But there were still others, including many of those who were not slave-owners, who, while they acquiesced in the existence of an institution for which they were not personally accountable, looked forward to its ultimate extinction by the voluntary action of the States concerned.  It was impossible as yet to touch the question openly, for the invectives and injustice of the abolitionists had so wrought upon the Southern people, that such action would have been deemed a base surrender to the dictation of the enemy; but they trusted to time, to the spread of education, and to a feeling in favour of emancipation which was gradually pervading the whole country.* (* There is no doubt that a feeling of aversion to slavery was fast spreading among a numerous and powerful class in the South.  In Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri the number of slaves was decreasing, and in Delaware the institution had almost disappeared.)

The opinions of this party, with which, it may be said, the bulk of the Northern people was in close sympathy,* (* Grant’s Memoirs page 214.) are perhaps best expressed in a letter written by Colonel Robert Lee, the head of one of the oldest families in Virginia, a large landed proprietor and slave-holder, and the same officer who had won such well-deserved renown in Mexico.  “In this enlightened age,” wrote the future general-in-chief of the Confederate army, “there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.  It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.  I think it a greater evil to the white than to the coloured race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former.  The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa—­morally, socially, and physically.  The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope, will prepare them for better things.  How long their subjection may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.  Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influence of Christianity than from the storms and contests of fiery controversy.  This influence, though slow, is sure.  The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small part of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist!  While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is still onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands, who sees the end and who chooses to work by slow things, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.  The abolitionist must know this, and must see that he has neither the right nor the power of operating except by moral means and suasion; if he means well to the slave, he must not create angry feelings in the master.  Although he may not approve of the mode by which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the result will nevertheless be the same; and the reason he gives for interference in what he has no concern holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbours when we disapprove of their conduct.”