es, towards other States of the Union, or their
citizens; the contest for the exclusive possession of the territories,
the common property of the States; the anarchy and bloodshed in Kansas;
the exasperation of parties throughout the Union; the attempt to
nullify, by popular clamor, the decision of the supreme tribunal of our
country; the existence of the "underground railroad," and of a party in
the North organized for the express purpose of robbing the citizens of
the Southern States of their property; the almost daily occurrence of
fugitive slave mobs; the total insecurity of slave property in the
border States;[1] the attempt to circulate incendiary documents among
the slaves in the Southern States, and the flooding of the whole country
with the most false and malicious misrepresentations of the state of
society in the slave States; the attempt to produce division among us,
and to array one portion of our citizens in deadly hostility to the
other; and finally, the recent attempt to excite, at Harper's Ferry, and
throughout the South, an insurrection, and a civil and servile war, with
all its attendant horrors.

All these facts go to prove that there is a great wrong somewhere, and
that a part, or the whole, of the American people are demented, and
hurrying down to swift destruction. To ascertain where this great wrong
and evil lies, to point out the remedy, to disabuse the public mind of
all erroneous impressions or prejudices, to combat all false doctrines
on _this_ subject, and to establish the truth, shall be the aim of the
following pages. In preparing them we have consulted the works of most
of the writers on both sides of this question, as well as the statistics
and history tending to throw light upon the subject. To this we would
invite the candid and dispassionate attention of every patriot and
philanthropist. To all such we would say, in the language of the Roman
bard,

"Si quid novisti vectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non,
His utere mecum."

In the following pages, the words slave and slavery are not used in the
sense commonly understood by the abolitionists. With them these terms
are contradistinguished from servants and servitude. According to their
definition, a slave is merely a "chattel" in a human form; a _thing_ to
be bought and sold, and treated worse than a brute; a being without
rights, privileges, or duties. Now, if this is a correct definition of
the word,