country for twenty years. You recollect the lines of Pope,
beginning,

'Vice is a monster of such frightful mein,
That to be hated, needs but to be seen.'

I had become so familiar with the loathsome features of
slavery, that they ceased to offend; besides, I had become a
Southern man in all my feelings, and it is a part of our
creed to defend slavery. I had also considered it was
impossible to free the slaves in this country. But it is
unnecessary to investigate the ground of my former opinions.
As to the Colonization Society, I have this among many
objections that it has two faces, one for the North, and a
very different one for the South. If the agents of the
Colonization Society will come here and say what I heard them
say in New York, I will insure them a good coat of tar and
feathers for their labor. That Society has few friends here,
a few large slaveholders who by it hope to send off the free
people in their neighborhood, and a few others, whose
consciences are not quite easy, get a salvo by advocating the
Colonization Society. These last are many of them ministers.
The mass of the people regard it as a Yankee plan, and hate
it of course. I remember, among other things, I told the
students in my address, that the only way to do away slavery
was to give us more religion. This argument then seemed to be
good. Send us preachers said I, and as religion spreads,
slavery will melt away, it cannot stand the gospel. I did not
reflect that the religion we have here, justifies and upholds
slavery. Our religion does not permit the preacher to touch
the subject. It is not the whole gospel. I have not yet seen
the man who would venture to take for his text, 'Masters,
give to your servants that which is just and equal.' If every
man in the country was a professor of religion, the religion
we have, it would not much help the cause. I think that I can
safely say that as a general thing, the Presbyterians are by
far the best masters, and give more attention to the
religious instruction of their slaves than others, but I know
one of these, an elder, who contends that slavery is no
violation of the law, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself,' and whose slaves are driven in the field with the
long whip! But it is just to add, that they are not
over-worked,