ve the life of your brother on the battle-field, and to
preserve you in the peaceable enjoyment of your property at home. Is the
efficient aid of such men to be rejected? Is their noble self-sacrifice
to be slighted? Shall we, under the contemptible pretext, that this war
must be waged--if waged at all--for the benefit of the white race,
deprive negroes of an opportunity to risk their lives to maintain a
government which has never protected them, and a Constitution which has
been practically interpreted in such a manner as to recognize and
sanction their servitude? Do not, I implore you, answer these inquiries
by that easy, but infamous taunt, so constantly on the lips of
unscrupulous politicians in your party,--"Here comes the inevitable
nigger again!" It is precisely because the awful and too long unavenged
sufferings of the slave must be inevitable, while Slavery exists, that
these questions must sooner or later be asked and answered, and that
your political upholding of such a system becomes a monstrous crime
against humanity.

After all, my dear Andrew, why are you so sensitive on the subject of
Slavery? You certainly can have no personal interest in the peculiar and
patriarchal institution. You are too skilful a financier ever to have
invested a single dollar in that fugacious wealth which so often takes
to its legs and runs away. Nor does your unwillingness to listen to any
expression of anti-slavery sentiment arise from affection for or real
sympathy with Slavery, on moral grounds. Indeed, I have more than once
been exceedingly refreshed in spirit at observing the sincere and hearty
contempt with which you have treated what is blasphemously called the
Biblical argument in favor of human bondage. The pleading precedent of
Abraham has not seduced you, nor has the happy lot of the more modern
Onesimus quieted all your conscientious scruples. You have never failed,
in private conversation, to condemn the advocates of Slavery on whatever
grounds they have rested its defence, nor have you ever ceased to
deplore its existence in our country.

At the same time I must admit that you have invariably resisted all
attempts to apply any practical check or remedy to the great and growing
evil, stoutly maintaining that it was a local institution, and that we
of the North had no right to meddle with it. I am well aware that you
have stigmatized every effort to awaken public attention to its nature
and tendency, or to point out