s habits. They are excessively jealous of their political
rights, yet frank and open hearted in their dispositions, and carry the
duties of hospitality to a great extent. Having overseers on most of
their plantations, the labor being performed by slaves, they have much
leisure, and are averse to much personal attention to business. They
dislike care, profound thinking and deep impressions. The young men are
volatile, gay, dashing and reckless spirits, fond of excitement and high
life. There is a fatal propensity amongst the southern planters to
decide quarrels, and even trivial disputes by duels. But there are also
many amiable and noble traits of character amongst this class; and if
the principles of the Bible and religion could be brought to exert a
controlling influence, there would be a noble spirited race of people in
the southwestern states.

It cannot be expected that I should pass in entire silence the system of
slaveholding in the lower Valley, or its influence on the manners and
habits of the people. This state of society seems unavoidable at
present, though I have no idea or expectation it will be perpetual.
Opposite sentiments and feelings are spreading over the whole earth, and
a person must have been a very inattentive observer of the tendencies
and effects of the diffusion of liberal principles not to perceive that
hereditary, domestic servitude must have an end.

This is a subject, however, that from our civil compact, belongs
exclusively to the citizens of the states concerned; and if not
unreasonably annoyed, the farming slaveholding states, as Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri, will soon provide for its eventual termination.
Doubtless, in the cotton and sugar growing states it will retain its
hold with more tenacity, but the influence of free principles will roll
onward until the evil is annihilated.

The barbarous and unwise regulations in some of the planting states,
_which prohibit the slaves from being taught to read_, are a serious
impediment to the moral and religious instruction of that numerous and
unfortunate class. Such laws display on the part of the law makers,
little knowledge of human nature and the real tendency of things. To
keep _slaves_ entirely ignorant of the rights of man, in this
spirit-stirring age, is utterly impossible. Seek out the remotest and
darkest corner of Louisiana, and plant every guard that is possible
around the negro quarters, and the light of truth will penetrate