This state of the public mind has been brought about within the last two or three years; and it is an event which, so far from lessening, greatly animates, the hopes and expectations of abolitionists.

3.  The abolitionists believed from the first, that the tendency of slavery is to produce, on the part of the whites, looseness of morals, disdain of the wholesome restraints of law, and a ferocity of temper, found, only in solitary instances, in those countries where slavery is unknown.  They were not ignorant of the fact, that this was disputed; nor that the “CHIVALRY OF THE SOUTH” had become a cant phrase, including, all that is high-minded and honorable among men; nor, that it had been formally asserted in our National legislature, that slavery, as it exists in the South, “produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth.”  Nor were the abolitionists unaware, that these pretensions, proving anything else but their own solidity, had been echoed and re-echoed so long by the unthinking and the interested of the North, that the character of the South had been injuriously affected by them—­till she began boldly to attribute her peculiar superiority to her peculiar institution, and thus to strengthen it.  All this the abolitionists saw and knew.  But few others saw and understood it as they did.  The revelations of the last three years are fast dissipating the old notion, and bringing multitudes in the North to see the subject as the abolitionists see it.  When “Southern Chivalry” and the purity of southern society are spoken of now, it is at once replied, that a large number of the slaves show, by their color, their indisputable claim to white paternity; and that, notwithstanding their near consanguineous relation to the whites, they are still held and treated, in all respects, as slaves.  Nor is it forgotten now, when the claims of the South to “hospitality” are pressed, to object, because they are grounded on the unpaid wages of the laborer—­on the robbery of the poor.  When “Southern generosity” is mentioned, the old adage, “be just before you are generous,” furnishes the reply.  It is no proof of generosity (say the objectors) to take the bread of the laborer, to lavish it in banquetings on the rich.  When “Southern Chivalry” is the theme of its admirers, the hard-handed, but intelligent, working man of the North asks, if the espionage of southern hotels, and of ships and steamboats on their arrival at southern ports; if the prowl, by day and by night, for the solitary stranger suspected of sympathizing with the enslaved, that he may be delivered over to the mercies of a vigilance committee, furnishes the proof of its existence; if the unlawful importation of slaves from Africa[A] furnishes the proof; if the abuse, the scourging, the hanging on suspicion, without law, of friendless strangers, furnish the proof; if the summary execution of slaves and of colored freemen, almost by the score, without legal trial, furnishes the proof; if the cruelties and tortures to which citizens have been exposed, and the burning to death of slaves by slow fires,[B] furnish the proof.  All these things, says he, furnish any thing but proof of true hospitality, or generosity, or gallantry, or purity, or chivalry.