These are my views upon the topics proposed for my consideration.  They are the views which I have always entertained, (at least ever since I have been awakened to their vast importance,) and which I have always supported, so far as I could, by my vote in Congress; and if, in any respect, my answers have not been sufficiently explicit, it will afford me pleasure to reply to any other questions which you may think proper to propose.

    I am, Sir, very respectfully,

    Your friend and fellow citizen,

    WILLIAM SPRAGUE.”

Oliver Johnson, Esq., Cor.  Sec.  R.I.A.S.  Society.

APPENDIX C.

The abolitionists in Connecticut petitioned the Legislature of that state at its late session on several subjects deemed by them proper for legislative action.  In answer to these petitions—­

1.  The law known as the “Black Act” or the “Canterbury law”—­under which Miss Crandall was indicted and tried—­was repealed, except a single provision, which is not considered objectionable.

2.  The right to trial by jury was secured to persons who are claimed as slaves.

3.  Resolutions were passed asserting the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and recommending that it be done as soon as it can be, “consistently with the best good of the whole country."(!)

4.  Resolutions were passed protesting against the annexation of Texas to the Union.

5.  Resolutions were passed asserting the right of petition as inalienable—­condemning Mr. Patton’s resolution of Dec. 21, 1837 as an invasion of the rights of the people, and calling on the Connecticut delegation in Congress to use their efforts to have the same rescinded.

* * * * *

APPENDIX D.

In the year 1793 there were but 5,000,000 pounds of cotton produced in the United States, and but 500,000 exported.  Cotton never could have become an article of much commercial importance under the old method of preparing it for market.  By hand-picking, or by a process strictly manual, a cultivator could not prepare for market, during the year, more than from 200 to 300 pounds; being only about one-tenth of what he could cultivate to maturity in the field.  In ’93 Mr. Whitney invented the Cotton-gin now in use, by which the labor of at least one thousand hands under the old system, is performed by one, in preparing the crop for market.  Seven years after the invention (1800) 35,000,000 pounds were raised, and 17,800,000 exported.  In 1834, 460,000,000 were raised—­384,750,000 exported.  Such was the effect of Mr. Whitney’s invention.  It gave, at once, extraordinary value to the land in that part of the country where alone cotton could be raised; and to slaves, because it was the general, the almost universal, impression that the cultivation of the South could be carried on only by slaves.  There being no free state in the South, competition between free and slave labor never could exist on a scale sufficiently extensive to prove the superiority of the former in the production of cotton, and in the preparation of it for market.