er of that poor little negro infant slave, "I knew
she did not dream what the parting would be." I repeat it, my theory of
slavery, that which I hold in common with all enlightened friends of
freedom, requires that this lady should have a debased, imbruted nature,
for she owns human beings, has made property of God's image in man. And
now I feel creeping over me a dreadful temptation to think that one may
hold fellow-creatures in bondage and yet be really humane, gentle, and
as good as a Northerner! What fearful changes in politics would come
about should our people believe this! It cannot be that our great party
of Freedom can ever go to pieces and disappoint the hopes of the world;
yet this would be the case, if the feelings stirred by this letter
should gain a general acceptance. I cannot gainsay the facts. Here is
the letter. May it never see the light; people are much more influenced
by such things than by mere logic, and oh, what would befall the nation
should our Northern excitement against slavery cease, and should we
leave the whole subject to the South and to God! "What if people should
come to believe that the Southerners--fifteen or sixteen States of this
Union--are as humane, Christian, and conscientious as the North!

Who will resolve my painful doubts? I do crave to know what possible
motive this lady could have had in taking so much thought and care about
the last resting-place of this poor little black "chattel." You and your
husband, dear lady, seem to be as kind and painstaking as though you
knew that a fellow-creature of yours was returning, "ashes to ashes,
dust to dust."

One great Northern "friend of the slave" tells us that the slaves at the
South are degraded so to the level of brutes, that baptizing them and
admitting them to Christian ordinances is about the same as though he
should say to his dogs, "I baptize thee, Bose, in," etc. This, he tells
us, he repeated many times here, and in England.[1] Nothing but love of
truth and just hatred of "the sum of all villanies" could, of course,
have made him venture so near the verge of unpardonable blasphemy as to
speak thus. Yet your feelings and behavior toward this babe are in
direct conflict with his theory. Pray whom am I to believe?

[Footnote 1: See "Sigma's" communications to the _Boston Transcript_,
August, 1857.]

Perhaps now I have hit upon a solution. Some people, Walter Scott is an
instance, bury their favorite dogs with all the