In this
you and your friends labor under a huge mistake, and it poisons all your
views and feelings about slavery. When you denounce slave-holders and
slavery, and depict the condition of the slave in your awful colors,
they at the South know that in hundreds of thousands of instances, as it
regards masters and slaves, all that you say is practically false; you
are carried away by your zeal against a theoretical wrong.
"Now suppose that instead of starting with the theoretical wrong and
getting only such facts as illustrate it, you should travel through the
South to pick up such letters as you consider this, respecting Kate, to
be;--what a pleasing view might be presented of the slaves' condition in
cases without number!"
"But," said he, "there are terrible evils underlying these fair features
of slavery."
"True," said I, "but why, in the name of truth and love do you never
hear such a letter as this read on the platforms of Northern abolition
societies? What mingled groans and hisses and shrieks for freedom, and
then what an emptying of the demoniacal epithets there would be, if such
a letter should be offered. One case of whipping would have more effect
than a thousand such letters, in your assemblies and newspapers.
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