e statements of the actual facts of the system, when it
was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be
decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies,
assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary
notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the
issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or
peace was not so plain.

Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty
years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was
lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was
precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements,
harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had
renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel
and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding,
the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be
kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of
miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such
atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor
things! Women, too! Tut, tut!

Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening
incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred
slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands
at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept
from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where
the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the
most respectable people,--not persons imbruted by exile among slaves
upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and
the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the
highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous,
clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and
believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be
mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly
undeceiving,--of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably
unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes
civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of
the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The
very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces