But still, here is the
letter; and it is written to her father, whom she could not deceive,
whom she had no motive, no wish, to delude. Had it been written to a
Northerner, I could have surmised that she was attempting to make false
impressions about slavery, and its influence on the slave-holder. Why
should she tell her father this simple tale, unless real affection for
the babe and its mother were impelling her? This tries my faith. It is
like an undesigned coincidence in holy writ, which used so to stagger my
unbelief. Possibly, however,--for I must maintain my previous
convictions if I can,--possibly her father is such as our anti-slavery
lecturers and writers declare a slave-holder naturally to be, and his
daughter, herself a mother, is seeking to touch his heart and turn him
from his cruelties as a slave-holder by showing him, in this indirect,
beautiful manner, that slave-mothers have the feelings of human beings.
Perhaps I may therefore compromise this matter by allowing, on one hand,
that the daughter is all that she appears to be, and claiming, on the
other, that the father is all that a slave-holder ought to be to verify
our Northern theories.
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