pitably
entertained me, he explained that he had business on the road on which I
was traveling, and that he would accompany me a number of miles.

This emigrant from Pennsylvania, now a citizen of Missouri, who carried
his library in his brain and read his books when he conversed with men,
and kept his own counsel and lived in peace with his neighbors, was now
about to say farewell. With some hesitation he said: "Mr. Butler, I
thank you for all you have told me. I feel just as you do; but I must
advise you to be careful how you talk to other men as you have talked to
me. There are many in this country that would shoot such a man as you
are. Good-bye."

CHAPTER III.

It is said, "There are two sides to every question." In my association
with men in the free States I had learned one side of this question; now
I was learning the other side, and began to be able to put in
intelligible shape to myself those reasonings by which these men
justified their action. They reasoned thus: "War is a state of violence
and always involves a trenching upon what we call natural rights; and
its decisions depend not so much on who is right or wrong, as on who
wields the longest sword and commands the heaviest battalions. And if in
carrying on a war some evil comes to innocent parties, this is only one
of its necessary consequences, and is justified by the final result;
provided always that the war, as a whole, is right and just. And in such
a strained and unnatural condition of affairs men can not be governed by
the same scrupulous regard for others' rights by which they are governed
in time of peace. But the North and South are already practically in a
state of war. This comes of the mistakes made at the formation of our
government. Thomas Jefferson and the fathers of the Revolution were
mistaken in holding slavery wrong. It is a rightful and natural
relation, as between an inferior and superior race. The black race is
far better off here in America, in slavery, than they would be in
Africa, in freedom and in paganism; and if there is something of
hardship in their lot, it is only because there is hardship in the lot
of every human being."

These men also said: "Consequent on these erroneous views held by Thomas
Jefferson and others, the settlement made as between the North and South
has been wrong, from the beginning, It was wrong to close the Northwest
Territory, embracing Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, against
slav