You thought
poor old Timmy's grave was not in a spot sufficiently choice for this
little babe's grave, and, it seems, you inclosed a spot, and inaugurated
it by the burial of this child, for the last resting-place of other
babes, the kindred of this child and of your other servants. This looks
as though there were some domestic permanence in some parts of the South
among the servants of a household; and as though the birth and death of
a child have some other associations with you than those which belong to
the breeding and sale of poultry. We are truly glad to think of all
this. It is exceedingly pleasant to have a good opinion of people, much
more so than to believe evil of them, and to accuse them wrongfully.
In speaking thus to you, I make myself think--and I hope I do not seem
self-complacent in saying it, for you must have learned from the tone of
my remarks, if from no other source, that self-complacency is not a
Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the
South--but I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems
good in you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle to your brother
slave-holder Philemon, in that epistle in which he sends back the slave
Onesimus,--a very trying epistle to us at the North, though on the
whole, many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration notwithstanding
this epistle, especially as it is explained to us by some at the North
who know most of Southern slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is
insisted by some of our best scholars, should control even our
interpretation of the word of God.
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