d the "good men at the
South," of whom we have spoken, are not only doing nothing to arrest
this increasing divergency, but they are actually favoring it. The
writings of your Dews, and Baxters, and Plummers, and Postells, and
Andersons, and the proceedings of your ecclesiastical bodies, abundantly
show this. Never, and the assertion is borne out by your statute books,
as well as other evidences, has Southern slavery multiplied its
abominations so rapidly, as within the last ten years; and never before
had the Southern Church been so much engaged to defend and perpetuate
these abominations. The other of these reasons for believing that
Southern slavery will never be conformed to your _beau ideal_ of
slavery, in which it is presupposed there are none but principles of
righteousness, is, that on its first contact with these principles, it
would "vanish into thin air," leaving "not a wreck behind." In proof of
this, and I need not cite any other case, it would be immediate death to
Southern slavery to concede to its subjects, God's institution of
marriage; and hence it is, that its code forbids marriage. The rights of
the husband in the wife, and of the wife in the husband, and of parents
in their children, would stand directly in the way of that traffic in
human flesh, which is the very life-blood of slavery; and the
assumptions of the master would, at every turn and corner, be met and
nullified by these rights; since all his commands to the children of
those servants (for now they should no longer be called slaves) would be
in submission to the paramount authority of the parents[A]. And here,
sir, you and I might bring our discussion to a close, by my putting the
following questions to you, both of which your conscience would compel
you to answer in the affirmative.

[Footnote A: I am aware that Professor Hodge asserts, that "slavery may
exist without those laws which interfere with their (the slaves) marital
or parental right" Now, this is a point of immense importance in the
discussion of the question, whether slavery is sinful; and I, therefore,
respectfully ask him either to retract the assertion, or to prove its
correctness. Ten thousands of his fellow-citizens, to whom the assertion
is utterly incredible, unite with me in this request. If he can show,
that slavery does not "interfere with marital or parental rights," they
will cease to oppose it. Their confident belief is, that slavery and
marriage, whether conside