This application occasioned me
great trouble and distress, as it was most painful to me to refuse
my testimony on the subject on which I felt so deeply; but it was
impossible for me then to feel at liberty to publish my journal.

When the address, drawn up at Stafford House, under the impulse of
Mrs. Beecher Stowe's powerful novel, and the auspices of Lord
Shaftesbury and the Duchess of Sutherland (by Thackeray denominated
the "Womanifesto against Slavery"), was brought to me for my
signature, I was obliged to decline putting my name to it, though I
felt very sure no other signer of that document knew more of the
facts of American slavery, or abhorred it more, than I did; but
also, no other of its signers knew, as I did, the indignant sense of
offense which it would be sure to excite in those to whom it was
addressed; its absolute futility as to the accomplishment of any
good purpose, and the bitter feeling it could not fail to arouse,
even in the women of the Northern States, by the assumed moral
superiority which it would be thought to imply.

I would then gladly have published my journal, had I been at liberty
to do so, and thus shown my sympathy with the spirit, though not the
letter, of the Stafford House appeal to the women of America.

It was not, however, until after the War of Secession broke out,
while residing in England, and hearing daily and hourly the
condition of the slaves discussed, in a spirit of entire sympathy
with their owners, that nothing but the most absolute ignorance
could excuse, that I determined to publish my record of my own
observations on a Southern plantation.

At the time of my doing so, party feeling on the subject of the
American war was extremely violent in England, and the people among
whom I lived were all Southern sympathizers. I believe I was
suspected of being _employed_ to "advocate" the Northern cause (an
honor of which I was as little worthy as their cause was in need of
such an advocate); and my friend, Lady ----, told me she had
repeatedly heard it asserted that my journal was not a genuine
record of my own experiences and observation, but "cooked up" (to
use the expression applied to it) to serve the purpose of party
special pleading. This, as she said, she was able to contradict upon
her own authority, having heard me read the