The Sable Cloud | Page 9

it should not be so, or it would
not be denied." All this is very sweet and beautiful; but now let me tell
you, honestly, what the spontaneous thought of a Northerner is while
meditating on such an apparently lovely picture. Here it is: Suppose
that Susan and little Cygnet, when both are three years old, are playing
in your front-yard some morning, and a cruel slave-trader should look
over the fence, and say to your husband, "Fine little thing there, sir;
take a hunderd and a ha'f for her?" I ask, Would not your husband
(perhaps in need, just then, of money to pay a note) lay down his
newspaper, invite the fellow in to drink, and go through the opening
scene of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," coaxing up the fellow's price; and
finally, would he not sell little Cygnet while her mother was out of
sight, push poor little Susan into a room alone to cry her eyes out, and
you and your husband pocket the money? Many of us at the North, dear
madam, if you will take my unworthy self as a specimen, and I am a
very moderate anti-slavery man and no fanatic, are quite as ready to
believe such things of you as the contrary. We have read "Uncle Tom's
Cabin."
Nothing could exceed the disgust and ridicule which your letter would
meet with at the hands of some of our best anti-slavery men. I am
thinking of it, just now, as in the hands of Rev. Mr. Blank. The other
day I saw a cambric muslin handkerchief, richly embroidered, blow
past me out of a child's carriage. As I turned to get it, a dog seized it,
shook it, put both his paws on it, rent it, made rags of it, threw it down,

snatched it up, and seemed vexed that there was no more of it to tear.
So will our abolitionists serve your letter, should they ever see it. And,
my dear madam, though I disapprove their temper and language, yet I
must confess that I sympathize with them in their principles, the only
difference between them and me being that of social position and
manners. I must tell you that, after all, you are probably unaware of the
deception which you are practising on yourself, in supposing that you
are really as loving and gentle toward a slave-mother and her child as
some might infer. Let but a good sale tempt you! I wait to know
whether you would then write such a letter. We have a ready answer to
all the kind and good things which are said about you, in this, which
you will see and hear in all our speeches and essays, namely, "Slavery
is the sum of all villanies." That is to all our thoughts and reasonings
about slavery what the longitude of Greenwich is to navigation. All
your clergy, all your physicians, all your judges and lawyers, all your
fathers and mothers, your gentlemen and ladies, all your children, are
heaped together by us in one name, to us an awful
name,--"Slave-power." We think about you as we do of Egypt, with
Israel in bondage.
And now that allusion furnishes me with an argument against your
letter, which I must, in conclusion, and sorely against many of my
feelings, let fall, like a stone, upon it, and crush it forever. Pharaoh's
daughter was touched with the cry of the little slave-babe, Moses; but
what does that prove? that Egyptian bondage was not "an enormous
wrong," a "stupendous injustice," "the sum of all villanies"? or that a
Red Sea was not already waiting to swallow up the slave-holders, horse
and foot?
You may write a thousand such letters, all over the South; but though
they delude me for a while, it is only until the moisture which they
raise to my eyes from my heart, by the pathos in them, dries up, and
leaves my vision clear of all the blinding though beautiful mists of that
error which has diffused itself over one half of this goodly land, and, I
grieve to add, which has fallen upon many even here in New England,
recreant sons of liberty, traitors to the memories of Faneuil Hall and
Bunker Hill.

LETTER FROM MR. NORTH, INCLOSING THE FOREGOING.
INFLUENCE OF THE LETTER UPON HIS WIFE.
MY DEAR MR. A. BETTERDAY CUMMING:--
I have, as you see, complied with your request, and herewith I send you
my thoughts and feelings in view of the good Southern lady's letter. I
came near, once or twice, abandoning some of my long-cherished
principles, under the influence of the letter and of the reflections to
which it gave rise. But I have been enabled to retain my integrity. I am
sorry to say that the letter has made