look for anything but national, State, and individual overthrow, and social ruin.

Whom has the present national executive called around him for his supporters and guides? Why, those very men who cordially endorsed the above declarations in Helper's book, and none others. Only think of it! Read the sentiments over again, and suppose yourself to have been a Southern slaveholder, and then remember that the very men who endorsed those sentiments had succeeded in 1860 in the election to the Presidency of one who had so recently declared in writing to that party, that he who refused to free his negroes should be made a slave himself, and that speedily. Could any family, social circle, or any volunteer association or combination either religious or political, hang together under such circumstances? Look at it and bring it home to yourselves. Remember that the President has surrounded himself with the most ultra of the endorsers of Helper, and exhausted his patronage with them; and will give no man an office of the most paltry kind, who refuses to endorse Helper entire; and by so doing he has laid a sickle with two edges at the root of the best and most wholesome government ever formed since the one for our first parents in Eden. Every Christian man and woman, who knows anything of human nature, knows that a volunteer government must be voluntarily sustained, or fall into ruin. But Mr. Lincoln was selected by the endorsers of the above declaration from Helper's book. Read over the quotation again, and in view of all these circumstances, say

whether we had a right to have expected anything else than the threatening circumstances which are thickening before us.

Don't stop to accuse me of being a secessionist, traitor, disunionist, or a sympathizer with rebellion, for there is not the slightest shadow of truth in the declaration, unless rebellion against the abolitionism of the free States be treason.

Let the present administration and all other abolitionists, including the worshippers of the black goddess of liberty of Melodeon Hall, Boston, "do as they would be done by;" then we shall have peace throughout our great and glorious country, and the Union be restored in less than a month.

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

The words of Jesus Christ. Don't forget to notice the words in the text, "all things whatsoever."

I wrote about two thirds of this chapter in 1860, prior to the Presidential election, and the balance soon after the firing upon the American flag by the rebels at Charleston. This is the reason why it first speaks of prospective; then the appearance of present strife between the North and South.

CHAPTER VIII.

Correspondence between Mrs. Mason of Virginia, and Mrs. Childs of Massachusetts. Mrs. Childs' Scriptural Quotations to sustain Abolitionism.

MRS. SENATOR MASON wrote Mrs. Childs last fall, soon after the John Brown raid in Virginia, on the impropriety of the interference by Northern people, with the lawful institutions of the South, to caution abolitionists not to place the southern people into such imminent danger, by trying to get up servile insurrections in the South. Mrs. Childs answers in a long letter, justifying herself in her ungodly insurrectionary work; in teaching southern slaves that they are as good as their masters, and should be insubordinate, and by charging the southern slaveholder with the most infamous and foul crimes that ever were charged to the hearts and hands of human beings. She quotes largely from Miss Grimkee, said to be a daughter of Judge Grimkee of South Carolina, who came North (she said) to get clear of the sound of the lash, and bemoanings of the tortured slaves, that did not cease to sound in her ears from six in the morning until late in the evening.

I have unfortunately lost fifteen pages of my manuscripts, in which I replied to the awful slanders ( 338 )

therein made; and as I have lost the letter of Mrs. Childs also, I have to restore them from memory. Therefore, can give only an outline of one or two stories. One was, that it was so common to whip slaves to death, that it was no more noticed than killing an animal, and that for the slightest disobedience. That it was an every day occurrence to strip men and women naked, and tie them up to a limb by the hands, and draw them up until they were on tiptoe, and then give them five hundred lashes, and let them stand in that position for many hours, after having bathed them with salt and water, and then give them five hundred lashes more, and salt them again, and let them hang for some hours more, and cut them down. They frequently died under this torture, and no account taken of it.

Again; after tying up men and women in the same position, they would take a large paddle made for the purpose, with holes through it, and paddle their naked bodies with it; every hole in the paddle would raise a blister, at each blow, until the whole surface of the body would be a complete jelly, and then they would throw on the salt and water, for still greater tortures; and that they frequently died under this mode of torture also, but no account taken of it by the authorities, and if they should happen to notice it, it would be passed over by a sham trial, and the parties discharged, or never call it up for trial.

I have no doubt some could be found in the North weak enough to believe such enormities in crime. And I might believe such stories under some cir

cumstances. But no thoughtful person would believe this one told by Miss Grimkee. I have travelled a great deal over this country, and have not yet seen the party or parties who were willing to amuse themselves at so dear a rate. Every man or woman will count the cost of their pleasures. But I do not believe that any man in his right mind could enjoy such cruelties and tortures, even if it cost them nothing in dollars and cents. And if the believers in Miss Grimkee's book will take a cow skin, and give a tree five hundred lashes as hard as they can lay on, and then give it five hundred more in the same strain, they will find themselves very tired when done, and will conclude there is too much labor for the trifling fiendish pleasure it might be to them, when we remember that the people of the South are not so fond of hard work. And that such flogging may cost the owner $1500 each, for he could get that sum for the slave at any time if sound.

Is it possible, that any man or woman is fool enough to believe any such stories? Who would believe any one raised in the South could tell so monstrous a falsehood? It would be hard for me to decide which I would prefer to be guilty of: the believing of such unnatural and foul slander, or to be the originator of it. For I think I should commit as great a sin by one as the other. It is hard

for me to believe any man or woman credulous enough to believe such monstrosities, and cannot persuade myself they believe it when they tell it, unless reason has been confused. And if such