"First, convince me that you have property in my possession, and you shall have the utmost farthing. But if Willis Hamilton and family are property in my possession, then are Rev. John Patchin and wife, principals of Raisin Institute, and other neighbors, property in my possession, as I have dealing with each family, precisely in the same manner that I have with Willis Hamilton and family, and I do as truly recognize property in my other neighbors as in the Hamilton family. Prove my position fallacious, and not predicated on principles of eternal right, and they may be blown to the four winds of heaven. If carnal weapons can be brought to bear upon the spiritual you shall have the liberty to do it with the six-shooters you flourished toward my face in Sylvania, Ohio….
"As for my being compelled to pay you for this alleged property, to this I have but little to say, as it is the least of all my troubles in this lower world. I will say, However, I stand ready to meet whatever you may think proper to do in the case. Should you think best to make us another call, I could not vouch for your safety. The circumstances connected with this case have been such that great excitement has prevailed. A. number of my neighbors have kept arms since our return from Toledo. I can say with the Psalmist, 'I am for peace, but they are for war.'
"At a public meeting called the next evening after our return from the Toledo trip, fourteen dollars was placed in my hands as a remuneration for the assistance I rendered in examining your very sick patient. I found the disease truly alarming, far beyond the reach of human aid, much deeper than bilious fever, although it might have assumed a typhoid grade. The blister that you were immediately to apply on the back of the patient could not extract that dark, deep plague-spot of slavery, too apparent to be misunderstood."
I received a long list of epithets in a letter, bearing date, Jonesboro, Tennessee, February 7, 1847, from Thomas K. Chester, the sick deacon:
"I have thought it my duty to answer your pack of balderdash, … that you presumed to reply to my father, as I was with him on his tour to Michigan, and a participant in all his transactions, even to the acting the sick man's part in Toledo …, True it is, by your cunning villainies you have deprived us of our just rights, of our own property…. Thanks be to an all wise and provident God that, my father has more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat; and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest, and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own property, and convert its labor to their own infernal aggrandizement.
"It is exceedingly unpleasant for me to indulge in abuse, particularly to a woman, and I would not now do it, did I not feel a perfect consciousness of right and duty…. Who do you think would parley with a thief, a robber of man's just rights, recognized by the glorious Constitution of our Union! Such a condescension would damn an honest man, would put modesty to the blush. What! to engage in a contest with you? a rogue, a damnable thief, a negro thief, an outbreaker, a criminal in the sight of all honest men; … the mother, too, of a pusillanimous son, who permitted me to curse and damn you in Sylvania! I would rather be caught with another man's sheep on my back than to engage in such a subject, and with such an individual as old Laura Haviland, a damned nigger-stealer….
"You can tell Elsie that since our return my father bought her eldest daughter; that she is now his property, and the mother of a likely boy, that I call Daniel Haviland after your pretty son. She has plenty to eat, and has shoes in the Winter, an article Willis's children had not when I was there, although it was cold enough to freeze the horns off the cows…. What do you think your portion will be at the great day of judgment? I think it will be the inner temple of hell."
In my reply, dated Raisin, March 16, 1847, I informed the sick deacon that my letter to his father "had served as a moral emetic, by the mass of black, bilious, and putrid matter it bad sent forth. You must have been exercised with as great distress, as extreme pain, that was producing paroxysms and vomiting, that you had in your sick-room in the Toledo hotel, when your physician was so hastily called to your relief by your son-in-law, as the matter that lies before me in letter form is as 'black', and much more 'bilious,' and nearer 'mortification' than that I saw there."
"We thank you for the name's sake. May he possess the wisdom of a
Daniel of old, although his lot be cast in the lions' den; and, like
Moses, may he become instrumental in leading his people away from a
worse bondage than that of Egypt.
"According to your logic, we are not only robbing the slaveholder, but the poor slave of his valuable home, where he can enjoy the elevating and soul-ennobling privilege of looking 'greasy, slick, and fat'—can have the privilege of being forbidden the laborious task of cultivating his intellect—is forbidden to claim his wife and children as his own instead of the property of John P. Chester."