anthem, of which the heavenly burden is,
"Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are
bound!"

The production of your accomplished pen, which has already called forth
such unqualified eulogy from almost every land where Anglo-Saxon
literature finds access, and created so sudden and fervent an excitement
on the momentous subject of American slavery, has nowhere been hailed
with a more cordial welcome, or produced more salutary effects, than in
the city of Aberdeen.

Though long ago imbued, with antislavery principles and interested in
the progress of liberty in every part of the world, our community, like
many others, required such information, suggestions, and appeals as your
valuable work contains in one great department of slavery, in order that
their interest might be turned into a specific direction, and their
principles reduced, to combined practical effort.

Already they have esteemed it a privilege to engage with some activity
in the promotion of the interests of the fugitive slave; and they shall
henceforth regard with a deeper interest than ever the movements of
their American brethren in this matter, until there exists among them no
slavery from which to flee.

While they participate in your abhorrence of slavery in the American
states, they trust they need scarcely assure you that they participate
also in your love for the American people.

It is in proportion as they love that nation, attached to them by so
many ties, that they lament the existence of a system which, so long as
it exists, must bring odium upon the national character, as it cannot
fail to enfeeble and impair their best social institutions.

They believe it to be a maxim that man cannot hold his fellow-man in
slavery without being himself to some extent enslaved. And of this the
censorship of the press, together with the expurgatorial indices of
various religious societies in the Southern States of America, furnish
ample corroboration.

It is hoped that your own nation may speedily be directed to recognize
you as its best friend, for having stood forth in the spirit of true
patriotism to advocate the claims of a large portion of your countrymen,
and to seek the removal of an evil which has done much to neutralize the
moral influence of your country's best (and otherwise free)
institutions.

Accept, then, from the community of Aberdeen their congratulations on
the high literary fame which you have by a singl