you may best ascertain the real nature of American slavery. The
commercial newspapers, published by slaveholders, in slaveholding
states, will give you a far more graphic idea of what slavery actually
is, than you have from Uncle Tom's Cabin; for there the most horrible
features are softened. This writer says, 'And now a word on American
representatives abroad. I have already made my complaint of the troubles
brought on Americans here by that "incendiary" book of Mrs. Stowe's,
especially of the difficulty we have in making the French understand our
institutions. But there was one partially satisfactory way of answering
their questions, by saying that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a romance. And
this would have served the purpose pretty well, and spared our blushes
for the model republic, if the slaveholders themselves would only
withhold their testimony to the truth of what we were willing to let
pass as fiction. But they are worse than Mrs. Stowe herself, and their
writings are getting to be quoted here quite extensively. The _Moniteur_
of to-day, and another widely-circulated journal that lies on my table,
both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary periodicals, _The
National Intelligencer_, of February 11, and _The N.O. Picayune_, of
February 17. The first gives an auctioneer's advertisement of the sale
of "a negro boy of eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three
horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows," &c. Then follows an account of
the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic
_feuilletons_ here, of a famous scene in the _Case de l'Oncle Tom_, as
played at the _Ambigu Comique_. The second extract is the advertisement
of "our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. M.C.G.," who presents his "respects
to the inhabitants of O. and the neighbouring parishes," and "informs
them that he keeps a fine pack of dogs trained to catch negroes," &c. It
is painful to think that there are men in our country who will write,
and that there are others found to publish, such tales as these about
our peculiar institution. I put it to Mr. G., if he thinks it is