black race; and yet it is notorious, that almost every Southern planter
has a family more or less numerous of illegitimate coloured children. Most
certainly, few people would like to assert that such connections are
formed because it is the _interest_ of these planters to increase the
number of their human property, and that they add to their revenue by the
closest intimacy with creatures that they loathe, in order to reckon
among their wealth the children of their body. Surely that is a monstrous
and unnatural supposition, and utterly unworthy of belief. That such
connections exist commonly, is a sufficient proof that they are not
abhorrent to nature; but it seems, indeed, as if marriage (and not
concubinage) was the horrible enormity which cannot be tolerated, and
against which, moreover, it has been deemed expedient to enact laws. Now
it appears very evident that there is no law in the white man's nature
which prevents him from making a coloured woman the mother of his
children, but there _is_ a law on his statute books forbidding him to make
her his wife; and if we are to admit the theory that the mixing of the
races is a monstrosity, it seems almost as curious that laws should be
enacted to prevent men marrying women towards whom they have an invincible
natural repugnance, as that education should by law be prohibited to
creatures incapable of receiving it. As for the exhortation with which
Mr. ---- closes his letter, that I will not 'go down to my husband's
plantation prejudiced against what I am to find there,' I know not well
how to answer it. Assuredly I _am_ going prejudiced against slavery, for I
am an Englishwoman, in whom the absence of such a prejudice would be
disgraceful. Nevertheless, I go prepared to find many mitigations in the
practice to the general injustice and cruelty of the system--much kindness
on the part of the masters, much content on that of the slaves; and I feel
very sure that you may rely upon the carefulness of my observation, and
the accuracy of my report, of every detail of the working of the thing
that comes under my notice; and certainly, on the plantation to which I am