t you greatly err, if you suppose, because we rely on force
in the last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours
is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in
hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only,
but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is
acknowledged. You say, that if those you address were "to spend one day
in the South, they would return home with impressions against slavery
never to be erased." But the fact is universally the reverse. I have
known numerous instances, and I never knew a single one, where there was
no other cause of offense, and no object to promote by falsehood, that
individuals from the non-slaveholding States did not, after residing
among us long enough to understand the subject, "return home" _to defend
our slavery_. It is matter of regret that you have never tried the
experiment yourself. I do not doubt you would have been converted, for I
give you credit for an honest though perverted mind. You would have seen
how weak and futile is all abstract reasoning about this matter, and
that, as a building may not be less elegant in its proportions, or
tasteful in its ornaments, or virtuous in its uses, for being based upon
granite, so a system of human government, though founded on force, may
develope and cultivate the tenderest and purest sentiments of the human
heart. And our patriarchal scheme of domestic servitude is indeed well
calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature. It is
not wanting in its enthusiasm and its poetry. The relations of the most
beloved and honored chief, and the most faithful and admiring subjects,
which, from the time of Homer, have been the theme of song, are frigid
and unfelt compared with those existing between the master and his
slaves--who served his father, and rocked his cradle, or have been born
in his household, and look forward to serve his children--who have been
through life the props of his fortune, and the objects of his care--who
have partaken of his griefs, and looked to him for comfort in their
own--whose sickness he has so frequently watched over and
relieved--whose holidays he has so often made joyous by his bounties and
his presence; for whose welfare, when absent, his anxious solicitude
never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate greetings never fail to
welcome him home. In this cold, calculating, ambitious world of ours,
there are few t