I was much entertained, and I said to him that I supposed his remarks would need qualification on both sides; but I was greatly impressed, as I often am here, with the secret, strong attachment which there is in Southern hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective of its anti-slavery views and feelings.  Its climate and institutions and arts and scenery are adapted to their diversified wants.  “The North and the South, Thou hast created them.”  God made the North for the South, and the South for the North, and our acts of non-intercourse are in violation of his will.  We are in a war of “conscience,” inflamed by doctrinal error on our part.  It allows no “conscience” to the other side.  The state of our “consciences” at the North is jury, judge, and executioner.  There is no “conscience,” we think, in Southern churches, ministers, judges, citizens, except that which is defiled.  Probably there is not on earth this day a greater despot, or one more prepared for inquisitorial proceedings, than “Northern Conscience.”

No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a slave-holder, had I been born and bred here, but I rejoice that I belong to a free state.  I love to think of my capable girls, my “help.” at home, who make the household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm of servants who do only half as much, and only half as well.  I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon.  But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit.  God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations.  I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before.  But I prefer a state of society free from slavery:  yet this makes me love those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the soil.  It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern country, as comparing unfavorably with neighboring free states.  Going up the Ohio River one day, a Northern gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Kentucky on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio on the other.  “There, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “is slavery,” pointing to Kentucky, “and there,” turning to the other side, “is freedom.”

“Now,” said an intelligent Ohioan, “if you will excuse me for saying it, I regard that as clear humbug.  What is cultivated on either side?  The products of Kentucky, if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to her lands.  It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference; it is the difference between large staples sown over large territories, and smaller staples raised on smaller fields.  Kentucky’s soil would be exhausted just as fast under free labor, so long as she cultivated her present crops.”