ount, near two thousand years ago, which is far superior to any
sermon that has been preached from that day to the present time; and
that they would do well to read it at least once a month.

It is but an act of justice to slaveholders for me to state, that the
education of slaves in most of the slave States is barred by
prohibitory laws. This is one of the fruits of abolition interference
with slavery. I have remarked in Chapter 3, of this volume, that the
abolition excitement in the North, about thirty-five years ago, cut
off discussion in the South on the subject of slavery; and that the
legislatures of the slave States in self-defence, or otherwise, in
obedience to the imperious demands of self-preservation, enacted
stringent laws in reference to the slave population, &c.; and that
among them will be found enactments making the education of slaves a
penal offense. It was the circulation of abolition tracts and papers
among the slaves by Northern men, that first suggested this idea to
the Southern legislatures. Previous to that time, many Christian
slaveholders were educating their slaves. These laws are inoperative
in many places in the South; and it affords me pleasure here to record
the fact, that most of the slaves in Knoxville, Tennessee, the city in
which I last resided while a citizen of the South, are able to read,
and many of them can write. Well done, ye noble and generous sons and
daughters of Knoxville.

CHAPTER XII.

The subject of slavery for the last thirty-five years has been an
exciting one in the United States. There has been much discussion, and
what is worse, much angry contention on the subject. It has been a
hobby for demagogues, and a fire-brand in the hands of factious
disorganizers. Fanatics and false philanthropists have rolled it as a
sweet morsel under their tongues. It has furnished them with a pretext
to cry liberty! liberty! from the rising to the setting sun. Their
whole souls, bodies, and minds, appear to have been absorbed in the
contemplation of African slavery. They appeared to be wholly engrossed
with this one idea, to be engulphed! swallowed up! lost! confounded
and bewildered in visionary abstractions, and ever and anon, their
plaintive notes were heard throughout the hills and dales, liberty and
oppression, the burden of their songs. They seemed to consider all
crime, all oppression, all injustice, all wrong, as merged in African
slavery and its concomitant evils, an