INTRODUCTION.





OUR generous friends in Georgia and South Carolina will not add among
their assumptions that we know nothing of the South and Southern life. A
residence of several years in those States, a connection with the press,
and associations in public life, gave us opportunities which we did not
lose, and have not lost sight of; and if we dipped deeper into the
vicissitudes of life and law than they gave us credit for at the time,
we trust they will pardon us, on the ground of interest in the welfare
of the South.

Perhaps we should say, to support the true interests of the South, we
should and must abandon many of those errors we so strenuously supported
in years past; and thus we have taken up the subject of our book, based
upon the practical workings of an infamous law, which we witnessed upon
the individual whose name forms a part of the title.

Imprisoning a shipwrecked sailor, and making it a penal offence for a
freeman to come within the limits of a republican State, whether
voluntarily or involuntarily, seems to be considered commonplace,
instead of barbarous in South Carolina. This may be accounted for by the
fact that the power of a minority, created in wrong, requiring barbarous
expedients to preserve itself intact, becomes an habitual sentiment,
which usage makes right.