in our "big woods." Many more
would seek the recesses of our swamps for secure covert. Few, very few
of them, could be prevailed on to do a stroke of work, none to labor
continuously, while a head of cattle, sheep or swine could be found in
our ranges, or an ear of corn nodded in our abandoned fields. These
exhausted, our folds and poultry yards, barns and store-houses, would
become their prey. Finally, our scattered dwellings would be plundered,
perhaps fired, and the inmates murdered. How long do you suppose that we
could bear these things? How long would it be before we should sleep
with rifles at our bedsides, and never move without one in our hands?
This work once begun, let the story of our British ancestors and the
aborigines of this country tell the sequel. Far more rapid, however,
would be the catastrophe. "Ere many moons went by," the African race
would be exterminated, or reduced again to slavery, their ranks
recruited, after your example, by fresh "emigrants" from their
fatherland.

Is timely preparation and gradual emancipation suggested to avert these
horrible consequences? I thought your experience in the West Indies had,
at least, done so much as to explode that idea. If it failed there, much
more would it fail here, where the two races, approximating to equality
in numbers, are daily and hourly in the closest contact. Give room for
but a single spark of real jealousy to be kindled between them, and the
explosion would be instantaneous and universal. It is the most fatal of
all fallacies, to suppose that these two races can exist together, after
any length of time, or any process of preparation, on terms at all
approaching to equality. Of this, both of them are finally and fixedly
convinced. They differ essentially, in all the leading traits which
characterize the varieties of the human species, and color draws an
indelible and insuperable line of separation between them. Every scheme
founded upon the idea that they can remain together on the same soil,
beyond the briefest period, in any other relation than precisely that
which now subsists between them, is not only preposterous, but fraught
with deepest danger. If there was no alternative but to try the
"experiment" here, reason and humility dictate that the sufferings of
"gradualism" should be saved, and the catastrophe of "immediate
abolition" enacted as rapidly as possible. Are you impatient for the
performance to commence? Do you long to gloat over