and they are well fed and clothed. You are at
liberty to inform the students, and others who heard me on
that occasion, that I am now an anti-slavery man; but I do
not wish the letter published with my name to it, as it would
be copied by other papers, and find its way back, and do me
injury, for no man is free, fully to express his thoughts in
this country."

The next is from a merchant in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Clergyman in
New Hampshire.

SAINT LOUIS, Jan. 18, 1835.

Very Dear Brother.

I want to say a good deal to you, Brother, on the subject,
which seems to interest you much at this time. I am now, and
was before I left Hartford, an abolitionist; and that too,
from deep and thorough conviction that the eternal rule of
right requires the immediate freedom of every bond-man in
this and every other country. Since my residence in this
slaveholding State, I have seen nothing which should tend to
alter my previous sentiments on this subject, on the contrary
much to confirm me in them. You, who reside in happy New
England, can have but very faint conceptions of the blighting
and corrupting influence of Slavery on a community. Although
in Missouri we witness Slavery in its mildest form, yet it is
enough to sicken the heart of benevolence to witness its
effects on society generally, and its awfully demoralizing
influence on the slaves themselves: being counted as property
among the cattle and flocks of their possessors, (forgive the
word,) their standard of morality and virtue is on a level
(generally) with the beasts with which they are classed: and
I am credibly informed that many emigrants from the slave
states, who own plantations on the Missouri River, finding
themselves disqualified by their former habits of indolence
to compete with emigrants of another character in enterprize,
turn their attention to the raising of slaves as they would
cattle, to be sold to the Negro dealers to go down the river.
What sort of standard of virtue, think you, will have place
on such a plantation; and at what period in the history of
our country will these degraded sons of Africa be
christianized under existing circumstances.

The ungodly man who is a slaveholder, is well enough pleased
with the efforts and views of the Colonization Society,