advocating a dissolution of the Union, with all its attendant
consequences, results and horrors. For whenever we cease to observe
the solemn compact that binds us together, then the Union must
necessarily be dissolved, and civil wars, with all its calamities,
must follow!! Mrs. Stowe will pardon me if I should perchance,
inferentialy saddle on her some things, that will make the vital fluid
curdle in her veins; unless she is dead to all those emotions of soul
which characterize her sex. As I find her in bad company, I am forced
in the absence of better testimony, to judge her from the company in
which I find her. The old Spanish proverb is as true as Holy Writ,
viz., "Show me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are."
If she chooses to write novels, and bring grave charges against others
by insinuation and innuendo, in order to evade the responsibility of
defining her position clearly and openly, she will not, I hope, take
offense if I define it for her.

Mrs. Stowe asserts that there are no laws in slave States to protect
slaves, and to punish the cruel and brutal outrages of masters. That
masters can cruelly beat their slaves, and also murder them with
impunity! This is untrue--nothing could be more false. In the eye of
the law, there is no difference between the man that murders his
slave, and the man that murders his neighbor; and the laws not only
punish men for cruel and unnecessary punishment inflicted on slaves,
but there are penal statutes against the unnecessary and barbarous
abuse and destruction of horses, and other species of property. She
may tell us that the penal statutes, so far as slaves are concerned,
are a dead letter; that they are inoperative; that they have no force
or effect whatever. This also, I know to be untrue, from personal
observation. I admit that slaveholders often evade the punishment due
their crimes, and so do men everywhere. The crimes of men of wealth