NEW YORK:
A. B. BURDICK, PUBLISHER,
No. 8 SPRUCE STREET.
1859.
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1857, by
HINTON ROWAN HELPER,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
J. J. Reed, Printer and Stereotyper,
43 Centre Street.
To
HENRY M. WILLIS,
OF CALIFORNIA,
FORMERLY OF MARYLAND,
WOODFORD C. HOLMAN,
OF OREGON,
FORMERLY OF KENTUCKY,
MATTHEW K. SMITH,
OF WASHINGTON TERRITORY,
FORMERLY OF VIRGINIA,
AND TO THE
NON-SLAVEHOLDING WHITES OF THE SOUTH
GENERALLY,
WHETHER AT HOME OR ABROAD
THIS WORK IS MOST CORDIALLY
DEDICATED
BY THEIR
SINCERE FRIEND AND FELLOW-CITIZEN,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
If my countrymen, particularly my countrymen of the South, still more particularly those of them who are non-slaveholders, shall peruse this work, they will learn that no narrow and partial doctrines of political or social economy, no prejudices of early education have induced me to write it. If, in any part of it, I have actually deflected from the tone of true patriotism and nationality, I am unable to perceive the fault. What I have committed to paper is but a fair reflex of the honest and long-settled convictions of my heart.
In writing this book, it has been no part of my purpose to cast unmerited opprobrium upon slaveholders, or to display any special friendliness or sympathy for the blacks. I have considered my subject more particularly with reference to its economic aspects as regards the whites—not with reference, except in a very slight degree, to its humanitarian or religious aspects. To the latter side of the question, Northern writers have already done full and timely justice. The genius of the North has also most ably and eloquently discussed the subject in the form of novels. Yankee wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. Against this I have nothing to say; it is all well enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give the facts.
I trust that my friends and fellow-citizens of the South will read this book—nay, proud as any Southerner though I am, I entreat, I beg of them to do so. And as the work, considered with reference to its author’s nativity, is a novelty—the South being my birth-place and my home, and my ancestry having resided there for more than a century—so I indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will also be novel; that is to say, that they will receive it, as it is offered, in a reasonable and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect upon it as an honest and faithful endeavor to treat a subject of enormous import, without rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their own sympathies.