It were almost as easy for the sun to call up vegetation by the side of an iceberg, as for the abolitionists to move the South extensively, whilst their influence is counteracted by a pro-slavery spirit at the North.  How vain would be the attempt to reform the drunkards of your town of Lexington, whilst the sober in it continue to drink intoxicating liquors!  The first step in the reformation is to induce the sober to change their habits, and create that total abstinence-atmosphere, in the breathing of which, the drunkard lives,—­and, for the want of which, he dies.  The first step, in the merciful work of delivering the slaveholder from his sin, is similar.  It is to bring him under the influence of a corrected public opinion—­of an anti-slavery sentiment:—­and they, who are to be depended on to contribute to this public opinion—­to make up this anti-slavery sentiment—­are those, who are not bound up in the iron habits, and blinded by the mighty interests of the slaveholder.  To depend on slaveholders to give the lead to public opinion in the anti-slavery enterprise, would be no less absurd, than to begin the temperance reformation with drunkards, and to look to them to produce the influences, which are indispensable to their own redemption.

You say of the abolitionists, that “they are in favor of amalgamation."

The Anti-Slavery Society is, as its name imports, a society to oppose slavery—­not to “make matches.”  Whether abolitionists are inclined to amalgamation more than anti-abolitionists are, I will not here take upon myself to decide.  So far, as you and I may be regarded as representatives of these two parties, and so far as our marriages argue our tastes in this matter, the abolitionists and anti-abolitionists may be set down, as equally disposed to couple white with white and black with black—­for our wives, as you are aware, are both white.  I will here mention, as it may further argue the similarity in the matrimonial tastes of abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, the fact so grateful to us in the days, when we were “workers together” in promoting the “scheme of Colonization,” that our wives are natives of the same town.

I have a somewhat extensive acquaintance at the North; and I can truly say, that I do not know a white abolitionist, who is the reputed father of a colored child.  At the South there are several hundred thousand persons, whose yellow skins testify, that the white man’s blood courses through their veins.  Whether the honorable portion of their parentage is to be ascribed exclusively to the few abolitionists scattered over the South—­and who, under such supposition, must, indeed, be prodigies of industry and prolificness—­or whether anti-abolitionists there have, notwithstanding all their pious horror of “amalgamation,” been contributing to it, you can better judge than myself.