I such
a property, I think I would put my slaves at once quietly upon the
footing of free laborers, paying them wages, and making them pay me rent
and take care of themselves. Of course I should be shot by my next
neighbor (against whom no verdict would be found except "Serve her
right!") in the first week of my experiment; but _if I wasn't_, I think,
reckoning only the meanest profit to be derived from the measure, I
should double the income of the estate in less than three years.... I am
more than ever satisfied that God and Mammon would be equally
propitiated by emancipation.

You ask me whether I take any interest in the Presidential election.
Yes, though I have not room left for my reasons--and I have some,
besides that best woman's reason, sympathy with the politics of the man
I belong to. The party coming into power are, I believe, at heart less
democratic than the other; and while the natural advantages of this
wonderful country remain unexhausted (and they are apparently
inexhaustible), I am sure the Republican Government is by far the best
for the people themselves, besides thinking it the best in the abstract,
as you know I do.

God bless you, my dearest Harriet.

I am ever yours most affectionately,
F. A. B.

[The question of my spending the winter in Georgia was finally
determined by Mr. J---- B---- 's decided opposition to my doing so.
He was part proprietor of the plantation, and positively stipulated
that I should not again be taken thither, considering my presence
there as a mere source of distress to myself, annoyance to others,
and danger to the property.

I question the validity of the latter objection, but not at all that
of the two first; and am sure that, upon the whole, his opposition
to my residence among his slaves was not only justifiable but
perfectly reasonable.

My Georgia journal was not published until thirty years after it was
written, during the civil war in the United States. I was then
passing some time in England, and the people among whom I lived
were, like most well-educated members of the upper classes of
English society, Southern sympathizers. The ignorant and mischievous
nonsense I was continually compelled to hear upon the subject of
slavery in the seceding States determined me to publish my own
observatio