You ascribe to us “the purpose to manumit the three millions of negro slaves.”  Here again you greatly misrepresent us, by holding us up as employing coercive, instead of persuasive, means for the accomplishment of our object.  Our “purpose” is to persuade others to “manumit.”  The slaveholders themselves are to “manumit.”  It is evident, that others cannot “manumit” for them.  If the North were endeavoring to persuade the South to give up the growing of cotton, you would not say, it is the purpose of the North to give it up.  But, as well might you, as to say, that it is the “purpose” of the abolitionists to “manumit.”  It is very much by such misrepresentations, that the prejudices against abolitionists are fed and sustained.  How soon they would die of atrophy, if they, who influence the public mind and mould public opinion, would tell but the simple truth about abolitionists.

You say, that the abolitionists would have the slaves manumitted “without compensation and without moral preparation.”  I have already said enough on the point of “compensation.”  It is true, that they would have them manumitted immediately:—­for they believe slavery is sin, and that therefore the slaveholder has no right to protract the bondage of his slaves for a single year, or for a single day or hour;—­not even, were he to do so to afford them “a moral preparation” for freedom, or to accomplish any other of the kindest and best purposes.  They believe, that the relation of slaveholder, as it essentially and indispensably involves the reduction of men to chattelship, cannot, under any plea whatever, be continued with innocence, for a single moment.  If it can be—­if the plain laws of God, in respect to marriage and religious instruction and many other blessings, of which chattelized man is plundered, can be innocently violated—­why credit any longer the assertion of the Bible, that “sin is the transgression of the law?”—­why not get a new definition of sin?

Another reason with abolitionists in favor of immediate manumission, is, that the slaves do not, as a body, acquire, whilst in slavery, any “moral preparation” for freedom.  To learn to swim we must be allowed the use of water.  To learn the exercises of a freeman, we must enjoy he element of liberty.  I will not say, that slaves cannot be taught, to some extent, the duties of freemen.  Some knowledge of the art of swimming may be acquired before entering the water.  I have not forgotten what you affirm about the “progressive melioration in the condition of slaves,” and the opening of “schools of instruction” for them “prior to the agitation of the subject of abolition;” nor, have I forgotten, that I could not read it without feeling, that the creations of your fancy, rather than the facts of history, supplied this information.  Instances, rare instances, of such “melioration” and of such “schools of instruction,” I doubt not there have been:  but, I am confident, that the Southern slaves have been sunk in depths of ignorance proportioned to the profits of their labor.  I have not the least belief, that the proportion of readers amongst them is one half so great, as it was before the invention of Whitney’s cotton gin.