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Page 2
I have in the following work, related an anecdote of a young lawyer,
who being asked how he could stand up before the court, and with
unblushing audacity state falsehoods; he very promptly answered, "I
was well paid; I received a large fee, and could therefore afford to
lie." I infer from the class of letters referred to, that the writers
are generally "well paid" for their services.
It has long been a practice of abolition editors in the Northern
States, when they were likely to run short of matter, to employ some
worthy brother, to travel South, and manufacture articles for their
papers. Many of those articles are falsehoods; and most of them, if
not all, are exaggerations.
No man who will consent to go south, and perform this dirty work, is
capable of writing truth. And moreover, many of the letters published
in abolition papers, purporting to have been written from some part of
the South, were concocted by editors and others at home; the writers
never having traveled fifty miles from their native villages. But some
of them do travel South and write letters; and it is of but little
consequence what they see, or what they hear; they have engaged to
write letters, and letters they must write: letters too, of a certain
character; and if they fail to find material in the South, it then
devolves on them to manufacture it.
They have engaged to furnish food for the depraved appetites of a
certain class of readers in the North; and furnish it they must, by
some means. They truly, are an unlucky set of fellows, for I never yet
heard of one of them, who was so fortunate as to find anything good or
praiseworthy among Southern people. This is very strange indeed! They
travel South with an understanding on the part of their employer, and
with an intention on their part, to misrepresent the South, and to
excite prejudice in Northern minds. How devoid of patriotism, truth
and justice. The mischief done by these misrepresentations is
inconceivable. If every abolitionist North of Mason and Dixon's line,
were separately and individually asked, from whence he derived his
opinions and prejudices in relation to Southern men, and Southern
slavery, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand would
answer, that they had learned all that they knew about slavery and
slaveholders from the publication of abolitionists: not one in a
thousand among them having ever seen a southern slave or his master.
"Truth is stranger than fiction;" and it is also becoming more rare.
No wonder people are misled, when the country is flooded with
abolition papers and Uncle Tom's Cabin. No one can read such
publications without being misled by them, unless he is, or has been,
a resident of a slave State. It is thus that materials are furnished
for abolition papers and such publications as Uncle Tom's Cabin; and
it is thus that the public mind is poisoned, public morals vitiated,
and honest but ignorant men led to say and do many things, which must,
sooner or later, result in deplorable consequences, unless something
can be brought to bear on the public mind that will counteract the
evil. The writer hopes, through the blessing of God, that the
following pages will prove an efficient antidote.
Southern people have their faults; they err in many things: and far be
it from me, under such circumstances, to become their apologist. It is
not as a defender of the South I appear before the public, but in
defense of my country, North and South. We are all brethren; we are
all citizens of the same heaven-favored country; and how residents of
one part of it can spend their lives in vilifying, traducing, and
misrepresenting those of another portion of it, is, to me,
unaccountable. It is strange, indeed! I entreat my countrymen to
reflect soberly on these things; and in the name of all that is sacred
I entreat you, my abolition friends, to pause a while, in your mad
career, and review the whole ground. It may be that some of you may
yet see the error of your course. I cannot give you all up. I trust in
God that you are not all given over to "hardness of heart and
reprobacy of mind." A word to the reader. Pass on--hear me
through--never mind my harsh expressions and uncouth language. Truth
is not very palatable, to any of us, at all times. Crack the nut; it
may be that you will find a kernel within that will reward you for
your trouble.
False impressions have been made, and continue to be made by the
writers alluded to above; sectional hatred is engendered, North and
South; and if this incessant warfare continues, it will, at no very
distant day, produce a dissolution of this Union. This result is
inevitable if the present state of things continues. Has the agitation
and discussion of the question of African slavery, in the free States,
resulted in any good, or is it ever likely to result in any? I flatter
myself that I have clearly shown, in the following pages, that
hitherto its consequences have been evil and only evil, and that
nothing but evil can grow out of it in future. I think that I have
adduced historical facts which clearly and indisputably prove that
northern agitation has served but to rivet the chains of slavery; that
it has retarded emancipation; that it has augmented the evils and
hardships of slavery; that it has inflicted injury on both masters and
servants; that it has engendered sectional hatred which endangers the
peace, prosperity, and perpetuity of the Union. Why, then, will
abolitionists persist in a course so inconsistent; so contrary to
reason; so opposed to truth, righteousness, and justice? They need not
tell me that slavery is an evil; that slavery is a curse; that slavery
is a hardship, and that it ought to be extinguished. I admit it; but
this is not the question. On this head I have no controversy with
them. The question is, whether their course of procedure is ever
likely to remove or mitigate the evils of slavery. Are we prepared, in
our efforts to remove the evils of slavery, to incur the risk of
subjecting ourselves to calamities infinitely worse that African
slavery itself? Or rather, is there the remotest probability,
supposing the plans and schemes of abolitionists should be carried
out, the Union dissolved, and the country plunged into civil war, that
slavery would thereby be abolished in the southern States?
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