ties of blood and affection which he alone of all human, of all living
creatures on the face of the earth may neither enjoy in peace nor defend
when they are outraged. If he is well treated, if his master be
tolerably humane or even understand his own interest tolerably, this is
probably _all_ he may have to endure: it is only to the consciousness of
these evils that knowledge and reflection awaken him. But how is it if
his master be severe, harsh, cruel--or even only careless--leaving his
creatures to the delegated dominion of some overseer, or agent, whose
love of power, or other evil dispositions, are checked by no
considerations of personal interest? Imagination shrinks from the
possible result of such a state of things; nor must you, or Mr. ----,
tell me that the horrors thus suggested exist only in imagination. The
Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and
personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that
it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision,
insult, menace--the handcuff, the lash--the tearing away of children
from parents, of husbands from wives--the weary trudging in droves along
the common highways, the labour of body, the despair of mind, the
sickness of heart--these are the realities which belong to the system,
and form the rule, rather than the exception, in the slave's experience.
And this system exists here in this country of your's, which boasts
itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom, the one place
in all the world where all men may find enfranchisement from all
thraldoms of mind, soul, or body--the land elect of liberty.

Mr. ---- lays great stress, as a proof of the natural inferiority of the
blacks, on the little comparative progress they have made in those States
where they enjoy their freedom, and the fact that, whatever quickness of
parts they may exhibit while very young, on attaining maturity they
invariably sink again into inferiority, or at least mediocrity, and