A distinguished Southern gentleman came home from his visit to the North, where he had received great attentions, and he filled his hearers with his enthusiastic admiration of us for our wonderful ingenuity in all the arts of life.
"It is astonishing," said he, "how they work everything into shape, and create instruments for their purposes. But," said he, "there is one thing in which they are deficient. They are omnipotent with matter, but they do not know how to govern men. If they did," said he, "there would be no chance for us in any form of contest with them."
I was much entertained, and I said to him that I supposed his remarks would need qualification on both sides; but I was greatly impressed, as I often am here, with the secret, strong attachment which there is in Southern hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective of its anti-slavery views and feelings. Its climate and institutions and arts and scenery are adapted to their diversified wants. "The North and the South, Thou hast created them." God made the North for the South, and the South for the North, and our acts of non-intercourse are in violation of his will. We are in a war of "conscience," inflamed by doctrinal error on our part. It allows no "conscience" to the other side. The state of our "consciences" at the North is jury, judge, and executioner. There is no "conscience," we think, in Southern churches, ministers, judges, citizens, except that which is defiled. Probably there is not on earth this day a greater despot, or one more prepared for inquisitorial proceedings, than "Northern Conscience."
No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a slave-holder, had I been born and bred here, but I rejoice that I belong to a free state. I love to think of my capable girls, my "help." at home, who make the household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm of servants who do only half as much, and only half as well. I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the soil. It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern country, as comparing unfavorably with neighboring free states. Going up the Ohio River one day, a Northern gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Kentucky on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio on the other. "There, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is slavery," pointing to Kentucky, "and there," turning to the other side, "is freedom."
"Now," said an intelligent Ohioan, "if you will excuse me for saying it, I regard that as clear humbug. What is cultivated on either side? The products of Kentucky, if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to her lands. It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference; it is the difference between large staples sown over large territories, and smaller staples raised on smaller fields. Kentucky's soil would be exhausted just as fast under free labor, so long as she cultivated her present crops."
I long to see some clear running water. Our streams and brooks in New England are not appreciated till one comes to this part of the land. I long to see some good grass. I yearn for some hills. I would sail again along our rock-bound coast; Oh for a walk on its beaches, to see the tunnellings of the sea in the rocks, and the spouting-horns. But what a relief it is to be in a section where the Christian religion is so generally accepted, and the swarms of errorists and sectarians which abound elsewhere are comparatively unknown. Here, the lowest class, in which error would be prolific, is under instruction, to a great degree. I see now why it is that false views about slavery are a great stimulant to heretical views and feelings;—they are a convenient substitute for the love and zeal which true Christianity supplies. The human mind, where it is accustomed to act freely, must be impelled by some master-passion; and when true religion does not supply it, error stands ready to satisfy the demand.
On the whole, I am persuaded that our Northern people behave full as well under the anti-slavery excitement as Southerners would if their consciences were perverted like ours, and we were the objects of their opposition. I think that a change will come over us. At the North, you have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it, and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time at the North, in our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and scud,—a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings toward each other. The change will be in the North. Slavery will come to be regarded as not in itself a sin, and the evils incident to it will be left for those immediately concerned to bear them or seek their removal. Or, if we become divided, the Southern section may extend its conquests into the whole southern part of the American continent, and spread the institution of slavery over that vast domain. God may have purposed that the good which has flowed to the African race in this land by its connection with us, shall be extended to millions more, not by importation, we may suppose, but by propagation here. I say this to show that fanatical opposers of slavery may be employed under God as the instruments of extending slavery to the very limits of habitable land in the southern parts of our continent. We have tried in vain at the North, for thirty years, to abolish slavery. It is time either to cease, or to try some entirely different influences.
But I must close my long letter. When you write again, I have no doubt that you will have seen some things in a new light. Tell me more about your studies. I was interested in your way of describing things. I only wondered that, with your occasional sense of the ludicrous, you should not have been aware of the impression which you yourself must have made on others. Burns's "giftie," "to see oursel's," etc., we all, more or less, need. I told Hattie the other day that I thought some parts of your letter did you very great credit, but that the monomania of the North has fallen upon you, and that you have it, as it seemed to me, in one of its worst forms. Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as the victim is, naturally, more or less amiable.
Your mother gave you in charge to me in her last sickness, and I must do all in my power for your best good. I have, therefore, told you some things which I have seen and considered. These you must now add to the facts of your "inductive philosophy." Your definition of "pro-slavery," and "friends of oppression," is a fair illustration of a prevailing state of mind at the North:—"Pro-slavery—i.e., do not agree with me in my manner of viewing and treating the subject." This you will correct. Excuse my freedom, but you have no father nor mother now, to advise and guide you, and you must let me be your Mentor in some things. I shall keep your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. Be careful what newspapers you read. Those which abound with low, opprobrious language about the South and Southerners, avoid. There are some low Southerners about here who go around buying up refractory and vicious negroes; they are the dregs of society; but I have listened, with others, at the North, to men, on the subject of "freedom," who, I think, would take kindly to this business, and they would be as hearty in it as they are now in vilifying it. The "Legrees" are not confined to the South. Do not incline your ear to those who systematically inveigh against slavery, making it their principal business. You will invariably find that there is something false and wrong in their principles as well as spirit. Be careful to what influences you commit your thoughts and your taste.
You need not become a friend of oppression; you need not approve of "auction-blocks," and "separation of families;" slavery can exist when these are done away. Until you are appointed and commissioned as a minister of righteousness to Southern Christians and ministers, I advise you to blot slavery out of the list of topics about which you are called to express the least concern. The South will work out the problem for herself, with the help of that God who has evidently appointed her to do a great work for the African race, and all the more perfectly and speedily as our Northern people let her entirely alone as to the moral relations of the subject.