that they had learned all that they knew about slavery and slaveholders from the publication of abolitionists:  not one in a thousand among them having ever seen a southern slave or his master.  “Truth is stranger than fiction;” and it is also becoming more rare.  No wonder people are misled, when the country is flooded with abolition papers and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  No one can read such publications without being misled by them, unless he is, or has been, a resident of a slave State.  It is thus that materials are furnished for abolition papers and such publications as Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and it is thus that the public mind is poisoned, public morals vitiated, and honest but ignorant men led to say and do many things, which must, sooner or later, result in deplorable consequences, unless something can be brought to bear on the public mind that will counteract the evil.  The writer hopes, through the blessing of God, that the following pages will prove an efficient antidote.

Southern people have their faults; they err in many things:  and far be it from me, under such circumstances, to become their apologist.  It is not as a defender of the South I appear before the public, but in defense of my country, North and South.  We are all brethren; we are all citizens of the same heaven-favored country; and how residents of one part of it can spend their lives in vilifying, traducing, and misrepresenting those of another portion of it, is, to me, unaccountable.  It is strange, indeed!  I entreat my countrymen to reflect soberly on these things; and in the name of all that is sacred I entreat you, my abolition friends, to pause a while, in your mad career, and review the whole ground.  It may be that some of you may yet see the error of your course.  I cannot give you all up.  I trust in God that you are not all given over to “hardness of heart and reprobacy of mind.”  A word to the reader.  Pass on—­hear me through—­never mind my harsh expressions and uncouth language.  Truth 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