in a Republican government.  Thus, through demagogues at the North an animosity was aroused.  It slumbered long in the germ, but being assiduously cherished from year to year it at last budded and bloomed in a clime congenial to its nature, & is now bringing forth its venomous fruit, even to a “hundred fold.”  It was the consuming of this pernicious fruit that brought death upon our “Body Politic” and produced all our woe.  Would to God that woe should fall upon none but those who “planted & watered” it!  I am perfectly conscious and cognizant of the manner in which this spirit of enmity has been fostered.  I am a Northern by birth and education, & can testify to that which I know.  I have also been in the South sufficiently long to know the sentiments of the people here, and how they coincide (or rather disagree) with the Northern conceptions of them.  I have spent almost 8 years here—­certainly long enough to learn the character of the “peculiar institution” as well as its practical workings & effect on society.  And as I came with somewhat of prejudice against it, you must be frank enough to acknowledge me a fair judge in the matter.  Among the first books put into my youthful library, was a work called Charles Ball, or The Trials of a Run-Away Slave.  This was a horrid thing, and formed an impression on my young mind that has only with the utmost difficulty been eradicated.  I am conscious that its contents are false.  About the same time, & repeatedly, I was taken to witness a panorama of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—­another book whose leaves have furnished much fuel to infernal flames.  At the same time, & ever since, I have had my ears grated with the harsh jargon of fanatical tirades against the institutions & people of the South.  Of course then my mind was poisoned & prejudiced.  And this has not been my political training alone but that of a majority of your youth at the North—­no further North too than Penna.  How then is it possible that the North can entertain amicable feelings toward the South?  Add to this, what you rightly remark, that the popular mind is continually influenced by the issues of the Press—­an instrument that has scattered the seeds of discord broadcast over the land.  And here you either ignorantly or designedly intimate a slander against the South.  You say “all papers have free issue at the North & not so at the South.”  Now do you not know enough of Southern affairs to see that the South by their very Constitution cannot admit incendiary documents to be cast into their midst—­it were suicidal.  If the South should publish papers uttering sentiments detrimental to Northern manufactories (in general) & in favor of foreign manufac’s, how long would the North permit such papers to pass into their territory?  Again, just as you say you “wish that North^n. papers could circulate South,” so also do