A RIGHT FEELING IN THE RIGHT QUARTER.
There is but one way for the oligarchy to perpetuate slavery in the Southern States, and that is by perpetuating absolute ignorance among the non-slaveholding whites. This it is quite impossible for them to do. God has scattered the seeds of knowledge throughout every portion of the South, and they are, as might have been expected, beginning to take root in her fertile soil. The following extracts from letters which have been received since we commenced writing this work, will show how powerfully the spirit of freedom is operating upon the minds of intelligent, thinking men in the slave States.
A Baltimorean, writing to us awhile previous to the last Presidential election, says:—
“I see that the Trustees of the University of North Carolina have dismissed Prof. Hedrick for writing a letter in favor of Republican principles. Oh, what an inglorious source of reflection for an American citizen! To think, to know that our boasted liberty of speech is a myth, an abstraction. To see a poor professor crushed under the feet of the tyrannical magnates of slavery, for daring to speak the honest sentiments of his heart. Where is fanaticism now, North or South? Oh, my country, my country, whither art thou tending? Truly we have fallen upon degenerate days. God grant that they may not be like those of ancient Greece and Rome, the forerunners of our country’s ruin.”
In a letter under date of November 1, 1856, a friend who resides in the eastern part of North Carolina, says:—
“In the papers which reached me last week I notice that our own State has been disgraced by a junto of pro-slavery hot-spurs, who had the audacity to meet in Raleigh for the express purpose of concocting measures for a dissolution of the Union. It appears that the three leading spirits of this cabal were the present governors of three neighboring States—three treasonable disturbers of the public peace, who, under the circumstances, should, in my opinion, have been shot dead upon the spot! I have each of their names noted down in my memorandum, and I shall certainly die unsatisfied, if I do not live to hear of their being thoroughly tarred and feathered, and ridden on a rail, by the non-slaveholding whites, against whose welfare their machinations have been chiefly leveled. Rely upon it, that, if they do not soon sneak away into their graves, a day of retributive justice will most assuredly overtake them.”
A native and resident of one of the towns in western North Carolina, under date of March 19, 1857, writes to us as follows:—
“While patrolling a few nights ago I was forcibly struck with the truthfulness of the remarks contained in your last letter.—Here I am, a poor but sober and industrious man, with a family dependent on me for support, and after I have finished my day’s labor, I am compelled to walk the streets from nine in the evening till three in the morning, to restrain the roving propensities of other people’s ‘property’—niggers. Why should I thus be deprived of sleep that the slaveholder may slumber? I frankly acknowledge my indebtedness to you for opening my eyes upon this subject. The more I think and see of slavery the more I detest it. * * * I am becoming restless, and have been debating within my own mind whether I had not better emigrate to a free State. * * * If I live, I am determined to oppose slavery somewhere—here or elsewhere. It will be impossible for me to keep my lips sealed much longer. Indeed, I sometimes feel that I have been remiss in my duty in not having opened them ere now. But for the unfathomable ignorance that pervades the mass of the poor, deluded, slavery-saddled whites around me, I would not suppress my sentiments another hour.”
Again, under date of April 7, 1857, he says:—
“I thank God that slavery will, in my opinion, soon be abolished. I wish to Heaven I had the ability to raise my voice successfully in favor of a just system to abolish it. I would indeed be rejoiced to have an opportunity to do something to relieve the South of the awful curse. Fear not that you will meet with no sympathizers in the South. You will have hosts of friends on every side—even in this town, if I am not greatly mistaken, a large majority of the citizens will add an enthusiastic Amen! to your work.”