Transcriber’s Note:
Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silentlycorrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of thistext for details regarding the handling of any textual issuesencountered during its preparation.
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The cover image has been fabricated and is placed in the public domain.
This is a legitimate topic of general interest, and it assumesa preponderating importance to the people of theSouthern American States, when the fact is taken intoconsideration that a general league against the institutionof African slavery has been entered into and consummatedbetween most of the civilized nations of the earth, andpublic opinion in many of the sister States of our ownNational Union has taken the same direction. The resultis, to have arraigned the slaveholding States before themighty bar of public opinion, on the charge of holding, asproperty, more than ten hundred millions of dollars’ worthof what does not belong to them, which is and never can bethe property of man; and this charge embraces, within itsscope, the crimes of theft, robbery, rapine, and cruelty.
The time has come when the South must enter her pleaof defence, not because the accusers are foreign nations,of which it may justly be said, before their charges areentertained, “Physician, heal thyself,” but because ouraccusers are among our own brethren, bound to us by freedom’sholiest associations and religion’s most sacred ties.
The author of the “Studies on Slavery” has the doubleadvantage of a full comprehension of the subject both inits Northern and Southern aspect. Born and educated inthe former, and qualified by a long residence in the lattersection of our Union, he is amply qualified to weigh theprejudices, the teachings, and the arguments of the one,against the facts, the justifications, the religious and politicalsanctions of the other.
Mr. Fletcher has not only marshalled into his line ofimpregnable defence the mandates and sanctions of theSacred