I hope that you will not think me “a strong-minded woman” in what I here repeat to you of the opinions and expressions which I have gathered in listening to the conversation of intelligent people on this subject.  I write these things for your instruction, and also as memoranda for my own future use.

It is a cherished idea with many excellent people that the time will come when there will not be a slave in this land, nor on the earth.  If they mean by this that the time will come when every man in every face will see a brother and a friend, it is certainly true.  But if they mean by it that ownership in man will come to an end, their opinion and prophecy are as good as those of men who should undertake to differ from them, and no better; while both would be entirely presumptuous in being positive on such a subject.  Some people seem to think that, in the good time coming, it is as though we should dwell out-of-doors, among flowers and fruits, with few wants, these being supplied by the spontaneous offerings of nature.

Others, however, suppose that we shall still need some to shovel, take care of horses, work over the fire the greater part of the day in preparing food, go of errands, and, in short, be a serving class.  They suppose that the same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and wisdom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to men, will, in the same sovereign way, create men and women with such degrees of capacity and susceptibility as will lead inevitably to their being superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness to all concerned.

This being so, none of us will venture to say that no one of the existing races of men will, to the end of time, be of such gentle, dependent natures as to find their highest happiness and welfare in being, generally, in the capacity of servants.  Some of all races, we do not object, may be servants to the end of time.  No one will say to his Maker that it will be unjust for Him to put a whole race of men forever in that serving condition, making them, according to their capacity, most happy in being so.  For “Who hath been His counsellor?” That the Africans are under a cloud of God’s mysterious providence, no one denies.  I will not dictate to my Maker when He shall remove that cloud, while I still endeavor to mitigate the effects of it upon my fellow-creatures, the blacks.  I do not know that he may not perpetuate, to the end of time, a relationship of dependency to other races in this African race.  I know nothing about it.  But I always feel impelled to say these things, when I hear good men confidently predicting that ownership in man will soon and forever come to an end.  I reply, It may be in the highest measure necessary to the happiness of the human family, at its best estate, that one race, or that races, should be in the relation of inferiors, finding their very best