d the truth; but I prefer to
do so; I wish, above all, to avoid exaggeration.]

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

This leads me to examine a side of the American question upon which,
attention is, naturally fixed at the present time; how is it that the
iniquities of slavery are maintained among this charitable and liberal
people? how is it that such iniquities have subsisted under the
influence of so powerful a Christian sentiment? Can it be true that
Christians have deserted the cause of justice? Has the Gospel had the
place which belongs to it, in the great struggle that is going on
between the North and the South? yes; or no. This is perhaps the point
of all others most important to clear up; first, because it is the one
on which the most errors have accumulated; next, because it is the one
most closely connected with the final solution; for this solution will
not be happy, if the Gospel has no hand in it.

To judge rightly, let us approach and endeavor to comprehend the true
position of those whose conduct we seek to appreciate. See the South,
for example, where the almost universal opinion is favorable to slavery,
where governors write dithyrambics on its benefits, where many
Christians have succeeded in discovering that it is sanctioned by the
Gospel, where men of sincerity are now placing their impious crusades in
behalf of its extension under the protection of God, where numerous
preachers expound in their own way the celebrated text "Cursed be
Canaan!" Do not these sentiments of the South, detestable as they are,
find, to a certain point, their explanation and excuse in the
circumstances in which the South is placed?

The power of surroundings is incalculable. If we ourselves, who condemn
slavery, and are right in so doing, had been reared in Charleston; if we
had led a planter's life from our earliest infancy; if we had nourished
our minds with their ideas; if we considered our monetary interests
menaced by Abolitionism; if the image of more fearful perils, of violent
destructions and massacres, appeared to haunt our thoughts; if the
political antagonism between the North and the South came to add its
venom to the passions already excited within us, is it certain that we
ourselves should no be figuring at the present time among the
desperadoes who are firing upon the ships of the Union, and attempting
the foundation of a Southern Confederacy?

It is well to ask this of ourselves, in order t