bidden. To this self-righteous and
self-exalted class belong all the abolitionists whose writings I have
read. With them it is no end of the argument to prove your propositions
by the text of the Bible, interpreted according to its plain and
palpable meaning, and as understood by all mankind for three thousand
years before their time. They are more ingenious at construing and
interpolating to accommodate it to their new-fangled and ethereal code
of morals, than ever were Voltaire and Hume in picking it to pieces, to
free the world from what they considered a delusion. When the
abolitionists proclaim "man-stealing" to be a sin, and show me that it
is so written down by God, I admit them to be right, and shudder at the
idea of such a crime. But when I show them that to hold "bond-men
forever" is ordained by God, _they deny the Bible, and set up in its
place a law of their own making_. I must then cease to reason with them
on this branch of the question. Our religion differs as widely as our
manners. The great Judge in our day of final account must decide between
us.

Turning from the consideration of slaveholding in its relations to man
as an accountable being, let us examine it in its influence on his
political and social state. Though, being foreigners to us, you are in
no wise entitled to interfere with the civil institutions of this
country, it has become quite common for your countrymen to decry slavery
as an enormous political evil to us, and even to declare that our
Northern States ought to withdraw from the Confedracy rather than
continue to be contaminated by it. The American abolitionists appear to
concur fully in these sentiments, and a portion, at least, of them are
incessantly threatening to dissolve the Union. Nor should I be at all
surprised if they succeed. It would not be difficult, in my opinion, to
conjecture which region, the North or South, would suffer most by such
an event. For one, I should not object, by any means, to cast my lot in
a confederacy of States whose citizens might all be slaveholders.

I indorse without reserve the much abused sentiment of Governor
M'Duffie, that "slavery is the corner-stone of our republican edifice;"
while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere
accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that "all men are born equal."[255]
No society has ever yet existed, and I have already incidentally quoted
the highest authority to show that none ever will exis