Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/369



ideas, against the established ordinance of God; and it sometimes takes effect. A professor in one of our Southern seminaries, not long since placed in the hands of a pupil 'Wayland's Moral Science,' and informed her that the chapter on slavery was heretical and unscriptural, and that she would not be examined on that chapter, and need not study it, Perhaps she didn't. But on the day of examination she wished her teacher to tell her 'if that chapter was heretical how she was to know but they were all so?' We might enumerate many other books of similar character and tendencies. But we will refer to only one more—it is 'Gilbert's Atlas'—though the real author's name does not appear on the title page. On the title page it is called 'Appleton's Complete Guide of the World;' published by D. Appleton & Co, New York. This is an elegant and comprehensive volume, endorsed by the Appletons and sent South, containing hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite. It is a sort of literary and scientific infernal machine. And whatever the design may have been, the tendency is as shocking as the imagination can picture This is the artillery and these the implements England and our own recreant sister States are employing to overturn the order of society and the established forms of labour that date back beyond the penning of the decalogue This book, and many other Northern school-books scattered over the country, come within the range of the statutes of this State, which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of the penalty of death upon any person who shall 'publish or distribute' such works; and were I a citizen of New Orleans, this work should not escape the attention of the grand jury. But need I add more to convince the sceptical of the necessity there is for the production of our own text-books, and, may I not add, our own literature? Why should the land of domestic servitude be less productive in the great works of the mind now than when Homer evoked the arts, poetry, and eloquence into existence? Moses wrote the Genesis of Creation, the Exodus of Israel, and the laws of mankind? and when Cicero, Virgil, Horace, St. John, and St. Paul became the instructors of the world? They will want no cut-throat literature, no fire-brand moral science nor Appleton's 'Complete Atlas,' to encourage crimes that would blanch the cheek of a pirate, nor any of the ulcerous and polluting agencies issuing from the hot-beds of abolition fanaticism."