gh it were an
every-day thing, a matter of course, for this lady to be kind and loving
to the blacks; and for my part I bless any one who has anything to do
for her or for those like her. Our papers never tell us such stories as
this letter contains. No, they, do not love to hear them, I fear; but if
a slave is beaten or ill-treated, then the chimes begin, 'enormous
wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'sum of all villanies.'"

"Why, my dear," said I, "you are getting to be pro-slavery very fast."

"Never," said she, "if you mean by that, as I suppose you do, approving
all that is involved in slavery and all that is committed under the
system."

"But," said I, "your present feeling toward this Southern lady may
insensibly lead you to believe that it is right to own a
fellow-creature. Does not Cowper say,--

"'I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
And startle when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned?'"

"How Kate must 'startle' and go into convulsions with terror every time
this mistress wakes!" she replied. "If Cowper had written in Alabama,
instead of describing a state of slavery such as existed in the British
possessions, and not, as in the South, mixed up with his every-day life;
if the first face with which he had become familiar as a babe had been a
black face, the face of his mother's 'slave' loving him, and nursing
him, and he, in turn, had tended his old 'Mammy' in her decrepitude, his
imagination would have contained some other pictures than those in the
lines which you quote. Had there been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would
have been like this lady; and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper
acting the kind part of this lady's husband toward a slave-mother and
her babe, his 'property,' so called. I lay awake here, last night, while
you were writing, and thought it all over. What were you writing about
so long? I wished that I had a pencil and paper near me. Those English
and French people who got rid of slavery as one gets rid of a bunion,
know nothing about slavery mingled with our very life-blood. How
self-righteous they are! Our people, too, are perpetually quoting what
Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in his day. Pray, has there been no
progress? Why are we not permitted to hear what Southern men, as good as
Jefferson, now say about modern slavery?"

"My dear," said I, "perhaps you are not fully qualified as yet to