You will please acknowledge, therefore, my dear madam, that in
giving you credit for kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother,
we are disposed to be just; yet I beg of you not to think that I abate
one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery is "the sum of
all villanies," "an enormous wrong," "a stupendous injustice."
I have just been reading your letter once more, and the foolish tears
pester me so that I can scarce see out of my eyes. I find, dear madam,
that you have known a bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying
with them to the grave. Your words make me think so of little graves
elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you are a slave-holder. Nor
can I hardly believe that your touching words are suggested by the death
of a slave's babe, when you speak of "the heavy earth piled on the
tender little breast." O my dear lady! has a slave's babe "a tender
little breast"? Then you really think so! And you a slave-holder!
"Border Ruffianism," perhaps, has not yet reached your heart; and yet I
suppose--forgive me if I do you wrong--that slave-holders' hearts
generally need only to be removed to the "borders," to manifest all
their native "ruffianism.
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