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equally divided by Bear Creek, a small tributary of the South Yadkin. More than one-third of this tract-on which we have plowed, and hoed, and harrowed, many a long summer without ever suffering from the effects of coup de soleil is under cultivation; the remaining portion is a welltimbered forest, in which, without being very particular, we counted, while hunting through it not long since, sixtythree different kinds of indigenous trees-to say nothing of either coppice, shrubs or plants-among which the hickory, oak, ash, beech, birch, and black walnut, were most abundant. No turpentine or rosin is produced in our part of the State; but there are, on the place of which we speak, several species of the genus Pinus, by the light of whose flammable knots, as radiated on the contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or by crook, had found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long winter evenings to our advantage, and have thus partially escaped from the prison-grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the non-slaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined. The fertility of the soil may be inferred from the quality and variety of its natural productions; the meadow and the bottom, comprising, perhaps, an area of forty acres, are hardly surpassed by the best lands in the valley of the Yadkin. A thorough examination of the orchard will disclose the fact that considerable attention has been paid to the selection of fruits; the buildings are tolerable; the water is good. Altogether, to be frank, and nothing more, it is, for its size, one of the most desirable farms in

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though they were neither more nor less brave or patri otic than their fellow-soldiers of the South, yet, inasmuch as the independence of our country was mainly secured by virtue of their numerical strength, we think they ought to consider it not only their right but their duty to make a firm and decisive effort to save the States which they fought to free, from falling under the yoke of a worse ty ranny than that which overshadowed them under the reign of King George the Third. Freemen of the North we earnestly entreat you to think of these things. Hitherto, as mere freesoilers, you have approached but half-way to the line of your duty; now, for your own sakes and for ours, and for the purpose of perpetuating this glorious Republic, which your fathers and our fathers founded in. septennial streams of blood, we ask you, in all seriousness, to organize yourselves as one man under the banners. of Liberty, and to aid us in exterminating slavery, which is the only thing that militates against our complete aggran dizement as a nation.

In this extraordinary crisis of affairs, no man can be a true patriot without first becoming an abolitionist. (A freesoiler is only a tadpole in an advanced state of transformation; an abolitionist is the full and perfectly devel oped frog.) And here, perhaps, we may be pardoned for the digression necessary to show the exact definition of the terms abolish, abolition and abolitionist. We have looked in vain for an explanation of the signification of these words in any Southern publication; for no dictionary has ever yet been published in the South, nor is there the least. probability that one ever will be published within her bor

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ders, until slavery is abolished; but, thanks to Heaven, a portion of this continent is what our Revolutionary Fathers and the Fathers of the Constitution fought and labored and prayed to make it-a land of freedom, of power, of progress, of prosperity, of intelligence, of religion, of liter ature, of commerce, of science, of arts, of agriculture, of manufactures, of ingenuity, of enterprise, of wealth, of renown, of goodness, and of grandeur. From that glorious part of our confederacy-from the North, whence, on account of slavery in the South, we are under the humiliating necessity of procuring almost everything that is useful or ornamental, from primers to Bibles, from wafers to printing-presses, from ladles to locomotives, and from portfolios to portraits and pianos-comes to us a huge volume bearing the honored name of Webster-Noah Webster, who, after thirty-five years of unremitting toil, completed a work which is, we believe, throughout Great Britain and the United States, justly regarded as the stan dard vocabulary of the English language-and in it the terms abolish, abolition, and abolitionist, are defined as fol lows:

"Abolish, v. t. To make void; to annul; to abrogate; applied chiefly and appropriately to establish laws, contracts, rites, customs and institutions; as to abolish laws by a repeal, actual er ritual. To destroy or put an end to; as to abolish idols."

"Abolition, n. The act of abolishing; or the state of being abolished; an annulling; abrogation; utter destruction; as the abolition of laws, decrees, or ordinances, rites, customs, &c. The putting an end to slavery; emancipation."

"Abolitionist, n. A person who favors abolition, or the immediate emancipation of slaves."

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There, gentlemen of the South, you have the definitions. of the transitive verb abolish and its two derivative nouns, abolition and abolitionist; can you, with the keenest possible penetration of vision, detect in either of these words even a tittle of the opprobrium which the oligarchs, in their wily and inhuman efforts to enslave all working classes irrespective of race or color, have endeavored to attach to them? We know you cannot; abolition is but another name for patriotism, and its other special synonyms are generosity, magnanimity, reason, prudence, wisdom, religion, progress, justice, and humanity.

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And here, by the way, we may as well explain whom we refer to when we speak of gentlemen of the South. We say, therefore, that, deeply impressed with the conviction that slavery is a great social and political evil, a sin and a crime, in the fullest sense, whenever we speak of gentlemen of the South, or of gentlemen anywhere, or at whatever time, or in whatever connection we may speak of gentlemen, we seldom allude to slaveholders, for the simple reason that, with few exceptions, we cannot conscientiously recognize them as gentlemen. It is only in those rare instances where the crime is mitigated by circumstances over which the slaveholder has had no control, or where he himself, convinced of the impropriety, the folly and the wickedness of the institution, is anxious to abolish it, that we can sincerely apply to him the sacred appellation in question-an appellation which we would no sooner think of applying to a pro-slavery slaveholder, or any other pro-slavery man, than we would think of applying it to a border-ruflian, a thief, or a murderer. Let it be under

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stood, however, that the rare instances of which we speak are less rare than many persons may suppose. We are personally acquainted with several slaveholders in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, who have unreservedly assured us that they were disgusted with the institution, and some of them went so far as to say they would ad to acquiesce in the provision of a statute which would make it obligatory on them all to manumit their slaves, without the smallest shadow or substance of compensation. These, we believe, are the sentiments of all the respectable and patriotic slaveholders, who have eyes to see, and see-ears to hear, and hear; who, perceiving the impoverishing and degrading effects of slavery, are unwilling to entail it on their children, and who, on account of their undeviating adherence to truth and justice, are, like the more intelligent nonslaveholders, worthy of being regarded as gentlemen in every sense of the term. Such slaveholders were Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other illustrious Virgin ians, who, in the language of the great chief himself, declared it among their "first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this country, may be abolished by law." The words embraced within this quotation were used by Washington, in a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786—a letter from which we shall quote more freely hereafter; and we think his emphatic use of the participle abolish, at that early day, is proof positive that the glorious "Father of his Country" is entitled to the first place in the calendar of primitive American abolitionists.

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