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,