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CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 ^3/ 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 
 
 AND 
 
 GOV. WISE AND MRS. MASON, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAYERY SOCIETY. 
 1860. 
 

CORRESPOI^DENCE. 
 
 LETTER TO GOV. WISE. 
 
 Wayland, Mass., Oct. 26tli, 1859. 
 
 GrOVERNOR WiSE ! I havG heard that you were a mau of 
 chivalrous sentiments, and I know you were opposed to the 
 iniquitous attempt to f6rce upon Kansas a constitution abhor- 
 rent to the moral sense of her people. Relying upon these 
 indications of honor and justice in your character, I venture 
 to ask a favor of you. Enclosed is a letter to Capt. John 
 Brown. Will you have the kindness, after reading it your- 
 self, to transmit it to the prisoner ? 
 
 I and all my large circle of abolition acquaintances were 
 taken by surprise when news came of Capt. Brown's recent 
 attempt ; nor do I know of a single person who would have 
 approved of it had they been apprised of his intention. But 
 I and thousands of others feel a natural impulse of sympathy 
 for the brave and suffering man. Perhaps God, who sees the 
 inmost of our souls, perceives some such sentiment in your 
 heart also. He needs a mother or sister to dress his wounds, 
 and speak soothingly to him. Will you allow me to perform 
 that mission of humanity ? If you will, may God bless you 
 for the generous deed ! 
 
 I have been for years an uncompromising abolitionist, and 
 I should scorn to deny it or apologize for it as much as John 
 Brown himself would do. Believing in peace principles, I 
 deeply regret the step that the old veteran has taken, while 
 I honor his humanity towards those who became his prisoners. 
 But because it is my habit to be as open as the daylight, I 
 
4 LETTER OF GOV. WISE. 
 
 will also say that if I believed our religion justified men in 
 fighting for freedom, I should consider the enslaved every- 
 where as best entitled to that right. Such an avowal is a 
 simple, frank expression of my sense of natural justice. 
 
 But I should despise myself utterly if any circumstances 
 could tempt me to seek to advance these opinions in any way, 
 directly or indirectly, after your permission to visit Virginia 
 has been obtained on the plea of sisterly sympathy with a 
 brave and suffering man. I give you my word of honor, 
 which was never broken, that I would use such permission 
 solely and singly for the purpose of nursing your prisoner, 
 and for no other purpose whatsoever. 
 
 Yours, respectfully, 
 
 L. MARIA CHILD. 
 
 REPLY OF GOV. WISE. 
 
 Richmond, Ya., Oct. 29th, 1859. 
 
 Madam : Yours of the 26th was received by me yesterday, 
 and at my earliest leisure I respectfully reply to it, that I 
 will forward the letter for John Brown, a prisoner under our 
 laws, arraigned at the bar of the Circuit Court for the county 
 of Jefierson, at Charlestown, Ya., for the crimes of murder, 
 robbery and treason, which you ask me to transmit to him. 
 I will comply with your request in the only way which seems 
 to me proper, by enclosing it to the Commonwealth's attorney, 
 with the request that he will ask the permission of the Court 
 to hand it to the prisoner. Brown, the prisoner, is now in 
 the hands of the judiciary, not of the executive of this Com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 You ask me, further, to allow you to perform the mission 
 " of mother or sister, to dress his wounds and speak soothingly 
 to him." By this, of course, you mean to be allowed to visit 
 him in his cell, and to minister to him in the offices of human- 
 ity. Why should you not be so allowed, Madam ? Virginia 
 and Massachusetts are involved in no civil war, and the Con- 
 
LETTER OF GOV. WISE. 5 
 
 stltution "which unites them in one confederacy guarantees to 
 you privileges and immunities of a citizen of the United 
 States in the State of Virginia. That Constitution I am 
 sworn to support, and am, therefore, bound to protect your 
 privileges and immunities as a citizen of Massachusetts com- 
 ing into Virginia for any lawful and peaceful purpose. 
 
 Coming, as 3'ou propose, to minister to the captive in pris- 
 on, you will be met, doubtless, by all our people, not only in a 
 chivalrous, but in a Christian spirit. You have the right to 
 visit Charlestown, Va., Madam ; and your mission being 
 merciful and humane, will not only be allowed, but respected, 
 if not welcomed. A few unenlightened and inconsiderate per- 
 sons, fanatical in their modes of thought and action, to main- 
 tain justice and right, might molest you, or be disposed to do 
 so ; and this might suggest the imprudence of risking any ex- 
 periment upon the peace of a society ver}^ much excited by 
 the crimes with whose chief author you seem to symjiathize 
 so much. But still, I repeat, your motives and avowed pur- 
 pose are lawful and peaceful, and I will, as far as I am con- 
 cerned, do my duty in protecting your rights in our limits. 
 Virginia and her authorities would be weak indeed — weak 
 in point of folly, and weak in point of power — if her State 
 faith and constitutional obligations cannot be redeemed in her 
 own limits to the letter of morality as well as of law ; and if 
 her chivalry cannot courteously receive a lady's visit to a 
 prisoner, every arm which guards Brown from rescue on the 
 one hand, and from lynch law on the other, will be ready to 
 guard your jierson in Virginia. 
 
 I could not permit an insult even to woman in her walk of 
 charity among us, though it be to one who whetted knives of 
 butchery for our mothers, sisters, daughters and babes. We 
 have no sympathy with your sentiments of sympathy with 
 Brown, and are surprised that you were " taken by surprise 
 when news came of Capt. Brown's recent attempt." His at- 
 tempt was a natural consequence of your sympathy, and the 
 errors of that sympathy ought to make you doubt its virtue 
 from the eJBfect on his conduct. But if is not of this I should 
 speak. When you arrive at Charlestown, if j^ou go there, it 
 will be for the Court and its officers, the Commonwealth's 
 attorney, sheriff and jailer, to say whether you may see and 
 wait on the prisoner. But, whether you are thus permitted 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 or not, (and you will be, if my advice can prevail,) you may 
 rest assured that he will be humanely, lawfully and mercifully 
 dealt by iu prison and on trial. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 HENRY A. WISE. 
 
 MRS. CHILD TO GOV. WISE. 
 
 In your civil but very diplomatic reply to my letter, you 
 inform me that I have a constitutional right to visit Virginia, 
 for peaceful purposes, in common with every citizen of the 
 United States. I was perfectly well aware that such was the 
 theory of constitutional obligation in the Slave States ; but I 
 was also aware of what you omit to mention, viz. : that the 
 Constitution has, in reality, been completely and systematic- 
 ally nullified whenever it suited the convenience or the policy 
 of the Slave Power. Your constitutional obligation, for 
 which you profess so much respect, has never proved any 
 protection to citizens of the Free States, who happened to 
 have a black, brown, or yellow complexion ; nor to any white 
 citizen whom you even suspected of entertaining opinions op- 
 posite to your own, on a question of vast importance to the 
 temporal welfare and moral example of our common country. 
 This total disregard of constitutional obligation has been man- 
 ifested not merely by the Lynch Law of mobs in the Slave 
 States, but by the deliberate action of magistrates and legisla- 
 tors. What regard was paid to constitutional obligation in 
 South Carolina, when Massachusetts sent the Hon. Mr. Hoar 
 there as an envoy, on a purely legal errand ? Mr. Hedrick, 
 Professor of Political Economy in the University of North 
 Carolina, had a constitutional right to reside in that State. 
 What regard was paid to that right, when he was driven from 
 his home, merely for declaring that he considered Slavery an 
 impolitic system, injui'ious to the prosperity of States? What 
 respect for constitutional rights was manifested by Alabama, 
 when a bookseller in Mobile was compelled to flee for his life, 
 because he had, at the special request of some of the citizens, 
 imported a few copies of a novel that everybody was curious 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. i 
 
 to read ? Your own citizen, Mr. Underwood, had a constitu- 
 tional right to live in Virginia, and vote for whomsoever he 
 jDleased. What regard was paid to his rights, when he was 
 driven from your State for declaring himself in favor of the 
 election of Fremont? With these, and a multitude of other 
 examples before your eyes, it would seem as if the less that 
 was said about respect for constitutional obligations at the 
 South, the better. Slavery is, in fact, an infringement of all 
 law, and adheres to no law, save for its own purposes of op- 
 pression. 
 
 You accuse Captain John Brown of " whetting knives of 
 butchery for the mothers, sisters, daughters, and babes " of 
 Virginia ; and you inform me of the well-known fact that he 
 is "arraigned for the crimes of murder, robbery and treason.'' 
 I will not here stop to explain why I believe that old hero to 
 be no criminal, but a martyr to righteous principles which he 
 sought to advance by methods sanctioned by his own religious '^ 
 views, though not by mine. Allowing that Capt. Brown did ^ 
 attempt a scheme in, which murder, robbery and treason were, 
 to his own consciousness, involved, I do not see how Gov. 
 V/ise can consistently arraign him for crimes he has himself 
 commended. You have threatened to trample on the Con- 
 stitution, and break the Union, if a majority of the legal vo- 
 ters in these Confederated States dared to elect a President 
 unfavorable to the extension of Slavery. Is not such a de- 
 claration proof of premeditated treason ? In the Spring of 1 
 1842, you made a speech in Congress, from which I copy the 
 following : — 
 
 " Once set before the people of the Great Valley the conquest of the rich 
 Mexican Provinces, and you might as well attempt to stop the wind. This 
 Government might send' its troops, but they would run over them like a 
 herd of buffalo. Let the work once begin, and I do not know that this 
 House would hold ??ie very long. Give me five millions of dollars, and I 
 would undertake to do it m.yself. Although I do not know how to set a 
 single squadron in the field, I could find men to do it. Slavery should pour 
 itself abroad, without restraint, and find no limit but the Southern Ocean. 
 The Camanehes should no longer hold the richest mines of Mexico. Every 
 golden image which had received the profanation of a false worship, should 
 soon be mefted down into good American eagles. I would cause as much 
 gold to cross the Rio del Norte as the mules of Mexico could carry; aye, 
 and I would make better use of it, too, than any lazy, bigoted priesthood 
 under heaven." 
 
 When you thus boasted that you and your "booted loafers " 
 would overrim the troops of the United States "like a herd of 
 
8 
 
 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 buffalo," if the Government sent them to arrest your invasion 
 of a neighboring nation, at peace with the United States, did 
 you not pledge yourself to commit treason? Was it not by 
 robbery, even of churches, that you proposed to load the mules 
 of Mexico with gold for the United States ? Was it not by 
 the murder of unoffending Mexicans that you expected to ad- 
 vance those schemes of avarice and ambition '? What human- 
 ity had you for Mexican " mothers and babes," whom you 
 proposed to make childless and fatherless? And for what 
 purpose was this wholesale massacre to take place ? Not to 
 right the wrongs of any oppressed class ; not to sustain any 
 great principles of justice, or of freedom ; but merely to en- 
 able " Slavery to pour itself forth without restraint." 
 
 Even if Captain Brown were as bad as you paint him, I 
 should suppose he must naturally remind you of the words of 
 Macbeth : 
 
 " We but teach 
 Bloody instructions, wbich, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor: This even-handed justice 
 Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
 To our own lips." 
 
 If Captain Brown intended, as you say, to commit treason, 
 robbery, and murder, I think I have shown that he could find 
 ample authority for such proceedings in the public declara- 
 tions of Gov. Wise. And if, as he himself declares, he merely 
 intended to free the oppressed, where could he read a more 
 forcible lesson than is furnished by the State Seal of Vir- 
 ginia ? I looked at it thoughtfully before I opened your let- 
 ter ; and though it had always appeared to me very sugges- 
 tive, it never seemed to me so much so as it now did in con- 
 nection with Captain John Brown. A liberty-loving hero 
 stands with his foot upon a prostrate despot ; under his strong 
 arm, manacles and chains lie broken; and the motto is, " Szc 
 Semper Tyrannis ; " "Thus be it ever done to Tyrants." And 
 this is the blazon of a State whose most profitable business is 
 the internal Slave-Trade ! — in whose highways coffles of hu- 
 man chattels, chained and manacled, are frequently seen ! 
 And the Seal and the Coffles are both looked upon by other 
 chattels, constantly exposed to the same fate ! AYhat if some 
 Vezey, or Nat Turner, should be growing up among those 
 apparently quiet spectators ? It is in no spirit of taunt or of 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. \) 
 
 exultation that I ask this question. I never think of it but_^ 
 with anxiety, sadness, and sj^mpathy. I know that a shave- \ 
 hokling community necessarily lives in the midst of gunpow- 
 der; and, in this age, sparks of free thought are flying in 
 every direction. You cannot quench the fires of free thought 
 and human sympathy by any process of cunning or force ; but 
 there is a method by which you can effectually wet the gun- 
 powder. England has already tried it, with safety and suc- 
 cess. Would that you could be persuaded to set aside the 
 prejudices of education, and candidly examine the actual - 
 working of that experiment ! Virginia is so richly endowed 
 by nature that Free Institutions alone are wanting to render 
 her the most prosperous and powerful of the States. 
 
 In your letter you suggest that such a scheme as Captain 
 Brown's is the natural result of the opinions with which I 
 sympathize. Even if I thought this to be a correct statement, 
 though I should deeply regret it, I could not draw the con- 
 clusion that humanity ought to be stifled, and truth struck 
 dumb, for fear that long-successful despotism might be en- 
 dangered by their utterance. But the fact is, you mistake 
 the source of that strange outbreak. No abolition arguments 
 or denunciations, however earnestly, loudly, or harshly pro- 
 claimed, would have produced that result. It was the legiti- 
 mate consequence of the continual, and constantly-increasing 
 aggressions of the Slave Power. The Slave States, in their 
 desperate efforts to sustain a bad and dangerous institution, 
 have encroached more and more upon the liberties of the Free 
 States. Our inherent love of law and order, and our super- 
 stitious attachment to the Union, you have mistaken for cow- 
 ardice ; and rarely have you let slip any opportunity to add 
 insult to aggression. 
 
 The manifested opposition to Slavery began with the lee- ■ 
 tures and pamphlets of a few disinterested men and women, 
 who based their movements upon purely moral and religious 
 grounds ; but their expostulations were met with a storm of 
 rage, with tar and feathers, brickbats, demolished houses, and 
 other applications of Lynch law. When the dust of the con- 
 flict began to subside a little, their numbers were found to be 
 greatly increased by the efforts to exterminate them. They 
 had become an influence in the State too important to be over- 
 looked by shrewd calculators. Political economists began to 
 1* 
 
10 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 look at the subject from a lower point of view. They used 
 their abilities to demonstrate that Slavery was a wasteful 
 system, and that the Free States were taxed, to an enormous 
 extent, to sustain an institution which, at heart, two-thirds of 
 them abhorred. The forty millions, or more, of dollars, ex- 
 pended in hunting Fugitive Slaves in Florida, under the name 
 of the Seminole War, were adduced, as one item in proof, to 
 which many more were added. At last, politicians were com- 
 pelled to take some action on the subject. It soon became 
 known to all the people that the Slave States had always 
 managed to hold in their hands the political power of the 
 Union, and that while they constituted only one-third of the 
 white population of these States, they held more than two- 
 thirds of all the lucrative, and once honorable offices; an 
 indignity to which none but a subjugated people had ever 
 before submitted. The knowledge also became generally 
 diifused, that while the Southern States owned their Demo- 
 cracy at home, and voted for them, they also systematically 
 bribed the nominally Democratic party, at the North, with 
 the offices adroitly kept at their disposal. 
 
 Through these, and other instrumentalities, the sentiments 
 of the original Garrisonian Abolitionists became very widely 
 extended, in forms more or less diluted. But by far the most 
 efficient co-laborers we have ever had have been the Slave 
 States themselves. By denying us the sacred Right of Pe- 
 tition, they roused the free spirit of the North, as it never 
 could have been roused by the loud trumpet of Garrison, or 
 the soul-animating bugle of Phillips. They bought the great 
 slave, Daniel, and, according to their established usage, paid 
 him no wages for his labor. By his co-operation they forced 
 the Fugitive Slave law upon us, in violation of all our hu- 
 mane instincts and all our principles of justice. And what did 
 they procure for the Abolitionists by that despotic process ? 
 A deeper and wider detestation of Slavery throughout the 
 Free States, and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, an 
 eloquent outburst of moral indignation, whose echoes wakened 
 the world to look upon their shame. 
 
 By fiUibustering and fraud, they dismembered Mexico, and 
 having thus obtained the soil of Texas, they tried to intro- 
 duce it as a Slave State into the Union. Failing to effect their 
 purpose by constitutional means, they accomplished it by a 
 
LETTER OF MRS, CHILD. 11 
 
 most open and palpable violation of the Constitution, and by 
 obtaining the votes of Senators on false pretences. (1) 
 
 Soon afterward, a Southern Slave Administration ceded to 
 the powerful monarchy of Great Britain several himdred 
 thousands of square miles, that must have been made into 
 Free States, to which that same Administration had declared 
 that the United States had " an unquestionable right ; " and 
 then they turned upon the weak Republic of Mexico, and, in 
 order to make more Slave States, wrested from her twice as 
 many hundred thousands of square miles, to which we had not 
 a shadow of right. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these extra efforts, they saw symptoms 
 that the political power so long held with a firm grasp was in 
 danger of slipping from their hands, by reason of the exten- 
 sion of Abolition sentiments and the greater prosperity of 
 Free States. Emboldened by continual success in aggression, 
 they made use of the pretence of " Squatter Sovereignty " to 
 break the league into which they had formerly cajoled the 
 servile representatives of our blinded people, by which all the 
 territory of the United States south of 36 30 was guaranteed 
 to Slavery, and all north of it to Freedom. Thus Kansas be- 
 came the battle-ground of the antagonistic elements in our 
 Government. .Ruffians hired by the Slave Power were sent 
 thither temporarily, to do the voting, and drive from the polls 
 the legal voters, who were often murdered in the process. 
 Names, copied from the directories of cities in other States, 
 were returned by thousands as legal voters in Kansas, in order 
 to establish a Constitution abhorred by the people. This was 
 their exemplification of Squatter Sovereignty. A Massachu- 
 setts Senator, distinguished for candor, courtesy, and stainless 
 integrity, was half murdered by slaveholders, merely for hav- 
 ing the manliness to state these facts to the assembled Con- 
 gress of the nation. Peacefnl emigrants from the North, who 
 went to Kansas for no other purpose than to till the soil, 
 erect mills, and establish manufactories, schools, and churches, 
 were robbed, outraged, and murdered. For many months a 
 war more ferocious than the warfare of wild Indians was car- 
 
 (1) Tae following Senators, Mr. Xiles, of Connecticut, Mr. Dix, of New 
 York, anl Mr. Tappan, of Oliio, published statements that their votes had 
 been obtained by false representations ; and they declared that the case 
 was the same with Mr. Heywood, of North Carolina. . 
 
12 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 ried on against a people almost unresisting, because they re- 
 lied upon the Central Government for aid. And all this 
 while, the power of the United States, wielded by the Slave 
 Oligarchy, was on the side of the aggressors. They literally 
 tied the stones, and let loose the mad dogs. This was the 
 state of things when the hero of Osawatomie and his brave 
 sons went to the rescue. It was he who first turned the tide 
 of Border-Ruffian triumph, by showing them that blows 
 were to be taken as well as given. 
 
 You may believe it or not, Gov. Wise, but it is certainly 
 the truth that, because slaveholders so recklessly sowed the 
 wind in Kansas, they reaped a whirlwind at Harper's Ferry. 
 
 The people of the North had a very strong attachment to 
 the Union ; but, by youi* desperate measure, you have weak- 
 ened it beyond all power of restoration. They are not your 
 enemies, as you suppose, but they cannot consent to be your 
 tools for any ignoble task you may choose to propose. You 
 must not judge of us by the crawling sinuosities of an Ever- 
 ett ; or by our magnificent hound, whom you trained to hunt 
 your poor cripples, and then sent him sneaking into a corner 
 to die — not with shame for the base purposes to which his 
 strength had been applied, but with vexation because you 
 withheld from him the promised bone. Not b^ such as these 
 must you judge the free, enlightened yeomanry of New Eng- 
 land. A majority of them would rejoice to have the Slave "^ 
 States fulfill their oft-repeated threat of withdrawal from the 
 Union. It has ceased to be a bugbear, for we begin to despair 
 of being able, by any other process, to give the world the ex- 
 ample of a real republic. The moral sense of these States is 
 outraged by being accomplices in sustaining an institution • 
 vicious in all its aspects ; and it is now generally understood 
 that v/e purchase our disgrace at great pecuniary expense, 
 If you would only make the offer of a separation in serious 
 earnest, you would hear the hearty response of millions, " Go, 
 gentlemen, and 
 
 ' Stand not upon the order of your going, 
 But go at once ! ' " 
 
 YourF, with all due respect, 
 
 L. MARIA CHILD. 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 13 
 
 EXPLANATORY LETTER. 
 
 To THE Editor of the New York Tribune : 
 
 Sir : I was much surprised to see my correspondence with 
 Governor Wise published in your columns. As I have never 
 given any person a copy, I presume you must have obtained 
 it from Virginia. 3Iy proposal to go and nurse that brave 
 and generous old man, who so willingly gives his life a sacri- 
 fice for God's oppressed poor, originated in a very simple and 
 unmeritorious impulse of kindness. I heard his friends in- 
 quiring, "Has he no wife, or sister, that can go to nurse him ? 
 ^Ve are trying to ascertain, for he needs some one." My* 
 niece said she would go at once, if her health were strong 
 enough to be trusted. I replied that my age and state of 
 health rendered me a more suitable person to go, and that I 
 would go most gladly. I accordingly wrote to Captain 
 Brown, and enclosed the letter to Governor Wise. ]My in- 
 tention was to slip away quietl}', without having the affair 
 made public. I packed my trunk and collected a quantity of 
 old linen for lint, and awaited tidings from Yirginia. When 
 Governor Wise answered, he suggested the " imprudence of 
 trying any experiment upon the peace of a society already 
 greatly excited," &c. My husband and I took couasel to- 
 gether, and we both concluded that, as the noble old veteran 
 was said to be fast recovering from his wounds, and as my 
 presence might create a popular excitement unfavorable to 
 such chance as the prisoner had for a fair trial, I had better 
 wait until I received a reply from Captain Brown himself. 
 Fearing to do him more harm than good by following my im- 
 pulse, I waited for his own sanction. Meanwhile, his wife, 
 said to be a brave-hearted Roman matron, worthy of such a 
 mate, has gone to him, and I have received the following 
 reply. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 L MARIA CHILD. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 10th, 1859. 
 
-4 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 MES. CHILD TO JOHN BROWN. 
 
 ^ Wayland, Mass., Oct. 26th, 1859. 
 
 Dear Capt. Brown : Thoiigli personally unknown to you, 
 you will recognize in my name an earnest friend of Kansas, 
 when circumstances made that Territory the battle-ground be- 
 tween the antagonistic principles of slavery and freedom, 
 which politicians so vainly strive to reconcile in the govern- 
 ment of the United States. 
 
 Believing in peace principles, I cannot sympathize with the 
 method you chose to advance the cause of freedom. But I 
 honor your generous intentions — I admire your courage, moral 
 and physical. I reverence you for the humanity which tem- 
 pered your zeal. I sympathize with you in your cruel be- 
 reavement, your sufferings, and your wrongs. In brief, I love 
 you and bless you. 
 
 Thousands of hearts are throbbing with sympathy as warm 
 as mine. I think of you night and day, bleeding in prison, 
 surrounded by hostile faces, sustained only by trust in God 
 and your own strong heart. I long to nurse you — to speak 
 to you sisterly words of sympathy and consolation. I have 
 asked permission of Governor Wise to do so. If the request 
 is not granted, I cherish the hope that these few words may 
 at least reach your hands, and afford you some little solace. 
 May you be strengthened by the conviction that no honest 
 man ever sheds blood for freedom in vain, however much he 
 may be mistaken in his efforts. May God sustain you, and 
 carry you through whatsoever may be in store for you ! 
 
 Yours, with heartfelt respect, sympathy and affection, 
 
 L. MABIA CHILD. 
 
LETTER OF JOHN BROWX. 15 
 
 REPLY OF JOHN BROWN. 
 
 Mrs. L. Maria Child : 
 
 -: My Dear Friend — Such you prove to be, though a stran- 
 ger — your most kind letter has reached me, with the kind 
 offer to come here and take care of me. Allow me to exjDress 
 my gratitude for your great sympath}^, and at the same time 
 to propose to you a different course, together with my reasons 
 for wishing it. I should certainly be greatly pleased to be- 
 come personally acquainted with one so gifted and so kind, 
 but I cannot avoid seeing some objections to it, under present 
 circumstances. First, I am in charge of a most humane gen- 
 tleman, who, with his family, has rendered me every possi- 
 ble attention I have desired, or that could be of the least 
 advantage ; and I am so recovered of my wounds as no longer 
 to require nursing. Then, again, it would subject you to 
 great personal inconvenience and heavy expense, without 
 doing me any good. Allow me to name to you another chan- 
 nel through which you may reach me with your sympathies 
 |much more effectually. I have at home a wife and three 
 I'young daughters, the youngest but little over five years old, 
 the oldest nearly sixteen. I have also two daughters-in-law, 
 whose husbands have both fallen near me here. There is also 
 another widow, Mrs. Thompson, whose husband fell here. 
 ^Whether she is a mother or not, I cannot say. All these, 
 Imy wife included, live at North Elba, Essex county. New 
 iYork. I have a middle-aged son, who has been, in some de- 
 igree, a cripple from his childhood, who would have as much 
 as he could well do to earn a living. He was a most dread- 
 ful sufferer in Kansas, and lost all he had laid up. He has 
 not enough to clothe himself for the winter comfortably. I 
 have no living son, or son-in-law, who did not suffer terribly 
 in Kansas. 
 
 Now, dear friend, would you not as soon contribute fifty 
 cents now, and a like sum yearly, for the relief of those very 
 poor and deeply afflicted persons, to enable them to supply 
 themselves and their children with bread and very plain cloth- 
 ing, and to enable the children to receive a common English 
 education ? Will you also devote your own energies to induce 
 
16 LETTER OF MRS. MASON. 
 
 others to join you in giving a like amount, or any other 
 amount, to constitute a little fund for the purpose named ? 
 
 I cannot see how your coming here can do me the least 
 good ; and I am quite certain you can do immense good where 
 you are. I am quite cheerful under all my afflicting circum- 
 stances and prospects ; having, as I humbly trust, " the peace 
 of God which passeth all understanding," to rule in my heart. 
 You may make such use of this as you see fit. God Almighty 
 bless and reward you a thousand fold ! 
 
 Yours in sincerity and truth, 
 
 JOHN BROWN. 
 
 LETTER OF MRS. MASON. 
 
 Alto, King George's Co., Ya., Nov. 11th, 1859. 
 
 Do you read your Bible, Mrs. Child ? If you do, read 
 
 there, " AYoe unto you, hypocrites," and take to yourself 
 with two-fold damnation that terrible sentence ; for, rest as- 
 sured, in the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for 
 those thus scathed by the awful denunciation of the Son of 
 God, than for you. You would soothe with sisterly and 
 motherly care the hoary-headed murderer of Harper's Ferry ! 
 A man whose aim and intention was to incite the horrors of 
 a servile war — to condemn women of your own race, ere 
 death closed their eyes on their sufferings from violence and 
 outrage, to see their husbands and fathers murdered, their 
 children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of 
 their babes. The antecedents of Brown's band proved them 
 to have been the offscourings of the earth ; and what would 
 have been our fate had they found as many sympathizers in 
 Yirginia as they seem to have in Massachusetts ? 
 
 Now, compare yourself with those your "sympathy" would 
 devote to such ruthless ruin, and say, on that "word of honor, 
 which never has been broken," would you stand by the bed- 
 side of an old negro, dying of a hopeless disease, to alleviate 
 his .sufferings as far as human aid could ? Have you ever 
 watched the last, lingering illness of a consumptive, to soothe, 
 
LETTER OF MRS. MASOX. 17 
 
 as far as in you lay, the inevitable fate ? Do you soften the 
 pangs of maternity in those around you by all the care and 
 comfort you can give ? Do ymi grieve with those 7iear you, 
 even though their sorrows resulted from their own misconduct ? 
 Did you ever sit up until the " wee hours " to complete a 
 dress for a motherless child, that she might appear on Christ- 
 mas day in a new one, along with her more fortunate com- 
 panions ? We do these and more for our servants, and why ? 
 Because we endeavor to do our duty in that state of life it 
 lias pleased God to place us. In his revealed word we readj, 
 our duties to them — theirs to us are there also — " Not only 
 to the good and gentle, but to the froward." — (Peter ii : 18.) 
 Go thou and do likewise, and keep away from Charlestown. 
 If the stories read in the public j^rints be true, of the suffer- 
 ings of the poor of the North, you need not go far for objects 
 of charity. " Thou hypocrite ! take first the beam out of 
 thine own eye, then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote out 
 of th}" neighbor's." But if, indeed, you do lack objects of 
 sympathy near you, go to Jefferson county, to the family of 
 George Turner, a noble, true-hearted man, whose devotion to 
 his friend (Col. Washington) causing him to risk his life, was 
 shot down like a dog. Or to that of old Beckham, whose 
 grief at the murder of his negro subordinate made him need- 
 lessly expose himself to the aim of the assassin Brown. And 
 when you can equal in deeds of love and charity to those 
 aroitnd you, what is shown by nine-tenths of the Virginia 
 plantations, then by your " spnpathy " whet the knives for 
 our throats, and kindle the torch that fires our homes. You 
 reverence Brown for his clemency to his prisoners ! Prison- 
 ers ! and how taken ? Unsuspecting workmen, going to their 
 daily duties ; unarmed gentlemen, taken from their beds at 
 the dead hour of the night, by six men doubly and t'-f'bly 
 armed. Suppose he had hurt a hair of their heads, do you 
 suppose one of the band of desperadoes would have left the 
 engine-house alive ? And did not he know that his treatment 
 of them was his only hope of life then, or of clemency after- 
 ward ? Of course he did. The United States troops could 
 not have prevented him from being torn limb from limb. 
 
 I will add, in conclusion, no Southerner ought, after your 
 letter to Governor Wise and to Brown, to read a line of your 
 composition, or to touch a magazine which bear?? your name 
 
18 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 in its lists of contributors ; and in this we hope for the " sym- 
 pathy," at least of those at the North who deserve the name 
 of woman. 
 
 M. J. C. MASON. 
 
 REPLY OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 Wayland, Mass., Dec. 17th, 1859. 
 
 Prolonged absence from home has prevented my answering 
 your letter so soon as I intended. I have no disposition to 
 retort upon you the " two-fold damnation," to which you con- 
 sign me. On the contrary, I sincerely wish you well, both in 
 this world and the next. If the anathema proved a safety 
 valve to your own boiling spirit, it did some good to you, 
 while it fell harmless upon me. Fortunately for aH of us, 
 the Heavenly Father rules His universe by laws, which the 
 passions or the prejudices of mortals have no power to change. 
 
 As for John Brown, his reputation may be safely trusted 
 to the impartial pen of History; and his motives will be 
 righteously judged by Him who knoweth the secrets of all 
 hearts. Men, however great they may be, are of small con- 
 sequence in comparison with principles ; and the principle for 
 which John Brown died is the question at issue between us. 
 
 You refer me to the Bible, from which you quote the 
 favorite text of slaveholders : — 
 
 " Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good 
 and gentle, but also to the froward." — 1 Peter, 2: 18. 
 
 Abolitionists also have ftivorite texts, to some of which I 
 would call your attention : — 
 
 "Remember those that are in bonds as bound with them." — Ileb. 13: 3. 
 
 " Hide the outcasts. Bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine out- 
 casts dwell with thee. Be thou a covert to them from the face of the 
 spoiler." — Isa. 16: 3, 4. 
 
 "Thou shalt not deliver unto" his master the servant which is escaped 
 from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee where it liketh him 
 best. Thou shalt not tjppress him." — Deut. 23: 15, 16. 
 
 " Open thy mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such as are appointed 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 19 
 
 to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause 
 of the poor and needy." — Prov. 29: 8, 9. 
 
 "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my 
 people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." — Isa. 58: 1. 
 
 I would especially commend to slaveholders the following 
 portions of that volume, wherein you say God has revealed 
 the duty of masters : — 
 
 " Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing 
 that ye also have a Master in heaven." — Col. 4:1. 
 
 "Xeither be ye called masters; for one is your master, even Christ; 
 and all ye are brethren." — Matt. 23: 8, 10. 
 
 " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do xe even so unto 
 them." — Matt. 7: 12. 
 
 "Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wicked- 
 ness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that 
 ye break every yoke ? " — Isa. 58 : 6. 
 
 " They have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they 
 might drink." — Joel 3: 3. 
 
 "He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker." — Prov. 14: 31. 
 
 "Rob not the poor, because he is poor; neither oppress the afilicted. 
 For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those who spoiled 
 them.' — Prov. 22: 22, 23. 
 
 " Woe unto him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and 
 giveth him not for his work." — Jer. 22: 13. 
 
 " Let him that stole, steal no more, but rather let him labor, working 
 with his hands." — Eph. 4: 28. 
 
 " AVoe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievous- 
 ness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment, 
 and to take away the right from the poor, that widows may be their prey, 
 and that they may rob the fatherless." — Isa. 10: 1, 2. 
 
 "If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant, 
 when they contend with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up ? and 
 when he visiteth, what shall I answer Him?" — Job 31: 13, 14. 
 
 " Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fotherless have 
 beea broken. Therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear 
 troubleth thee; and darkness, that thou canst not see." — Job 22: 9, 10, 11. 
 
 " Behold, the hire of your laborers, who have reaped down your fields, 
 which is of you kept back by fraud, erieth; and the cries of them which 
 have reaped are entered into the cars of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have 
 lived in pleasui'e on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your 
 hearts as in a day of slaughter; ye have condemned and killed the just." 
 — James 5: 4. 
 
 If the appropriatene.ss of these texts is not apparent, I will 
 try to make it so, by evidence drawn entirely from Southern 
 sources. ' The Abolitionists are not such an ignorairt ^et of 
 fanatics as you suppose. They himv whereof they affirm. 
 They are familiar with the laws of the Slave States, which 
 are alone sufficient to inspire abhorrence in any humane heart 
 
20 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 or reflecting mind not perverted by the prejudices of education 
 and custom. I might fill many letters with significant extracts 
 from your statute-books ; but I have space only to glance at 
 a few, which indicate the leading features of the system you 
 cherish so tenaciously. 
 
 The universal rule of the slave State is, that " the child 
 follows the condition of its mother.'^ This is an index to 
 many things. Marriages between white and colored people 
 are forbidden by law ; yet a very large number of the slaves 
 are brown or yellow. When Lafayette visited this country in 
 his old age, he said he was very much struck by the great 
 change in the colored population of Virginia ; that in the 
 time of the Revolution, nearly all the household slaves were 
 black, but when he returned to America, he found very few 
 of them black. The advertisements in Southern newspapers 
 often describe runaway slaves that "pass themselves for white 
 men." Sometimes they are described as having " straight, 
 light hair, blue eyes, and clear complexion." This could not 
 be, unless their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers 
 had been white men. But as their mothers were slaves, the 
 law pronounces them slaves, subject to be sold on the auction- 
 block whenever the ne3e3sities or convenience of their masters 
 or mistresses require it. The sale of one's own children, 
 brothers, or sisters, has an ugly aspect to those who are un- 
 accustomed to it ; and, obviously, it cannot have a good moral 
 influence, that law and custom should render licentiousness a 
 profitable vice. 
 
 Throughout the Slave States, the testimony of no colored 
 person, bond or free, can be received against a white man. 
 You have some laws, which, on the face of them, would seem 
 to restrain inhuman men from murdering or mutilating slaves ; 
 but they are rendered nearly null by the law I have cited. 
 Any drunken master, overseer, or patrol, may go into the ne- 
 gro cabins, and commit what outrages he pleases, with perfect 
 impunity, if no white person is present who chooses to witness 
 against him. North Carolina and Georgia leave a large loop- 
 hole for escape, even if white persons are present, when mur- 
 der is committed. A law to punish persons for "maliciously 
 killing a slave" has this remarkable qualification: "Always 
 provided that this act shall not extend to any slave dying of 
 moderate correction." We at the North find it difficult to 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 21 
 
 understand how moderate punishment can cause death. I 
 have read several of your law-books attentively, and I find no 
 cases of punishment for the murder of a slave, except by fines 
 paid to the owner., to indemnify him for the loss of his prop- 
 erty : the same as if his horse or cow had been killed. In 
 the South Carolina Reports is a case where the State had in- 
 dicted Guy Raines for the murder of a slave named Isaac. 
 It was proved that AVilliam Gray, the owner of Isaac, had 
 given him a thousand lashes. The poor creature made his 
 escape, but was caught, and delivered to the custody of Raines, 
 to be carried to the county jail. Because he refused to go, 
 Raines gave him five hundred lashes, and he died soon after. 
 The counsel for Raines proposed that he should be allowed to 
 acquit himself by his ow7i oath. The Court decided against 
 it, because white ivitnesses had testified; but the Court of 
 Appeals afterward decided he ought to have been exculpated 
 by his own oath, and he was acquitted. Small indeed is the 
 chance for justice to a slave, when his own color are not al- 
 lowed to testify, if they see him maimed or his children mur- 
 dered ; when he has slaveholders for Judges and Jurors; 
 when the murderer can exculpate himself by his own oath ; 
 and when the law provides that it is no murder to kill a slave 
 by " moderate correction " ! 
 
 Your laws uniformly declare that " a slave shall be deemed 
 a chattel personal in the hands of his owner, to all intents, 
 constructions, and purposes whatsoever." This, of course, 
 involves the right to sell his children, as if they were pigs ; 
 also, to take his wife from him " for any intent or purpose 
 whatsoever." Your laws also make it death for him to resist 
 a white man, however brutally he may be treated, or however 
 much his family may be outraged before his eyes. If he at- 
 tempts to run away, your laws allow any man to shoot him. 
 
 By your laws, all a slave's earnings belong to his master. 
 He can neither receive donations nor transmit property. If 
 his master allows him some hours to work for himself, and by 
 great energ}^ and perseverance he earns enough to buy his own 
 bones and sinews, his master may make him pay two or three 
 times over, and he has no redress. Three such cases have 
 come within my own knowledge. Even a written promise 
 from his master has no legal value, because a slave can make 
 no contracts. 
 
22 
 
 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 Your laws also systematically aim at keeping the minds of 
 the colored people in the most abject state of ignorance. If 
 white people attempt to teach them to read or write, they are 
 pmiished by imprisonment or fines ; if they attempt to teach 
 others, they are punished with from twenty to thirty-nine 
 lashes each. It cannot be said that the anti-slavery agitation 
 produced such laws, for they date much further back ; many 
 of them when we were Provinces. They are the necessities 
 of the system, which, being itself an outrage upon hmnan na- 
 ture, can be sustained only by perpetual outrages. 
 
 The next reliable source of information is the advertise- 
 ments in the Southern papers. In the North Carolina 
 (Raleigh) Staiidard, Mr. Micajah Ricks advertises, " Run- 
 away, a negro woman and her two children. A few days before 
 she went off, I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of 
 her face. I tried to make the letter M." In the Natchez 
 Courier, Mr. J. P. Ashford advertises a runaway negro girl, 
 with " a good many teeth missing, and the letter A l3randed 
 on her cheek and forehead." In the Lexington (Ky.) Obser- 
 ver, Mr. William Overstreet advertises a runaway negro v>^ith 
 " his left eye out, scars from a dirk on his left arm, and much 
 scarred with the whip." I might quote from hundreds of 
 such advertisements, offering rewards for runaways, "dead or 
 alive," and describing them with "ears cut off," "jaws brok- 
 en," " scarred by rifle-balls," &c. 
 
 Another source of information is afforded by your " Fugi- 
 tives from Injustice," with many of whom I have conversed 
 freely. I have seen scars of the whip and marks of the brand- 
 ing-iron, and I have listened to their heart-breaking sobs, 
 while they told of " piccaninnies " torn from their arms and 
 sold. 
 
 Another source of information is furnished by emancipated 
 slaveholders. Sarah M. Grimke, daughter of the late Judge 
 Grimke, of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, testifies as 
 follows : "As I left my native State on account of Slavery, 
 and deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of 
 the lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly 
 bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes with which I 
 have been familiar. But this cannot be. They come over 
 my memory like gorj^ spectres, and implore me, with resist- 
 less power, in the name of a God of mercy, in the name of a 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. / 23 
 
 crucified Saviour, in the name of humanity, for the sake of 
 the slaveholder, as well as the slave, to bear witness to the 
 horrors of the Southern prison-house." She proceeds to de- 
 scribe dreadful tragedies, the actors in which she says were 
 " men and women of the first families in South Carolina ; " 
 and that their cruelties did not, in the slightest degree, afi'ect 
 their standing in society. Her sister, Angelina Grimke, de- 
 clared : " While I live, and Slavery lives, I 7mcst testify 
 against it. Not merely for the sake of my poor brothers and 
 sisters in bonds ; for even were Slavery no curse to its victims, 
 the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon 
 the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor 
 and pray for its overthrow with my latest breath." Among 
 the horrible barbarities she enumerates is the case of a girl 
 thirteen years old, who was flogged to death by her master. 
 She says : " I asked a prominent lawyer, who belonged to one 
 of the first families in the State, whether the murderer of this 
 helpless child could not be indicted, and he coolly replied that 
 
 the slave was Mr. r-'s property, and if he chose to sufi'er 
 
 the loss, no one else had anything to do with it." She pro- 
 ceeds to say : "I felt there could be for me no rest in the 
 midst of such outrages and pollutions. Yet I saw nothing of 
 Slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in 
 the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it 
 was garnished by refinement and decked out for show. It is 
 my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction that this is a cause 
 worth dvino- for. I say so from what I have seen, and heard, 
 and known, in a land of Slavery, whereon rest the darkness 
 of Egypt and the sin of Sodom." I once asked Miss Ange- 
 lina if she thought x\bolitionists exaggerated the horrors of 
 Slavery. She replied, with earnest emphasis : " They cannot 
 be exaggerated. It is impossible for imagination to go beyond 
 the fact!?." To a lady who observed that the time had not yet 
 come for agitating the subject, she answered : " I apprehend 
 if thou wert a slate, toiling in the fields of Carolina, thou 
 wouldst think the time had fully come." 
 
 3Ir. Thome,, of Kentucky, in the course of his eloquent lec- 
 tures on this subject, said : " I breathed my first breath in an 
 atmosphere of Slavery. But though I am heir to a slave in- 
 heritance, I am bold to denounce the whole system as an out- 
 rao-e, a complication of crimes, and wrongs, and cruelties, 
 that make angels weep." 
 
24 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 " Mr. Allen, of Alabama, in. a discussion with the students 
 at Lane Seminary, in 1 834, told of a slave who was tied up 
 and beaten all day, with a paddle full of holes. At night, 
 his flesh was literally pounded to a jelly. The punishment 
 was inflicted within hearing of the Academy and the Public 
 G-reen. But no one took any notice of it. No one thought 
 any wrong was done. At our house, it is so common to hear 
 screams from a neighboring plantation, that we think nothing 
 of it. Lest any one should think that the slaves are generally 
 well treated, and that the cases I have mentioned are excep- 
 tions, let me be distinctly understood that cruelty is the rule^ 
 and kindness is the exception." 
 
 In the same discussion, a student from Virginia, after re- 
 lating cases of great cruelty, said : " Such things are common 
 all over Virginia ; at least, so far as I am acquainted. But 
 the planters generally avoid punishing their slaves before 
 strangers.'''' 
 
 Miss Mattie Griffith, of Kentucky, whose entire property 
 consisted in slaves, emancipated them all. The noble-hearted 
 girl wrote to me : "I shall go forth into the world penniless ; 
 but I shall work with a light heart, and, best of all, I shall 
 live with an easy conscience." Previous to this generous 
 resolution, she had never read any Abolition document, and 
 entertained the common Southern prejudice against them. 
 But her own observation so deeply impressed her with the 
 enormities of Slavery, that she was impelled to publish a book, 
 called " The Autobiography of a Female Slave." I read it 
 with thrilling interest; but some of the scenes made my 
 nerves quiver so painfully, that I told her I hoped they were 
 too highly colored. She shook her head sadly, and replied : 
 *' I am sorry to say that every incident in the book has come 
 within my own knowledge." 
 
 St. George Tucker, Judge and Professor of Law in Vir- 
 ginia, speaking of the legalized murder of runaways, said : 
 " Such are the cruelties to which a state of Slavery gives 
 birth — such the horrors to which the human mind is capable 
 of being reconciled by its adoption." Alludiilg to our strug- 
 gle in '76, he said : " While we proclaim our resolution to 
 live free or die, we imposed on our fellow-men, of different 
 complexion, a Slavery ten thousand times worse than the ut- 
 most extremity of the oppressions of which we complained." 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 25 
 
 Governor Giles, in a Message to the Legislature of Vir- 
 ginia, referring to the custom of selling free colored people 
 into Slavery, as a punishment for offences not capital, said : 
 " Slavery must be admitted to be a jncnishment of the highest 
 order ; and, according to the just rule for the apportionment 
 of punishment to crimes, it ought to be applied only to crimes 
 of the highest order. The most distressing reflection in the 
 application, of this punishment to female offenders is, that it 
 extends to their offspring ; and the innocent are thus punished 
 with the guilty." Yet one hundred and twenty thousand in- 
 nocent babes in this country are annually subjected to a pun- 
 ishment which your Governor declared " ought to be applied 
 only to crimes of the highest order." 
 
 Jefferson said : "One day of American Slavery is worse 
 than a thousand years of that which we rose in arms to op- 
 pose." Alluding to insurrections, he said : " The Almighty 
 has no attribute that can take side with us in such a contest." 
 
 John Randolph declared : " Every planter is a sentinel at 
 his own door. Every • Southern mother, when she hears an 
 alarm of fire in the night, instinctively presses her infant 
 closer to her bosom." 
 
 Looking at the system of slavery in the light of all this 
 evidence, do you candidly think we deserve "two-fold damna- 
 tion " for detesting it ? Can you not believe that we may 
 hate the system, and yet be truly your friends? I make 
 allowance for the excited state of your mind, and for the 
 prejudices induced by education. I do not care to change 
 your opinion of me ; but I do wish you could be persuaded to 
 examine this subject dispassionately, for the sake of the pros- 
 perity of Virginia, and the welfare of unborn generations, 
 both white and colored. For thirty years. Abolitionists have 
 been trying to reason with slaveholders, through the press, 
 and in the halls of Congress. Their efforts, though directed 
 to the masters only, have been met with violence and abuse 
 almost equal to that poured on the head of John Brown. Yet 
 surely we, as a portion of the Union, involved in the expense, 
 the degeneracy, the danger, and the disgrace, of this iniquitous 
 and fatal system, have a right to speak about it, and a right 
 to be heard also. At the North, we willingly publish pro- 
 slavery arguments, and ask only a ftiir field and no favor for 
 the other side. But you will not even allow your own citi- 
 
28 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 zens a chance to examine this important subject. Your let- 
 ter to me is published in Northern papers, as well as South- 
 ern; but my reply will not be allowed to appear in any 
 Southern paper. The despotic measures you take to silence 
 investigation, and shut out the light from your own white 
 population, prove how little reliance you have on the strength 
 of your cause. In this enlightened age, all despotisms ought 
 to come to an end by the agency of moral and rational means. 
 But if they resist such agencies, it is in the order of Provi- 
 dence that they must come to an end by violence. History 
 is full of such lessons. 
 
 Would that the veil of prejudice could be removed from 
 3^our eyes. If you would candidly examine the statements of 
 Governor Hincks of the British West Indies, and of the Bev. 
 Mr. Bleby, long time a Missionary in those Islands, both be- 
 fore and after emancipation, you could not fail to be convinced 
 that Cash is a more powerful incentive to labor than the Lash, 
 and far safer also. One fact in relation to those Islands is 
 very significant. While the working people were slaves, it 
 was always necessary to order out the military during the 
 Christmas holidays ; but, since emancipation, not a soldier is 
 to be seen. A hundred John Browns might land there, with- 
 out exciting the slightest alarm. 
 
 To the personal questions you ask me, I will reply in the 
 name of all the women of New England. It would be ex- 
 tremely difficult to find any woman in our villages who 
 does not sew for the poor, and watch with the sick, whenever 
 occasion requires. We pay our domestics generous wages, 
 with which they can purchase as many Christmas gowns as 
 they please ; a process far better for their characters, as well 
 as our own, than to receive their clothing as a charity, after 
 being deprived of just payment for their labor. I have never 
 known an instance where the " pangs of maternity " did not 
 meet with requisite assistance ; and here at the North, after 
 we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies. 
 
 I readily believe what you state concerning the kindness of 
 many Virginia matrons. It is creditable to their hearts : but 
 after all, the best that can be done in that way is a poor 
 equivalent for the perpetual wrong done to the slaves, and the 
 terrible liabilities to which they are always subject. Kind 
 masters and mistresses among you are merely lucky accidents. 
 
LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 27 
 
 If any one chooses to be a brutal despot, your laws and cus- 
 toms give him complete power to do so. And the lot of those 
 slaves who have the kindest masters is exceedingly precarious. 
 In case of death, or pecuniary difficulties, or marriages in the 
 family, they may at any time be suddenly transferred from 
 protection and indulgence to personal degradation, or extreme 
 severity ; and if they should try to escape from such suffer- 
 ings, anybody is authorized to shoot them down like dogs. 
 
 With regard to your declaration that "no Southerner ought 
 henceforth to read a line of my composition," I reply that I 
 "have great satisfaction in the consciousness of having nothing 
 to lose in that quarter. Twenty-seven years ago, I published 
 a book called "An Appeal in behalf of that class of Ameri- 
 cans called Africans." It influenced the minds of several 
 young men, afterward conspicuous in public life, through 
 whose agency the cause was better served than it could have 
 been by me. Exom that time to this, I have labored too 
 earnestly for the slave to be agreeable to slaveholders. Liter- 
 ary popularity was never a paramount object with me, even 
 in my youth ; and, now that I am old, I am utterly indiffer- 
 ent to it. But, if I cared for the exclusion you threaten, I 
 should at least have the consolation of being exiled with hon- 
 orable company. Dr. Ghanning's writings, mild and candid 
 as they are, breathe what you would call arrant treason. 
 William C. Bryant, in his capacity of editor, is openly on 
 our side. The inspired muse of Whittier has incessantly 
 sounded the trumpet for moral warfare with your iniquitous 
 institution ; and his stirring tones have been answered, more 
 or less loudly, by Pierpont, Lowell, and Longfellow. Emer- 
 son, the Plato of America, leaves the scholastic seclusion he 
 loves so well, and, disliking noise with all his poetic soul, 
 bravely takes his stand among the trumpeters. Greorge "W. 
 Curtis, the brilliant writer, the eloquent lecturer, the elegant 
 man of the world, lays the wealth of his talent on the altar 
 of Freedom, and makes common cause with rough-shod re- 
 formers. 
 
 The genius of Mrs. Stowe carried the outworks of your in- 
 stitution at one dash, and left the citadel open to besiegers, 
 who are pouring in amain. In the church, on the ultra-liberal 
 side, it is assailed by the powerful battering-ram of Theodore 
 Parker's eloquence. On the extreme orthodox side is set a 
 
28 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 
 
 huge fire, kindled by the burning words of Dr. Cheever* 
 Between them is Henry Ward Beecher, sending a shower of 
 keen arrows into your entrenchments ; and with him ride a 
 troop of sharp-shooters from all sects. If you turn to the 
 literature of England or France, you will find your institution 
 treated with as little favor. The fact is, the whole civilized 
 world proclaims Slavery an outlaw, and the best intellect of 
 the age is active in hunting it down. 
 
 L. MARIA CHILD. 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE. 
 
 BY WILLIAM ALLIKGHAME. 
 
 A man there came, whence none could tell, 
 Bearing a touchstone in his hand, 
 And tested all things in the land 
 
 By its unerring spell. 
 
 A thousand transformations rare, 
 From fair to foul, from foul to fair ; 
 The golden crown he did not share, 
 
 Nor scorn the beggar's clothes. 
 
 Of heirloom jawels, prized so much, 
 Were many changed to chips and clods, 
 And even statues of the gods 
 
 Crumbled beneath its touch. 
 
 Then angrily the people cried, 
 
 " The loss outweighs the profit far, 
 Our goods suffice us as they are, 
 
 We will not have them tried." 
 
 But since they could not so avail 
 To check his unrelenting quest. 
 They seized him, saying, " Let him test 
 
 How real is our jail." 
 
 But though they slew him with their swords, 
 And in the fire the touchstone burned, 
 Its doings could not be o'erturned, 
 
 Its undoings restored. 
 
 And when, to stop all future harm. 
 They strewed his ashes to the breeze. 
 They little guessed each grain of these 
 
 Conveyed the perfect charm. 
 
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