It is remarkable, that in the houses of the wealthy, as well as in store or shop-keepers back-rooms, it is the common practice to ask you to take a glass of water, cool fresh water, as a refreshment; at which offer no one is offended; and when wine or liquors are on the {10} salver, water is often preferred; but our countrymen would think it a sad insult to be invited to so simple a refreshment.
I have, my dear sir, met with no instances of a rude ruffian-like character, that will apply to Americans generally; and, I believe, much less than I should have met with in England, had I travelled her roads and rivers to the extent I have done in this country.
The American notion of liberty and equality is highly gratifying to me. The master or employer is kept within the bounds of reason and decency towards his labourer. No curses or oaths towards their servants, or HELPS as they choose to call themselves; (for every one who takes money or wages, is, after all, a servant;) he obeys all reasonable orders for his remuneration; and when this obedience ceases, the contract of service is at an end. I have often been surprised at the highmindedness of American labourers, who are offended at the name of servant.
With respect to this place, I have, in former letters, stated it to be a phenomenon in the history of the world; twenty-five years since it was trodden only by the foot of the savage; now it contains about three thousand inhabitants. A college, at which are already one {11} hundred and forty students; its professors, chosen purely for their talents, without any requirement of unanimity of religious opinions, as in the colleges with you: professors so chosen, not being confined to any particular sect, are likely to fill their stations with ability; and, as far as I am capable of judging, are eminently calculated for their respective situations to which they are chosen. This institution promises to be in the moral world, what the sun is in the natural world, and is calculated to illuminate, civilize, and bless mankind.
To the inhabitants of Lexington, wherever I may reside in future, I shall ever feel grateful: their hospitality, their kindness to me, as a stranger, and their sympathy in the hour of affliction, are never to be effaced from my memory.
Their politeness and liberality are perhaps, unequalled. Balls, at which the fair sex are never allowed to share any expence,—an Atheneum and a considerable museum, the benefits of which the stranger is invited to partake gratis,—may be mentioned as not being very customary in England. Tea-parties are a continual festival from the time you enter to the time of your departure, which however, are too much like our routs in England; and in time, I should fear would, as they have in England, become {12} a substitute for hospitality. I have known collected at these parties from one to two hundred persons. Thus, my dear Sir, you see, instead of being in continual broils, and exposed to the affronts and insults of rude Americans, I have received nothing but civility and hospitality. It will hardly be credited when I assure you I have not yet met with a single annoyance in the whole of my journey from New York to Pittsburgh by land; nor from thence down the Ohio to Louisville,—a distance of six hundred miles by water, and five hundred miles by land: thus you see, my dear friend, I am in no danger at present, of being disgusted by American rudeness, irreligion, or fanaticism.
To your last question,—How can you reside in a state where personal slavery is in existence? I, with regret, reply, this is the spot which clouds the American sun of liberty; and I confess I know not which are most excited in me, the risible or the sorrowful feelings, when I hear a Kentuckyan boasting, in lofty terms, of the liberty of his country, when that country is divided into two classes, and two classes only—the master and the slave! The term of master implies the willing servitude of free men: the term slave, includes in it the admission {13} of tyrants or tyranny; and a Kentuckyan has no more right to talk of freedom than the legitimates, whose determined purpose it is to blot liberty and happiness from the face of the earth. The one talks of liberty and social order, and it appears that by it is meant the increasing trappings of monarchy; the other does the same of liberty, and the rights of men.
The legitimates, who have high notions of regal authority, attempting to subjugate the minds of men, is perfectly consistent with their notions of power, their education and habits; but to hear the republicans of slave states point to the Declaration of Rights, who inform the coming traveller that they are now blazoned forth on satin and velvet;—an American republican pointing to the Rights of Men with his left hand, while his right is obliged to hold the whip, and with watchful eye to subjugate the minds and bodies of a large share of the population of his state:—this, indeed is worthy the taunts and derision of kings. It is this that keeps the wealth of Europe from pouring its treasures into the fertile region of Kentucky, and the industry of thousands from approaching the state. It would be painful to relate all the horrors I have beheld in slavery under {14} its mildest form. Whites full of whiskey, flogging their slaves for drinking even a single glass! Women, heavy with young, smarting under the angry blow, or the lash, and with babes at the breast, which one of our writers calls "Nature's passport through the world," lacking food in the midst of abundance, and cloathing insufficient to satisfy the demands even of common decency. Avarice, which our Poet Young calls "Earth's greatest blunder—Hell's loudest laugh;"—avarice, which seems to be the source of all this mischief, now comes to the relief of the ragged lingering wretch. If they are miserable, they must not die, for a mother and infant are worth from six hundred to a thousand dollars: but in a slave state, avarice has preserved life, clothed the wretched, and fed the hungry; it has fattened and made fine, the slave that he or she may fetch at the hammer, one or two hundred dollars more. "Lord, what is man!" Was it for this that your heroes fought, bled, and died ? Was it for this, that the brave and virtuous Washington, to whom so many memorials in the way of oration and praise are delivered on each succeeding anniversary of his birth, spent his long and glorious course ? Oh! youth of Kentucky, when you speak of his {15} fame with the enthusiasm of a republican, speak of his humanity, read his will; see his ardent desire to let the captive go free: imitate his virtues, and fall not into the errors of tyrants, who suppose military glory to be the glory of a christian.
It is worthy of enquiry, whether it is likely that Americans will escape the judgments with which God has afflicted other nations, while their land is infected with personal slavery, and whether the liberties of America are not endangered by the increase of its black population. Perhaps some ambitious military chief may take the work from the hands of republicans, and "proclaim liberty to the captives," and make them the instruments of political slavery: let it be the work of crowned despots to subjugate the minds and bodies of men, but let not republicans assist in such a work.
Whenever you take Freedom's sacred name into your lips—whenever you unfurl the standard of partial liberty—you stand self-condemned. Despots keep men's minds in ignorance, that the voice of slavery and abject dependance may not be heard even in its defence. Do ye not the same: both your efforts will be in vain; the minds of men are in progressive march, and your united efforts will not stop their destination.