavery speeches.

I see how the lost will hate God's mysterious providence, and revile it;

and how they will fight with each other, and pour out their furious

invective and sarcasm and vituperation, and scourge one another with

their fiery tongues, as they now do, when some one of the party appears

to falter. If there were not something truly good in connection with

slavery amid all its evils, I think such men would not oppose it.

Pray, who are these gentlemen, and who are their extremely zealous

anti-slavery friends of more respectable standing, that they should have

such immense instalments of sympathy and pity for the "poor slave"?

Their neighbors are as susceptible as they to every form of human

sorrow; they know as much, their judgments are as sound, their motives

are as good as theirs. Had these zealous people made new discoveries,

or, were the subject of slavery new, we might give them credit for being

on the hill-tops, while we were in the vales. This passionate sympathy,

on the part of some, for "the down-trodden," as they call the negroes,

is not like zeal for a theological, or a political, or a scientific,

doctrine, which would justify its adherents in rebuking the error and

indifference of others; for if slavery be as they represent it, the

proofs of it must be as self-evident as starvation. What if a class of

men among us should rage against those who do not contribute largely to

the Syrian sufferers, as the zealous anti-slavery people reproach and

even revile those who do not see slavery with their eyes? We should then

say, "Friends, who are you, that you should claim to have all the

virtuous sensibility?"

But more than this,--I doubt, I venture to deny, and that on

philosophical grounds, the true philanthropy of these people. For true

love and kindness always create something of their own kind where they

have full power. Are there any words or acts of love, kindness,

gentleness, mercy, toward others, in the speeches and doings of the

zealous anti-slavery people?

I wish that you had been with me, one evening, in a corner of the

Methodist meeting-house, where I sat and enjoyed the slaves'

prayer-meeting. I had been filled with distress that day by reading, in

Northern papers, the doings and speeches at excited meetings called to

sympathize with servile insurrection. In this prayer-meeting the slaves

rose one after another, went in front, and repeated each a hymn, then

resumed their seats, while some one, moved by the sentiments of the

hymn, would lead in prayer. A white gentleman presided, according to

custom, and I was the only other white person present. Going to that

meeting with the impressions upon my heart of the terrible excitements

which you were witnessing at home, and saying to myself, "O my soul,

thou hast heard the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war!" you

cannot imagine what my feelings were when the largest negro that I ever

saw rose and stood before the desk, and repeated the following hymn by

Rev. Charles Wesley. The first lines, you may well suppose, startled me,

and made me think that the insurrection had reached even here.

"Equip me for the war,

And teach my hands to fight;

My simple, upright heart prepare,

And guide my words aright.

"Control my every thought,

My whole of sin remove;

Let all my works in thee be wrought,

Let all be wrought in love.

"Oh, arm me with the mind,

Meek Lamb! that was in thee;

And let my knowing zeal be join'd

With perfect charity.

"With calm and temper'd mind

Let me enforce thy call;

And vindicate thy gracious will,

Which offers life to all.

"Oh, may I love like thee,

In all thy footsteps tread;

Thou hatest all iniquity,

But nothing thou hast made.

"Oh, may I learn the art,

With meekness to reprove;

To hate the sin with all my heart,

But still the sinner love."

You must read this hymn to "Isaiah," and tell him about the

prayer-meeting. While the "friends of the slave," as you call them, are

holding such humiliating meetings as you describe, in behalf of the

slaves, and are vexing themselves and chafing under the imagination of

their unmitigated sorrows and "oppression," the slaves themselves, all

over the South, are holding prayer-meetings, and are blessing God that

they are "raised 'way up to heaven's gate in privilege." As I sat in

that prayer-meeting I could almost have risen and asked the prayers of

the slaves in behalf of many at the North who are making themselves and

others nearly insane on their behalf. But I thought of my former

ignorance and prejudice, and said, "And such were some of you."

I will tell you some of the little incidents which meet one every day,

and which give you impressions respecting the relations between the

whites and blacks, full as instructive as those received in any other

way.

Crossing a public street, which is steep, in the city of ----, a

truckle-cart came by me at great speed, drawn by a white boy, with

another white boy pushing, and seated in it, erect and laughing, was a

fine-looking black boy of about the same age as his white playmates.

Around the corner of another street there came by me, with a

skip-and-jump step, two white girls, about thirteen years old, and

between them--the arms of the three all intertwined--was another girl of

the same age, as black as ebony. On they went jumping, and keeping step,

and singing.

I had not been accustomed to such sights in Beacon Street, on my visits

to Boston. "Friends of the slave," as we most surely are, and some of us

being decorated with that name by way of distinction, significant of our

all-absorbing business "to raise the black man at the South to the

condition of a human being," when we get them there we are not greeted

in the streets with pictures of white and black children on such terms

as appeared in these two casual incidents. Nothing at first struck me

with greater wonder at the South than to see the most fashionably

dressed ladies in the most public streets stop to help a black woman

with a burden on her head, if she needed assistance, or to hold a gate

open for a man with a wheelbarrow.

One white boy cried to another across a street, "Come along, it's most

time to be in school." The other answered, in a petulant tone, "I a'n't

going to school." A tall, white-headed negro was passing; his black

surtout nearly touched the ground; he had on his arm a very nice

market-basket, covered with a snow-white napkin, and in his right hand a

long cane. Hearing what the last boy said, he came to a full stand, put

down his basket, clasped his long cane with both hands, and brought it

down on the brick sidewalk with three quick raps, and then a rap at each

of these points of admiration: "What! what! what!" said he, drawing

himself up to express surprise, and calling out with magisterial voice;

"Go to school! my son! go to school! and larn! a heap!" the cane making

emphasis at every expression. The white boy retreated under the

impression of a well-deserved, though kind, rebuke. He did not call the

old man "nigger," nor in any way insult him.

But here is an incident of a different kind.

Standing to talk with a man who had charge of my baggage, in the

passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers'

apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse

look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black

man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity

in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would

have commanded attention anywhere. The white man, seeing him enter the

wrong door, cried out to him with an impudent voice, ordered him back,

pointed him to the proper room, and told him to go in there and make

himself "oneasy," with a laugh at his own attempt at inaccurate talk as

he cast a glance at some white men standing by. The black man was his

slave. The natural and proper order of things was reversed in their

relation to each other.

I looked at the black man as he took his seat, and, without being

observed, I kept my eye on his face. He cast his eye out of the window,

as though to relieve a struggle of emotions, but a calm expression

settled down upon his features.

A Southern gentleman, a slave-holder, witnessing the scene with me,

said,--

"Disgusting! There, madam, you have one of the great evils of

slavery,--irresponsible power in the hands of men who are not fit to be

intrusted with authority over others. No man, I sometimes think, ought

to be allowed to hold slaves till he has submitted to examination as to

character, or brings certificates of a good disposition. I know that

man. His father was from ---- [a New England State.] He is what we call

a torn-down character. His neighbors all"--but the signal was given for

starting, and the conversation was broken off.

My first thought was, How glad I would be to set that man free from such

bondage! The next thought was, Where would I send him to be free from

"the power of the dog?" I had been reading, in a Boston paper, a lecture

delivered in Boston, by a distinguished "friend of the slave," against

Mr. Webster and Mr. Choate, before an "immense audience." I thought, How

much better it is to be a Christian slave, even to this master, than to

sit in the seat of the scornful, applauding such a lecture!

The poor slave was having his probation and discipline, as we all have

ours, and he was suffering, as we all do in our turns, from an impudent

tongue. Little did he think that a fellow-creature, looking at him at

that moment, was reminded, by his meekness under insult, of Him, our

example, who, under such provocation, opened not his mouth, and that I

was made to remember, as I stood there and received instruction from

him, that the best alleviation and cure of anguished sensibility under

ill-treatment is in this same silence, and in thoughts of Jesus.

After the cars had started, I took my Bible from my carpet-bag, and read

these passages: "Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not

only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is

thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering

wrongfully." Then this is enforced by the example of our incarnate God

and Saviour, who is held up to Christian slaves as their example; and in

this connection, not only in this passage, but elsewhere in speaking to

slaves, the Apostle brings in the most sublime truths relating to

redemption. You will be struck with this in reading what is said to

slaves, that in several cases, the train of thought proceeds directly

from their condition and its duties, to the most sublime and beautiful

truths of salvation. How divinely wise did these exhortations to slaves

appear to me, that morning, in contrast with the spirit of the Northern

abolitionist, and his talk about "Bunker Hill," "'76," and his

"grandfather's old gun over the mantel-piece," and his injunctions to

slaves as to the duty of stealing, and even murdering, if necessary, to

effect their liberty. This is not the spirit of the New Testament. The

idea of submission on the part of "servants" to "masters," of "pleasing

them well in all things," of "fear and trembling," "not purloining but

showing good fidelity in all things," is not found in the Gospel of the

abolitionist. He complains that we do not send the true Gospel to the

South. There are passages in the Epistles addressed to slaves, which, if

faithfully regarded, would make fugitive slave laws for the most part

needless. No wonder that the New Testament, with its exhortations to

meekness and patience under suffering, and the duty of those who are

"under the yoke," and of masters as being "worthy of honor," and the

caution that the slave do not take undue liberty where his master is a

believer, nor assert the doctrine of equality in Christ as a ground for

undue familiarity, or disobedience, is repudiated by the vengeful spirit

of the abolitionist. How well the Apostle understood him! "If any man

teach otherwise," that is, contrary to these injunctions as to the duty

of slaves who have believing masters, "he is proud, (that is the leading

feature of his error) he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about

questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings,

evil surmisings." What an anomaly it would be to have an abolition

convention opened with reading a collect of Paul's inspired directions

to masters and slaves.

But we never hear anything quoted from the Bible on the subject but

"break every yoke!" "let the oppressed go free!" "undo the heavy

burdens!" I was telling a slave-holder of the frequency with which we

hear these expressions in public prayer. "I could join in every one of

them," said he; "I am for breaking every yoke, South and North,

unbinding every heavy burden, and destroying every form of oppression.

But they must be actual, not theoretical, nor imaginary."

This gentle slave in the cars, we will suppose, refuses opportunities to

escape, but complies with the exhortations of the New Testament,

"enduring grief, suffering wrongfully." His master is at last touched by

his meekness, his "not answering again." I should relate only that which

I know to have happened, should I say, that one day this master is

filled with distress on account of sin. He goes out into the

cotton-field and finds Jacob.

"Jacob," he says, "I am a great sinner. Jacob, I feel that I am sinking

into hell. Jacob, pray for me. I mean to turn about, if I live."

"Dats jest what I've sought de Lord for, massa, dis six months coming

New Year. Let's go up into de loft; it's whar I've wrastled for you in

prayer."

He leads the way. The floor of the loft is covered with cotton-seed. A

wheelbarrow is in the middle of the floor. Jacob takes off his jacket,

and with it brushes the cotton-seed away from one side of the

wheelbarrow, lays the jacket down for his master to kneel upon, and goes

to the other side. Like Jacob at Peniel, he has power over the angel,

and prevails; he weeps and makes supplication unto him. The master

breaks out in prayer. He rises and says,--

"Jacob, forgive me if I've been unkind to you; I've seen that you are a

Christian; now if you want to leave me for anybody else, say so."

"Thank you, massa; only sarve de Lord with gladness for all de good

things he has done for you, and I'll sarve you de same. Please go home

and tell missis; she told me to pray for you; 'twill finish up her joy."

This is better than running away and going to Canada. Those Christians

who send the Gospel to the South by missionaries and religious tracts,

to promote such scenes as this, do a better work than though they

withheld missionaries and tracts from one half of the nation, and called

it "Standing up for Jesus."

I am sometimes inclined to put down all that I see and hear, good and

bad, and publish a book to satisfy my truly candid but mistaken friends

at the North as to the real truth on this subject. But I have in mind

the way in which similar works have already been received and treated by

an unreasoning, passionate North. I have amused myself sometimes in

imagining what certain writers would say to some of the incidents which

I have related in this letter. Let me attempt to show you the spirit and

manner of our Northern reviewers when one ventures to state favorable

things relating to slavery. I will take some of the incidents already

related in this letter and let these men review them. I am perfectly

familiar with their style, from having been employed in helping your

uncle prepare the notices of new publications for the "---- Review."

Here, then, I will give you first a supposed notice of my little book,

should I make one, from a Northern religious newspaper, quoting, in all

cases, the identical expressions from articles which I have read:--

"'The authoress, it seems, is yet in her Paradise of slavery.' Her

'opulent friends' and the slave-holders generally, it would appear, got

up little tableaux for her, to impose on her good-nature. Knowing the

times when she took her daily walks, they put the fattest and sleekest

black boy whom they could find, into a truckle-cart, and made two of the

sons of the 'most opulent' citizens race down hill with him. Slavery,

therefore, is not the bad thing she and we had supposed. The female

teacher of a school in the neighborhood of her daily walk was suborned,

most probably, by the 'opulent' ladies of the place, to practise another

pleasing trick. Two white girls and a black girl were made to practise

running with their arms interlocked, and one day, as our friend came in

sight, they were pushed out to astonish her with one instance of white

girls hugging a negro slave-child. No doubt our friend, on seeing these

three together, soliloquized as follows:--

"See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending,

All nature now glowing in Eden's first bloom."

The old negro, respectable and well off, was one of those rare

exceptions to surrounding degradation which you now and then see in

Southern cities. The poor slave in the cars, gentle, timid, quivering,

was the true exponent of slavery. Had our authoress filled her book with

such illustrations exclusively, she would have written more truthfully,

more for her reputation with the real 'friends of the slave,' and, we

confess, more in accordance with our taste."

A writer in a very respectable publication at the North, already

referred to, gave us several years ago a curious piece of criticism on

some publication which he regarded as too favorable to slavery. His

pages, some of them, were crowded with daggers, in the shape of

exclamation marks,--two, three, four, and, in one instance, five, at the

end of quotations from the book under review. It was he that made the

assertion about the "arsenic," as being "universally in the hands of the

slaves."

I shall now let him review my little stories. I quote many of his

words:--

"'To show the ignorance and simplicity of our travelling' lady, we give

the following,--and what will the North say to this new argument in

favor of slavery? namely, a truckle-cart! a black boy riding!! two white

boys giving him a ride!!! and three girls, one of them black! arm in

arm!! romping. 'It is not the fault of this writer, that she cannot

understand a principle;' 'she is a New England Orthodox,'--'and a fair

specimen of the limitations of that type of mankind.' 'But does not the

lady know,' why negro boys are put in truckle-carts? 'If not, any of her

Southern friends could have told her.' We can tell her; 'we have lived

at the South.' These white boys were sent on an errand with their cart,

and to increase its momentum down hill, and, withal, to tease and worry

a fellow-creature, with a skin not colored like their own, they made

this poor slave-boy get in. She should have seen the poor creature

trudging home, up hill, under a Southern sun, after the little white

tyrants had done with him, unless it was the case, which we more than

half suspect, that the ride was a stratagem to convey the poor child to

the auction-block. 'How the merry dogs,' the white boys, must have

laughed at this Northern lady's complacent looks at them. She had no

tears for the poor old white-headed negro, who, hearing the word

'school' from the lips of his white young masters, had such a rush of

sorrow come over his soul at the thought of the midnight ignorance in

which the slave-driver's whip had kept him, that he actually dropped his

burden in the public street, and uttered incautious words, for which, no

doubt, old as he was, he caught a terrible flogging. "Why, in the name

of humanity, did not the authoress load her pages, as she might so

easily have done, with scenes like that in the cars? There is slavery!

patent! undisguised! In the other cases it is slavery, indeed, but

covered with the pro-slavery lady's snow-white napkin."

Here is a review of me and of my little stories, by a distinguished New

England divine, and author. He has written much on slavery. Having

prepared notices of some of his writings on this subject, I am familiar

with his turns of thought and modes of expression. I have great regard

for him, and always read him with pleasure and profit, not excepting

when he writes as follows, in doing which he has the approbation of

large numbers among the Northern clergy of all denominations, except the

Episcopalians,--who, more than other Northern ministers, are remarkably

free from ultraisms.

"Concerning the truckle-cart, 'we would say this,' that unquestionably

'the moral power' of the incident was all which the writer assumes, but

its 'logical sequences' 'we utterly deny.' Slavery is evil, and only

evil, and that continually; now, to infer that agreeable relations can

subsist between the children of masters and the children of slaves under

the 'immense, malignant, and all-pervading influence of slavery,'

abhorred of Heaven and all good men, does violence to all sound

principles of reasoning, and is at war with 'the manifest rules of

Providence.'

"And as to the three girls 'we are prepared to say' that the author 'did

not look deep enough' into the philosophy of human motives under the

controlling power of slavery. For slavery makes men improvident, and

their children also; (see 'Judge Jay,' 'Weld on Slavery,' etc.) These

white girls, therefore, probably had no money in their pockets; it was

the time of recess; they were hungry; the black child we presume had

money in her pocket, for by the authoress's own showing (in the story of

a slave changing a gold piece for the landlord), slaves may have money

of their own. Had our authoress followed her trio down to the

confectioner's, there she might have seen these white children cajoling

the poor black, and making her treat them; in preparation for which they

affected to put their arms around her; but, in the true diabolical

spirit of slavery, it was only to devour.

"We have no space to enter philosophically into the instruction afforded

us by the old negro and the schoolboys; but there is deep meaning in it,

which the true friends of the slave, who may read it, will do well to

ponder. The old negro is the prophetic representation of his

down-trodden race, crying with bewildered accents, he heeds not where,

'Go to school! boys; go to school!' Let a united North echo back his

words, suiting their political action to them, and saying to the colored

children, with an authority which shall shake the very pillars of the

Union, 'Go to school, boys! go to school!'

"Nor can we, for the tears which dim our sight, speak as we would of

the wretched master and his amiable slave in the cars. The sketch

reminded us of the best in 'Uncle Tom.' We need books filled with such

pictures, to electrify the slumbering sensibilities of the North. Wanton

candor in speaking of slavery, is the most unpardonable of sins. There

is a time to tell the whole truth; but the wise man says. There is 'a

time to keep silence.'"

I did not pretend, Gentlemen Reviewers, that my little, pleasing

incidents were arguments in favor of slavery; you should not have been

so alarmed; you are really rude; I almost feel disposed to say to you,

for each of my tales, as the Rosemary said to the Wild Boar,--

"Sus, apage! haud tibi spiro;"

which, not having a poetical friend near to translate for me, I venture

to render as follows:--

"Thus to the Boar replied the Rosemary:

O swine, depart! I do not breathe for thee."

In noticing the manner in which many Northern writers, some of them

amiable men, receive the candid views and statements of travellers and

visitors at the South, I have been made to think of a company of the

owls, such as you see in Audubon, listening to the reading of David's

one hundred and fourth Psalm, in which he describes nature. Not a smile

of satisfaction; on the contrary, if you

"Molest the ancient, solitary reign"

of prejudice in their minds against the South, they either mope, or make

a sad noise. With regard to others, are there any limits to their anger

and denunciations? You may, without difficulty, imagine how this

appears to the Southerner, who knows the truthfulness of the

representations which excite this passionate resentment, and how much

the character of the North for ordinary candor falls in his esteem, and

how little disposed he is to heed their admonitions, and how absurd

their demands upon his ecclesiastical bodies to suffer their

remonstrances, appear, together with their subsequent withdrawal of

fellowship for the reason publicly assigned; namely, that the South will

not let them admonish her "in the Lord." Indeed, whatever may be true of

slavery, the South looks on the great body of zealous anti-slavery

people as being in as false and unnatural a state of excitement as the

Massachusetts people were in the times of witchcraft. A great delusion

is over the minds of many at the North, like one of our eastern

sea-fogs. It always makes a Southerner merry, when listening, in New

York or Boston, for example, to a lecture, if the speaker concludes a

sentence with some allusion to "freedom," and the people clap and stamp.

That the blood should tingle in our veins at so slight a cause, makes

him think that we are certainly in need of something worthy of our great

excitability, and that we are thankful for small favors in that way. He

does not think less than we of liberty where an occasion makes that name

and idea appropriate; but that the condition of his slaves should

reconsecrate for us all the old battle-cries of freedom, seems to him

pitiably weak. It shows him how incompetent we are to deal with the

acknowledged evils of slavery; and there are those at the South who are

stirred up by us to take extreme views of an opposite kind, which good

people there very generally deplore.

A Southern lady here tells me that some time since, being on a visit at

the North, she received through the post-office anonymous letters with

extracts from newspapers containing little items of woe, declared to

have been experienced at the South, with here and there delirious abuse

of slave-holders and frenzied words about freedom. She could have

matched every one of them, she said, with wife-murders at the North,

during her visit. In dealing with people like the slaves, of course men

of brutal passions, provoked by their stupidity and negligence, or

exasperated by their crimes, and, in cases of ungovernable anger,

venting their displeasure upon their negroes under slight or merely

imaginary affronts, give occasion to tales of distress which are nowhere

mourned over more deeply than at the South. These cases are the natural

results of a superior and inferior class of society, standing in the

relation, the one to the other, of proprietor and dependant, and such

evils are not peculiar to this institution. Human nature is the same

everywhere. The South is willing to have the abuses of irresponsible

power among them compared with abuses, discomforts, disadvantages

elsewhere. Grant that an owner may abuse his liberty; ownership leads to

more of care and protection than of abuse and cruelty. The slaves are

here; the question is not, What would be the best possible condition for

these people under the sun, but, What is best for them, being on this

soil. "Set them all free," is the answer of some. Half the ministers at

the North every Sabbath pray for the slaves thus: "Break every yoke; let

the oppressed go free." If this means, Give the slaves their liberty,

this would be their most direful calamity; they would be chased away

from every free state, in process of time, and the Dred Scott decision

would be invoked, even in Massachusetts, by its present most bitter

opposers, and in its most misrepresented forms, as a defence of the

American white race against the blacks. "Set them free and hire them!"

is the reply of others. This, among other effects, would make them a far

more degraded people than they now are. Slavery keeps them identified

with the whites; they are more respectable and respected by far, in this

relation, than they can be, in the circumstances of the case, if they

are detached from the whites. There is no expression which conveys a

more absolute error than this, and we often meet with it: "He ceased to

be a slave, and became a man." I read lately the report of a lecture at

the North, by an eminent gentleman, of great moral worth, and highly

respected. He said, "A man cannot be, voluntarily, a slave, without

having his manhood crushed out of him." That might be true in our case;

but having seen manhood forced into benighted natures here, and splendid

specimens of man as the result, I was, by this remark, reminded again of

the delusiveness which there is sometimes in the best of logic. You gave

us a good specimen in your admirable illustration of no water in the

moon. A comparison of the slaves with the free negroes of the North, and

in Canada, and with the free colored population in some of the Slave

States, will satisfy any impartial spectator that manhood is full as

conspicuous in the slaves, as a body, as in the free negroes.

Here are two extracts from Northern papers, which, true or false, awaken

compassion in every human bosom toward the free colored people. Indeed,

allowing these statements, so unfavorable to them, to be mostly false,

it reveals the antipathy of the white to the colored race when the

blacks come to seek equality with the whites. Let these free blacks be

mixed up in large proportions with society in England and Scotland, and

if Canadians feel as they are here represented, we may be sure that the

present tone of the British people with regard to American slavery and

the blacks, would also be modified. But here are the extracts:--

"Getting Sick of Them.--The colored persons of Toronto, having had a

meeting to denounce Colonel John Prince, a member of the Canadian

Parliament, for speaking against them, he publishes a reply, in

which he says,--

"'It has been my misfortune, and the misfortune of my family, to

live among those blacks (and they have lived upon us) for

twenty-four years. I have employed hundreds of them, and with the

exception of one, named Richard Hunter, not one of them has done for

us a week's honest labor. I have taken them into my service, fed and

clothed them, year after year, on their arrival from the States, and

in return have generally found them rogues and thieves, and a

graceless, worthless, thriftless set of vagabonds. This is my very

plain and simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would

be indorsed by all the Western white men, with very few

exceptions.'"

"Underground R.R. Return Trains.--The 'Cleveland Plaindealer' states

that every steamboat arriving at that place brings back from Canada

families of negroes, who have formerly fled to the Provinces from

the States. They are principally from Canada West. They describe the

life and condition of the blacks in Canada as miserable in the

extreme. The West is, therefore, likely to have large accessions to

its colored population. The Canada folks do not want them, and have

shown a disposition in their Parliament, and otherwise, to

discourage their coming to, or remaining in the Provinces. In some

instances, the question of ejecting those now resident there, has

been discussed. Our Western States will be likely to experience a

similar attack of the _black vomito_, when they shall have become

satisfied with this peculiar Southern luxury. In some localities the

superabundant free negro population has already become a burden,

while in others they are under severe restrictions, which amount

almost to an exclusion from the limits of the state.

"Should this exodus from Canada continue to any great extent, it

would throw such a burden upon those states which have adopted the

most liberal policy towards the negro, that it would occasion a

reaction in the public sentiment which would compel them to abandon

their abolition doctrine and practice, for their own

self-protection. We should then hear of fewer attempts to abduct

slaves from the slave-holding states; and abolitionists would be

content to allow slaves to remain under the care and protection of

their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed

and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of

the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil

and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there

is no alternative but to take them to their own bosoms."

Compare with this the condition of the free blacks in South Carolina.

The amount of property held by them is $1,600,000; their annual taxes,

$27,000; and the free blacks own slaves to the amount of $300,000 in

value.

The above statements teach us that any attempts to force the Southern

slaves away from their present relation, are in violation of the laws of

Providence concerning them. If they become free in a natural way, and

can provide for themselves, or be provided for, it is well; otherwise,

the South, and their present relation to the white race, are the bounds

of their habitation fixed for them by an all-wise God, till his purpose

concerning them as a race shall be made manifest. The people of the Free

States ought to thank God that the South is willing to keep the colored

people. Instead of inflaming our passions against the abstract

wrongfulness of holding fellow-men in bondage, we should consider that

theoretical justice to the slaves as a whole would be practical

inhumanity. The destiny of the colored race here is a dark problem. But

it is not for us to penetrate the future. When God is ready to finish

his purposes with regard to their continuance with us, He will open a

way for their liberation; in the mean time it is our duty to protect

them from their own improvidence and from the neglect and degradation

which they would suffer at the hands of the Free States. Instead of

aiding slaves to escape, or rejoicing when we hear of runaways, I say we

should feel grateful, on our own account, and for the slaves, that the

South is willing to harbor them, and we ought to consider that the very

best thing to be done for them is to encourage the South in treating

them well, mitigating their trials and sorrows, and, in short, complying

with the Apostle's doctrine and exhortations as to the duty of masters.

But we have a way, at the North, of delivering over our Southern

brethren to supposed terrible liabilities in their relation to the

slaves. "They are sleeping on a volcano;" "they keep weapons under their

pillows;" "they are always in fear." And when a servile insurrection

takes place, many close their eyes and lift their hands, and say,

"Perhaps the day of retribution is come! They have been 'sinning against

the Northern conscience;' they have been resisting our well-meant

efforts for their good; we would not stir up the slaves against them,"

(some kindly say,) "but if they rise, did not Jefferson say, 'There is

not an attribute of the Almighty that would take part with the whites?'"

Thus we prefer to take Jefferson's opinion on this subject, though

hundreds as good and wise as he, and quite as decided in their

acceptance of the Christian religion, differ totally from him. In

strictly political matters, many of the same people who love to quote

Jefferson against modern slave-holders, are of opinion that time and

experience give modern statesmen some advantages in their judgments. As

to Jefferson's oft-quoted remark, above cited, it appears to me that if

the Almighty has anywhere set the seal of his divine blessing, clear and

broad, it is on the Christian influence of our Southern friends upon

this colored race.

It is humiliating to me, in looking back to the North, to see how

injudicious and weak we are in pouring out our sympathy upon a fugitive

slave, without discrimination. The lecture before the Boston audience,

already mentioned, contains a perfect illustration of Northern credulity

in the case of fugitive slaves. The lecturer tells us that while reading

the printed report of Mr. Everett's Oration at the inauguration of the

Webster statue, a fugitive slave appeared at his door, and, baring his

breast and back, showed him the marks of the branding-iron, and the

scars from the lash. At the sight, he says, the paper dropped from his

hand. He "thought of Webster and the Fugitive Slave Law."

Now this negro was, just as likely as not, one of those characters whom

we call jail-birds. If so, and he had lived at the North, instead of

branding-iron and stripes, he might have had parti-colored pants, and

manacles, and a record of ten or twenty years in the state's prison. But

because he ran away from the South, he straightway became, as a matter

of course, a martyr and a saint. Perhaps he was, truly, a saint; and

perhaps he was not.

Looking out of the window in a hotel the other day, we saw two white

men leading up a black man with a leather bridle around his neck.

"Here, Hattie," said your Uncle, "here is slavery; now you have it in

full bloom."

The poor fellow was crying and protesting and begging to be released.

Your Uncle stepped out and spoke to a very respectable gentleman whom he

met on the piazza. He could not refrain from expressing some feeling at

the sight of a fellow-creature so literally "reduced to the level of the

brutes." I did not hear the whole of the conversation, for my attention

was diverted by two roosters who just then flew at each other and were

assailed by a troop of black urchins who tried to scare them apart,

pulling their tail-feathers and uttering ludicrous cries.

"You are from the North, sir, I take it," said the gentleman, in reply

to your Uncle.

"I am, sir," said your Uncle. "Do you often bridle your slaves in this

way, in these parts? I am seeking for information on the subject of

slavery."

"I shall be happy to give you any," said the gentleman. "I am here as a

magistrate."

"I am one at home," said my husband.

"One of these white men who led the negro," said the gentleman, "was

riding on horseback, and was attracted to a by-place by the screams of a

child, and found this black man attempting violence upon a black girl

ten years old. He knocked the fellow down and held him, and called for

help. A white man who came up took the bridle from the horse, to secure

the villain with it. They have with difficulty kept the negroes from

putting him to death."

"We are all ready, sir," said a sheriff to the gentleman.

"Will you walk into the hall?" said the magistrate to your Uncle.

But the stage-coach was waiting for him, and we were soon on our way.

Your Uncle was silent for nearly fifteen minutes, when he said,--

"What is that passage, Hattie, about answering a matter before you

understand it?"

I gave Hattie my Bible, and, after a while, she read:

"He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame

unto him. The spirit of a man"--

"That will do, child," said your Uncle, "I wanted only that one verse."

* * * * *

I should be glad to transfer some of this Southern ease and beauty of

manners to the North. I wish that we could see more of these Southern

ladies and gentlemen there. They stay away very much, because they

cannot bring servants with them. Whole families would rejoice to visit

our Northern shores and mountains for summer residences, were it not for

this. When our passions subside, and we can look at this subject fairly,

we shall repeal the statutes which prevent a Southerner from residing in

a free state for a season, with his or her servant. The people of

Massachusetts, for example, can easily appreciate the hardship of being

kept away from a clime which they would visit for health or recreation,

by the fear of being set upon by a mob of whites and blacks seeking to

drag a wet-nurse, for example, before a court to be interrogated whether

she does not wish to leave us. How long will our warm-hearted,

hospitable people allow such things? The answer, from ten thousand

tongues, will be, So long as Southern people imprison colored seamen

from the North!--If Southern slaves should come here and make trouble

between our domestics and us, and we should forbid their coming, the

cases would be more nearly parallel.--Moreover, it will be said that the

manner in which people from the North have in many instances of late

been treated at the South, does not encourage the hope and prospect of

amicable intercourse. This is certainly so; and therefore what have we

to look for but everlasting hatred and strife? and that whether we be

one nation or two confederacies.

A distinguished Southern gentleman came home from his visit to the

North, where he had received great attentions, and he filled his hearers

with his enthusiastic admiration of us for our wonderful ingenuity in

all the arts of life.

"It is astonishing," said he, "how they work everything into shape, and

create instruments for their purposes. But," said he, "there is one

thing in which they are deficient. They are omnipotent with matter, but

they do not know how to govern men. If they did," said he, "there would

be no chance for us in any form of contest with them."

I was much entertained, and I said to him that I supposed his remarks

would need qualification on both sides; but I was greatly impressed, as

I often am here, with the secret, strong attachment which there is in

Southern hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective of

its anti-slavery views and feelings. Its climate and institutions and

arts and scenery are adapted to their diversified wants. "The North and

the South, Thou hast created them." God made the North for the South,

and the South for the North, and our acts of non-intercourse are in

violation of his will. We are in a war of "conscience," inflamed by

doctrinal error on our part. It allows no "conscience" to the other

side. The state of our "consciences" at the North is jury, judge, and

executioner. There is no "conscience," we think, in Southern churches,

ministers, judges, citizens, except that which is defiled. Probably

there is not on earth this day a greater despot, or one more prepared

for inquisitorial proceedings, than "Northern Conscience."

No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a slave-holder, had I

been born and bred here, but I rejoice that I belong to a free state. I

love to think of my capable girls, my "help." at home, who make the

household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm of servants who

do only half as much, and only half as well. I am glad, too, that my

children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be

waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an

invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God,

who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I

love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I

prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love

those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a

necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as

cultivators of the soil. It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some

people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern country, as comparing

unfavorably with neighboring free states. Going up the Ohio River one

day, a Northern gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Kentucky

on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio on the other.

"There, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is slavery," pointing to

Kentucky, "and there," turning to the other side, "is freedom."

"Now," said an intelligent Ohioan, "if you will excuse me for saying

it, I regard that as clear humbug. What is cultivated on either side?

The products of Kentucky, if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to

her lands. It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference; it is

the difference between large staples sown over large territories, and

smaller staples raised on smaller fields. Kentucky's soil would be

exhausted just as fast under free labor, so long as she cultivated her

present crops."

I long to see some clear running water. Our streams and brooks in New

England are not appreciated till one comes to this part of the land. I

long to see some good grass. I yearn for some hills. I would sail again

along our rock-bound coast; Oh for a walk on its beaches, to see the

tunnellings of the sea in the rocks, and the spouting-horns. But what a

relief it is to be in a section where the Christian religion is so

generally accepted, and the swarms of errorists and sectarians which

abound elsewhere are comparatively unknown. Here, the lowest class, in

which error would be prolific, is under instruction, to a great degree.

I see now why it is that false views about slavery are a great stimulant

to heretical views and feelings;--they are a convenient substitute for

the love and zeal which true Christianity supplies. The human mind,

where it is accustomed to act freely, must be impelled by some

master-passion; and when true religion does not supply it, error stands

ready to satisfy the demand.

On the whole, I am persuaded that our Northern people behave full as

well under the anti-slavery excitement as Southerners would if their

consciences were perverted like ours, and we were the objects of their

opposition. I think that a change will come over us. At the North, you

have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out

to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it,

and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite

and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time at the North, in

our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome

drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and

scud,--a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the

wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God

will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of

misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established

laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings

toward each other. The change will be in the North. Slavery will come to

be regarded as not in itself a sin, and the evils incident to it will be

left for those immediately concerned to bear them or seek their removal.

Or, if we become divided, the Southern section may extend its conquests

into the whole southern part of the American continent, and spread the

institution of slavery over that vast domain. God may have purposed that

the good which has flowed to the African race in this land by its

connection with us, shall be extended to millions more, not by

importation, we may suppose, but by propagation here. I say this to show

that fanatical opposers of slavery may be employed under God as the

instruments of extending slavery to the very limits of habitable land in

the southern parts of our continent. We have tried in vain at the North,

for thirty years, to abolish slavery. It is time either to cease, or to

try some entirely different influences.

But I must close my long letter. When you write again, I have no doubt

that you will have seen some things in a new light. Tell me more about

your studies. I was interested in your way of describing things. I only

wondered that, with your occasional sense of the ludicrous, you should

not have been aware of the impression which you yourself must have made

on others. Burns's "giftie," "to see oursel's," etc., we all, more or

less, need. I told Hattie the other day that I thought some parts of

your letter did you very great credit, but that the monomania of the

North has fallen upon you, and that you have it, as it seemed to me, in

one of its worst forms. Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as

the victim is, naturally, more or less amiable.

Your mother gave you in charge to me in her last sickness, and I must do

all in my power for your best good. I have, therefore, told you some

things which I have seen and considered. These you must now add to the

facts of your "inductive philosophy." Your definition of "pro-slavery,"

and "friends of oppression," is a fair illustration of a prevailing

state of mind at the North:--"Pro-slavery--_i.e._, do not agree with me

in my manner of viewing and treating the subject." This you will

correct. Excuse my freedom, but you have no father nor mother now, to

advise and guide you, and you must let me be your Mentor in some things.

I shall keep your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. Be

careful what newspapers you read. Those which abound with low,

opprobrious language about the South and Southerners, avoid. There are

some low Southerners about here who go around buying up refractory and

vicious negroes; they are the dregs of society; but I have listened,

with others, at the North, to men, on the subject of "freedom," who, I

think, would take kindly to this business, and they would be as hearty

in it as they are now in vilifying it. The "Legrees" are not confined to

the South. Do not incline your ear to those who systematically inveigh

against slavery, making it their principal business. You will invariably

find that there is something false and wrong in their principles as well

as spirit. Be careful to what influences you commit your thoughts and

your taste.

You need not become a friend of oppression; you need not approve of

"auction-blocks," and "separation of families;" slavery can exist when

these are done away. Until you are appointed and commissioned as a

minister of righteousness to Southern Christians and ministers, I advise

you to blot slavery out of the list of topics about which you are called

to express the least concern. The South will work out the problem for

herself, with the help of that God who has evidently appointed her to do

a great work for the African race, and all the more perfectly and

speedily as our Northern people let her entirely alone as to the moral

relations of the subject.

You subscribe yourself, "Yours for the slave;" I shall subscribe myself,

"Yours for preaching the Gospel to every creature."

With the strongest love,

Your affectionate Aunt.