demn the South in this particular. Their clergy, their
husbands, their young men, if they are no better, are no worse than we.
But there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by
anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in
which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one
sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of
frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North,
what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the
corrupting and 'barbarous' influence of slavery!

"How the morbid fancy of a Northerner loves to gloat over occasional
instances of violence at the South, and is never employed in depicting
scenes of betrayal and cruelty which our policemen in large cities could
recount by scores."

"I saw," said Mr. North, "in a recent paper, that a slave in Washington
County, N.C., was hanged by the sheriff in the presence of three
thousand spectators, for the murder of a white man, whom he shot with a
pistol because he suspected him of undue familiarity with the wife of
the black man. Poor fellow! no doubt he swung for it because he was a
slave. He must let his marriage rights be invaded by the whites, and
bear it in silence, or die."

Said I, "What a perfect specimen of Northern anti-slavery feeling and
logic have we in what you now say. If a man, on suspicion of you, takes
the law into his hands and shoots you with a pistol, does he not deserve
to die? He does, if he is a white man; perhaps, if he be a slave, that
excuses him! Even where a man is known to be guilty of the crime
referred to, and the husband shoots him, he is apt to have a narrow
escape from being punished. As to bearing such violations of one's
rights in silence under intimidation, there is no more power in
intimidation to save a villain at the South from disgrace and abhorrence
in his community, than at the North."

"But he can evade prosecution under the statute," said Mr. North, "more
easily at the South than here."

"When you have served on the grand jury a few terms," said I, "you will
be more charitable toward Southerners. Human nature is the same
everywhere. It makes, where it does not find, occasion for sin.

"Now you will not understand, in all that I have said, that I am
pleading for slavery, that I desire to have this abject race among us,
that Southerners are purer and better than we. We are both under sin. We
all