Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them also with what they would be in Africa, or if set free, to remain in connection with the whites, slavery is not a curse.  To be free is, of course, in itself a blessing.  But it depends on many things whether, under existing circumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse.  Our people generally insist that it must be, and therefore that it is.  Here they are mistaken, as I now view the subject.  The British people and the French, looking at the blacks in a colony, settle the question of emancipation in their own minds without much difficulty.  But it would be found to be a different thing to emancipate the colored race, to live side by side with the English people in the mother-country.  In that case, a contest between the two races for the possession of power, and innumerable offences and practical difficulties, would, in time, lead to the extermination, or expatriation, of one of the two races, or to their intermarriage, if the universal history of such conjunction of races is any guide.

I do not wonder that the good lady with the “marsh-mallow” exclaimed so at your groundless commiseration of the sick among the slaves.  You have no more idea of the practical relation between the whites and the blacks, the owners and the slaves, than most of the English people, who have never been here, have of our Federal and State relations.

I will tell you an incident which I know to be literally true.

A lady from a free state was visiting at the South.  Calling upon a married lady, a near relative of one who has been Vice-President of the United States, she found her with a little sick black babe at her breast.

The Northern lady started with astonishment.  I am not informed whether she was what is called among us a “friend of the slave;” the eminent lady friend whom she visited certainly was such, in the best sense.  The Northern lady’s feelings of repugnance would not be found to be peculiar to her among our Northern people.  The little babe died on the lap of the Southern lady.

So you see that there are more things here than are dreamed of in your philosophy.  When you stigmatize the Southerners as oppressors, my only consolation for you is that you know not what you do.  Imagine, now, the Rev. Mr. Blank, at the North, relating that little incident:  “Behold and see this monstrous picture of infinite hypocrisy:  The Slave-power with a slave at its breast!  Yes, rather than lose one or two hundred dollars’ worth of human “property,” a distinguished lady slave-holder will give her nourishment to a slave-infant.  So they fatten the accursed system out of their own bodies and souls.”  Such is a fair specimen of this man’s frenzy; and there are multitudes all over the Free States who will listen to such language and applaud it.  But how cruel it is, how low and wicked!  I pray Heaven to deliver you from being an abolitionist in the cast of your mind, your temper,