E449 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 III 
 
 DDDD173flDS7 
 
WHY I HAVE NOT GONE TO THE SOUTH. 
 
 [The following letter, in reply to an in<iuiry ar; above, was written 
 by a gentleman of Warrington, England — a man of education and 
 Ligh moral and Christian character — who passed the Summer and 
 early Autumn of 1858 in travelling in the United States.] 
 
 Boston, Sept. 16, 1858. 
 
 Mr Dear Sir : I have be:n frequently asked, by the 
 apologists and defenders of the slave system, in this coun- 
 try — " Have you been to the South ? " " See the insti- 
 tution as it exists, before you condemn it," «fcc. As the 
 request seems a plausible one, 1 now wish to state my 
 reasons why a journey to the South, to see the state of 
 the slave population there, must be worse than useless, 
 for ita proposed end ; and why, humanly speaking, it 
 eould lead to nothing but mystification and deception. 
 The slave-owner and his apologists seem to imagine, that 
 the only conceivable evil of slavery consists in the lash of 
 the overseer ; excessive and wasting labor ; privation of 
 food, and the non-allowance of tim3 for occasional recrea- 
 tion. 
 
 Xow, I would most cheerfully — if only the issue of the 
 question of the righteousness of elaveholding could be 
 raised before some just tribunal, whose decision should be 
 held binding in the case — give the slave-owner the benefit 
 of admission — that no slave ever was lashed, or had his 
 life shortened one minute, by labor and privation of any 
 kind ; and that his life was one of continued jollity from 
 the cradle to the grave ; and I tell him that the issue 
 
c^/HA-t 
 
 would not be one whit the less doubtful. No man can 
 be a slave-owner without believing or practising a lie ; 
 and no man can be a slave without injury to his whole 
 nature — intellectual, moral and spiritual — and these to- 
 gether constitute the. damnable sin of slavery in the first 
 
 Now, no man journeying through the South could, by 
 so doing, see more clearly this lie which the slave-owner 
 cherishes in his heart of hearts, and lives by as a divine 
 truth ; nor would such journey reveal, more clearly, the 
 moral degradation of the slave, than the fact that he is 
 so brutified as to submit to a bondage which, if his soul 
 were only a few degrees higher and purer than it is, would 
 end in open rebellion ; war to the knife, and death to 
 every slaveholder and every abettor of slavery where the 
 bondage existed. These things are clear as the noon-day 
 sun. And lashes more or less bloody, labor more or less 
 wasting, and pork more or less liberally doled out, are 
 matters of so comparatively small concern, that how it 
 could ever enter into men's heads to place the issue of 
 this great question upon such facts only, is to me utterly 
 inexplicable. The only apparent reason is, that slave- 
 holding has demented the master at the same time that it 
 brutifies his victim. St. Paul describes the last state of 
 reprobation of the Gentile world as one in which ** God 
 had given them up to strong delusion that they should 
 believe a lie, who had pleasure in unrighteousness." 
 
 What truth can be clearer than that the man who 
 accumulates his wealth by taking forcibly or fraudulently 
 from others the daily produce of their labor, and only 
 gives them, in return, such food and shelter as he gives to 
 bis horses and cattle, and for the same motive, that they 
 
:5- 3 
 
 ^may work more efiBciently for his gain — I ask, what truth 
 c ; can be clearer than that such a man is a thief and robber 
 An the sight of God ? If he is not a thief, who is ? Bring 
 the black hired slave into court : " I earned five dollars 
 last week, and this white man took three, and only left 
 me two to provide food and lodging and clothes for my- 
 self." The American nation justifies this theft ; and it is 
 their crime and their shame that they do so ; but their 
 doing so cannot alter the everlasting principles of right 
 and truth, or make the armed power which sustains the 
 white thief in his crime other than one of brute force and 
 oppression. Such national crime does all it can do to 
 pervert and pollute the national conscience. The Ameri- 
 can nation makes physical strength the arbiter and judge 
 of all moral principle, and, by so doing, dethrones God, 
 and becomes an agent of hell. 
 
 But it is a comparatively small matter that the slave 
 owner is a thief. If this was his only crime, he might 
 still be a being of comparative purity and holiness. He 
 is a murderer of the souls as well as the bodies of men. He 
 declares the slave is not fit for freedom. And yet he 
 bred him, kept him from infancy to manhood, but took 
 special care that no faculty should be developed that did 
 not serve his lust for gain ! Laws are passed, making it 
 a crime to teach him to read. The intellect that God has 
 given, and by the gift revealed the duty of cultivation, is 
 stultified by enforced neglect. The spirit that was made 
 for progress is enfeebled and chained down, and kept in 
 the swaddling-bands of infancy ; and all that he can do to 
 destroy the ever-living soul of his brother man he does, 
 to gratify his lust for gain ! And I am to go into the 
 South, to see the institution, before I condemn it ! And 
 
if I go, they will try to show me a man so brutified that 
 be shall rejoice before me in his degradation ! And be- 
 cause they have succeeded in making him a non-rebellious 
 slave, I am to join them in exulting over the moral ruin ! 
 And because they still have doubts of their own ability 
 to keep the man in chains by their own power, I am to 
 help them in adding mine to aid in such hellish work ! 
 And the North does it — gives them the aid they need, 
 and covers it up, all over, with the Bible ! And I am to 
 go into the South specially to see whether I cannot be 
 brought over to their side I I am not to go to teach the 
 black man his rights and duties before God, but to become 
 the auxiliary of the slave-owner ; for if I do not become 
 that, I can do nothing. Except that, if I act as a Chris- 
 tian, I have, as the certain result, legal imprisonment, or 
 illegal lynch law. I will not go to the South. 
 
 Yours very truly, W. Robson. 
 
 Anerican Aiiti-Slavery Society, 138 Nassau street, New York, 
 
 54 W 
 
"^oV **' 
 
 i- ^. 
 
 ^c 
 
 
 "^o 
 
 
 7* c^'^ 'WW^* ^-tf -"S 
 
 
 
 AC 
 
 
 « ^0^ 
 
 
 >_ 'e.. .1^ 
 
 «>.^^ /. 
 
 ; v< 
 
 
 ^'♦ .i'.. -^ 
 
 O" -o . » « A 
 
 A^ .oi»«^ '^. 
 

 "Ao^ 
 
 
 •'"•' \^ •. -*• ••" 
 
 
 >° 
 
 
 
 
 9^.^l):a^. 
 
 
 
 
 't.^V^ vstRT 
 
 T *, IK BOOK8<NCHNC 
 
 ^ tfli Cfan(viH«. Pa 
 
 > ^rti Jan fet 1989