"
"But," said I, "your present feeling toward this Southern lady may
insensibly lead you to believe that it is right to own a
fellow-creature. Does not Cowper say,--
"'I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
And startle when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned?'"
"How Kate must 'startle' and go into convulsions with terror every time
this mistress wakes!" she replied. "If Cowper had written in Alabama,
instead of describing a state of slavery such as existed in the British
possessions, and not, as in the South, mixed up with his every-day life;
if the first face with which he had become familiar as a babe had been a
black face, the face of his mother's 'slave' loving him, and nursing
him, and he, in turn, had tended his old 'Mammy' in her decrepitude, his
imagination would have contained some other pictures than those in the
lines which you quote. Had there been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would
have been like this lady; and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper
acting the kind part of this lady's husband toward a slave-mother and
her babe, his 'property,' so called.
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