The “two races” exist in peace in Mexico,—­in all the former South American dependencies of Spain, in Antigua, in the Bermudas, in Canada, in Massachusetts, in Vermont, in fine, in every country where they enjoy legal equality.  It is the denial of this that produces discontent.  MEN will never be satisfied without it.  Let the slaveholders consult the irreversible laws of the human mind—­make a full concession of right to those from whom they have withheld it, and they will be blessed with a peace, political, social, moral, beyond their present conceptions; without such concessions they never can possess it.

A system that cannot withstand the assaults of truth—­that replies to arguments with threats—­that cannot be “talked about”—­that flourishes in secrecy and darkness, and dies when brought forth into the light and examined, must in this time of inexorable scrutiny and relentless agitation, be a dangerous one.  If justice be done, all necessity for the extirpation of any part of the people will at once be removed.  Baptisms of blood are seen only when humanity has failed in her offices, and the suffering discern hope only in the brute efforts of despair.

Mr. Elmore is doubtless well versed in general history.  To his vigorous declamation, I reply by asking, if he can produce from the history of our race a single instance, where emancipation, full and immediate, has been followed, as a legitimate consequence, by insurrection or bloodshed.  I may go further, and ask him for a well authenticated instance, where an emancipated slave, singly has imbrued his hands in his master’s blood.  The first record of such an act in modern times, is yet to be made.

Mr. Elmore says “the white inhabitants in the slave states should be informed of the full length and breadth and depth of this storm which is gathering over their heads, before it breaks in its desolating fury.”  In this sentiment there is not a reasonable man in the country, be he abolitionist or not, who will not coincide with him.  We rejoice at the evidence we here have, in a gentleman of the influence and intelligence of Mr. Elmore, of the returning sanity of the South.  How wildly and mischievously has she been heretofore misled!  Whilst the Governors of Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, have been repelling offers, made in respectful terms, of the fullest and most authentic accounts of our movements; and whilst Governor Butler of South Carolina, has not only followed the example of his gubernatorial brethren just named, but is found corresponding with an obscure culprit in Massachusetts—­bribing him with a few dollars, the sum he demanded for his fraudulent promise to aid in thwarting the abolitionists[A]; whilst too, Mr. Calhoun has been willing to pass laws to shut out from his constituents and the South generally information that concerned them more nearly than all others—­we now have it from the highest source, from one selected by a state delegation as its representative