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Adams, Nehemiah, 1806-1878

"The Sable Cloud A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861)"

It would be difficult to
find even here at the North,--the humane North, nay, even among those
who have solemnly consecrated themselves as "the friends of the slave,"
and who "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them,"--a heart
more loving and good, affections more natural and pure. I am surprised.
This was a slave-babe. Its mother was this lady's slave. I am confused.
This contradicts my previous information; it sets at nought my ideas
upon a subject which I believed I thoroughly understood.
A little negro slave-babe, it seems, is dead, and its owner and mistress
is acting and speaking as Northerners do! Yes, as Northerners do even
when their own daughters' babes lie dead!
The letter must be a forgery. No; here it is before me, in the
handwriting of the lady, post-marked at the place of her residence. But
is it not, after all, a fiction? I can believe almost anything sooner
than that I am mistaken in the opinions and feelings which are
contradicted by this letter. In the spirit of Hume's argument against
the miracles of the Bible, I feel disposed, almost, to urge that it
would be a greater miracle that the course of nature at the South in a
slave-holder's heart should thus be set aside than that there should not
be, in some way, deception about this letter.


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