“Our text books are abolition books. They are so to the extent of their capacity.”... “We have been too careless and indifferent to the import of these things.”
“And so long as we use such works as ‘Wayland’s Moral Science,’ and the abolition geographies, readers, and histories, overrunning, as they do, with all sorts of slanders, caricatures, and blood-thirsty sentiments, let us never complain of their [northern Church people’s] use of that transitory romance [Uncle Tom’s Cabin]. They seek to array our children by false ideas, against the established ordinance of God; and it sometimes takes effect. A professor in one of our Southern seminaries, not long since placed in the hands of a pupil ‘Wayland’s Moral Science,’ and informed her that the chapter on slavery was heretical and unscriptural, and that she would not be examined on that chapter, and need not study it. Perhaps she didn’t. But on the day of examination she wished her teacher to tell her ‘if that chapter was heretical how she was to know but they were all so?’ We might enumerate many other books of similar character and tendencies. But we will refer to only one more—it is ‘Gilbert’s Atlas’—though the real author’s name does not appear on the title page. On the title page it is called ‘Appleton’s Complete Guide of the World;’ published by D. Appleton & Co, New York. This is an elegant and comprehensive volume, endorsed by the Appletons and sent South, containing hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite.[72] It is a sort of literary and scientific infernal machine. And whatever the design may have been, the tendency is as shocking as the imagination can picture.... This is the artillery and these the implements England and our own recreant sister States are employing to overturn the order of society and the established forms of labour that date back beyond the penning of the decalogue.... This book, and many other Northern school-books scattered over the country, come within the range of the statutes of this State, which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of the penalty of death upon any person who shall ‘publish or distribute’ such works; and were I a citizen of New Orleans, this work should not escape the attention of the grand jury. But need I add more to convince the sceptical of the necessity there is for the production of our own text-books, and, may I not add, our own literature? Why should the land of domestic servitude be less productive in the great works of the mind now than when Homer evoked the arts, poetry, and eloquence into existence? Moses wrote the Genesis of Creation, the Exodus of Israel, and the laws of mankind? and when Cicero, Virgil, Horace, St. John, and St. Paul became the instructors of the world?[73]... They will want no cut-throat literature, no fire-brand moral science ... nor Appleton’s ‘Complete Atlas,’ to encourage crimes that would blanch the cheek of a pirate, nor any of the ulcerous and polluting agencies issuing from the hot-beds of abolition fanaticism.”
From an article on educational reform at the South, in the same “Review,” 1856, I take the following indications of what, among other Northern doings, are considered to imperil the South:—
“‘Lovell’s United States Speaker,’ the ‘National Reader,’ the ‘Young Ladies’ Reader,’ ‘Columbian Orator,’ ‘Scott’s Lessons,’ the ‘Village Reader,’ and numerous others, have been used for years, and are all, in some respects, valuable compilations. We apprehend, however, there are few parents or teachers who are familiar with the whole of their contents, or they would demand expurgated editions for the use of their children. The sickly sentimentality of the poet Cowper, whose ear became so ‘pained,’ and his soul ‘sick with every day’s report of wrong and outrage,’ that it made him cry out in agony for ‘a lodge in some vast wilderness,’ where he might commune with howling wolves and panthers on the blessings of liberty (?), stamps its infectious poison upon many of the pages of these works.”...
“From the American First Class Book, page 185, we quote another more modern sentiment, which bears no less higher authority than the name of the great Massachusetts statesman, Mr. Webster:”
Having burnt or expurgated Webster and Cowper, is it to be imagined that the leaders of opinion in the South would yet be willing to permit familiar intercourse between themselves and a people who allowed a book containing ‘Such lines as these to circulate freely?—
“What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,