guard against the mad onset, the full extent of this gigantic conspiracy and crusade against their institutions; and of necessity upon their lives with which they must sustain them; and their fortunes and prosperity, which exist only while these institutions exist, that I was induced to enter into a correspondence with you, who by your official station and intelligence were known to be well informed on these points, and from your well established character for candor and fairness, would make no statements of facts which were not known or believed by you to be true.  To a great extent, my end has been accomplished by your replies to my inquiries.  How far, or whether at all, your answers have run, beyond the facts inquired for, into theories, arguments, and dissertations, as erroneous as mischievous, is not a matter of present consideration.  We differed no wider than I expected, but that difference has been exhibited courteously, and has nothing to do with the question of publication.  Your object, or rather the object of your Committee, is to publish; and I, having no reason to desire it, as you have put me in possession of the facts I wished, and no reason not to desire it, as there is nothing to conceal, will leave yourself and the Committee to take your own course, neither assenting nor dissenting, in what you may finally decide to do.

    Very respectfully,

    Your obedient servant,

    F.H.  Elmore.”

[This letter of Mr. Elmore contains but little more than a reiteration of alarming cries on the part of the slaveholder;—­cries that are as old as the earliest attempts of philanthropy to break the fetters of the enslaved, and that have been repeated up to the present day, with a boldness that seems to increase, as instances of emancipation multiply to prove them groundless.  Those who utter them seem, in their panic, not only to overlook the most obvious laws of the human mind, and the lights of experience, but to be almost unconscious of the great events connected with slavery, that are now passing around them in the world, and conspiring to bring about its early abrogation among all civilized and commercial nations.

However Christian, and civilized, industrious, prosperous and happy, the SLAVEHOLDERS of the South may be, this cannot be said of the SLAVES.  A large religious denomination of the state in which Mr. Elmore resides, has deliberately pronounced them to be “HEATHEN.” Their “industry” is seen at the end of the lash—­of “prosperity” they have none, for they cannot possess any thing that is an element of prosperity—­their “happiness” they prove, by running away from their masters, whenever they think they can effect their escape.  This is the condition of a large majority of the people in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.