First of all, in
spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient
works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an
observer. He could be no more. "Uncle Tom," as its "Key" shows, and as
Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous
witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was "American
Slavery as it is," a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American
Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony
incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers,
periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century.
But the world was deaf. "They have made it a business. They select all
the horrors. They accumulate exceptions." Such were the objections that
limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was
answered. Foreign tourists were taken to "model plantations." They shed
tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful
provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African
fellow-creatures. The affection of "Mammy" for "Massa and Missis" was
something unknown where hired labor prevailed.
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