To this we reply, that, if all claimed by the objector were true, it could avail him nothing for ‘public opinion’ is neither made nor unmade by ‘the first class of society.’  That class produces in it, at most, but slight modifications; those who belong to it have generally a ‘public opinion,’ within their own circle which has rarely more, either of morality or mercy than the public opinion of the mass, and is, at least, equally heartless and more intolerant.  As to the estimation in which ‘speculators,’ ‘soul drivers,’ &c. are held, we remark, that, they are not despised because they trade in slaves but because they are working men, all such are despised by slaveholders.  White drovers who go with droves of swine and cattle from the free states to the slave states, and Yankee pedlars, who traverse the south, and white day-laborers are, in the main, equally despised, or, if negro-traders excite more contempt than drovers, pedlars, and day-laborers, it is because, they are, as a class more ignorant and vulgar, men from low families and boors in their manners.  Ridiculous to suppose, that a people, who have, by law, made men articles of trade equally with swine, should despise men-drovers and traders, more than hog-drovers and traders.  That they are not despised because it is their business to trade in human beings and bring them to market, is plain from the fact that when some ’gentleman of property and standing’ and of a ‘good family’ embarks in a negro speculation, and employs a dozen ‘soul drivers’ to traverse the upper country, and drive to the south coffles of slaves, expending hundreds of thousands in his wholesale purchases, he does not lose caste.  It is known in Alabama, that Mr. Erwin, son-in-law of the Hon. Henry Clay, and brother of J.P.  Erwin, formerly postmaster, and late mayor of the city of Nashville, laid the foundation of a princely fortune in the slave-trade, carried on from the Northern Slave States to the Planting South; that the Hon. H. Hitchcock, brother-in-law of Mr. E., and since one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was interested with him in the traffic; and that a late member of the Kentucky Senate (Col.  Wall) not only carried on the same business, a few years ago, but accompanied his droves in person down the Mississippi.  Not as the driver, for that would be vulgar drudgery, beneath a gentleman, but as a nabob in state, ordering his understrappers.

It is also well known that President Jackson was a ‘soul driver,’ and that even so late as the year before the commencement of the last war, he bought up a coffle of slaves and drove them down to Louisiana for sale.