University of Virginia Library

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235

NOTE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

“All the pieces in this volume have been printed heretofore —mostly in the daily papers. Some of them, rather trivial, are included because of their popularity. Indeed all those on war and polity seem to me but ephemeral expressions— suspiria, risus, elatio—of the great national Passion, in its several phases. They are spray, as it were, flung up by the strong Tide-Rip of Public Trouble, and present the Time more nearly, perhaps, than they do the writer. Penned, for the most part, on occassion, from day to day, (and often literally currente calamo,)they may well have admitted instances of diffuseness, contradiction, or repetition.

On overlooking them, I find almost nothing, in substance, to omit or qualify. I have chanted of Treason and Slavery, sometimes fancifully or passionately, perhaps—always fairly, in effect, I hope. Let us give the latter of these Twin Gentlemen his due, whatever that may be.

Can a slave-holder be a good man? Assuredly, to my thinking—especially where manumission is impracticable, by reason of law or popular violence. But, so far as I have seen, he is good in spite of his slave-holding, not because of it. Justice, humanity, regard to natural right—these can hardly be credited to a status, the single condition of which is the allowed infraction of them. They belong to the man, not to the business. Thus much for those friends of mine who are, or have been slave-holders, and whose natural goodness could convert a relation so injurious in its essence, and often so horrible in its concomitants, into something at least not absolutely shocking the senses, nor quite precluding the interchange of kindly feeling. Thus much, too, for those of us, who, travelling or residing in slave-regions, have also certainly been amenable to whatever blame may attach to the naked fact of using slave-services.

But how suddenly and thoroughly an ill usage may pervert the best feelings, is patent enough. What travellers were those, in Java, who, in their first morning's ride, had such a shock on seeing the abject prostration of all the natives they encountered? They soon got bravely over it, however—for, on their way home, meeting a couple of Chineses, who did not fling themselves on their faces, they were vastly scandalized at the omission, and, as they tell us, exclaimed with one voice, “Confound the impudence of those fellows!” So easy is it to reconcile one's self to whatever may be held as “the thing,” and so natural to think empirically. It is a system, and its results, average or extreme, not individuals, that I have dealt with.

True, it is only of late that any American (or, for the matter of that, any European) could, with the least personal consistency, assail the system—always excepting a very few of the original emancipationists, who, from the first, grimly and grandly pretermitted all use of the products of slave-labor. For the rest of us, we have been art and part—accessaries before and after the fact. It is now these many years that we have held an uncommonly large Candle (saving your presence) to the Devil. It is going out, and the snuff and smoke come under our noses pretty strongly—but he won't let us drop it, as long as a spark remains to light his work withal. Let us bear it as we may, and not make matters worse by trying to puff it alight again.

'Tis certain, we can hardly lay claim to the initiation of what has turned out such a sturdy contest of right against wrong. I dare say we should have gone on, in sæcula, in the old way, had not Aphrosyné that wild-eyed angel, (who at the worst pinch, always does the will of the Gods,) descended to fire the Southern Heart. A sublime vis inertiæ, three years ago, on a point of abstract right, was our earliest political merit. Since then, by sacrifices without precedent, in defence of the same, and by a readiness to share the burden of expiation and reform, the Nation, at last, has fairly earned the right to speak. Here is one of its voices—would it were nearer to