Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/416

Rh as regards moral and intellectual culture, and this in consequence of the unhappy slave-institution with all its consequences—both to the black and the white population. There are great individuals in the Southern States, but no great community, no united, aspiring people. The fetters of slavery bind, more or less, all and every one. Yet I love the South. I have found there many things to love; many things to esteem; many things to enjoy; many things to be grateful for; and as it is natural to me to enter into the life amid which I am living or observing, I have in the South felt myself to have a southern tendency, and having entered into the peculiar life of the South, its circumstances and position, having a living sense of the good which abundantly exists here; which here is in operation; I have perfectly understood that bitter feeling which ferments, even in noble minds, towards the despotic and unreasonable North, against that portion of the North which is so opposed to the South; against the ultra-abolitionists and their violence. It is merely when I oppose them to the ultra of the pro-slavery party—that I hold with the former. But what would I not give if the South, the true, the noble South, would itself take the subject of contention in hand, and silence the mouth of their opponents, silence their blame both just and unjust, in a great and noble way, by laws which would bring about a gradual emancipation, by one law, at least, which should allow the slaves to purchase their own freedom, and that of their families, at a reasonable price, a price which should be established by law. This, it seems to me, might be required from the Southern States, as an act of justice to themselves, to their native land—so far as they desire to have part in its proud charter of liberty, and that they do desire—as an act of justice to their posterity, to the people whom they have enslaved, and for whom they thereby would open a future, first by means of hope, by a noble object for which to