ts and my obligations under the
Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the
poor creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes
and unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. In 1841 you
and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from
Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from
Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen
slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual
torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio
or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to assume that I
have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the
power to make me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much
the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in
order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union. I
do oppose the extension of slavery because my judgment and feelings so
prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary. If for this
you and I must differ, differ we must. . . .

"You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a
Christian you will rejoice at it. All decent slave holders talk that
way and I do not doubt their candour. But they never vote that way.
Although in a private letter or conversation you will express your
preference that Kansas shall be free, you will vote for no man for
Congress who would say the same thing publicly. No such man could be
elected from any district in a slave State. . . . The slave breeders
and slave traders are a small, odious and detested class among you; and
yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and are as
completely your masters as you are the masters of your own negroes.

"You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I
am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an
Abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso
as good as forty times; and I never heard of any one attempting to
un-Whig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of
slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing, that is certain. How could I be?
How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favour of
degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears
to me pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men
are created equal.' We now practically read it,