“The company agreed in this, though the physician made no remark.  We conversed further on the antipathy of the Free States to a large increase among them of the colored population, ungrateful and perfidious Kansas, even, withholding civil and political equality from them; their condition in Canada; their relation to the whites in every state where they have gone to reside; and we concluded that the South was the best home for the black man,—­that home to become better and better in proportion as the law of Christian benevolence prevailed.  We agreed that if the South could be relieved of Northern interference, the condition of the colored people would be greatly improved, in many respects; especially, we regretted that now we did not have an enlightened public sentiment at the North to help the best part of the Southern people in effecting reformations and improving the laws and regulations.  Now, the Northern influence is wholly nugatory, or positively adverse.  The opinions and feelings of calm and candid neighbors and friends have great influence.  This the South does not enjoy.  The North is her passionate reprover; she is held to be, by many, her avowed enemy.  In resistance, and in retaliation, compromises are broken, and every political advantage is grasped at in self-defence, by the South.  Recrimination ensues, and civil war is threatened.  The only remedy is the entire abandonment by the North of interference with this subject; but this cannot take place so long as the Northern people labor under their doctrinal error that it is a sin to hold property in man.  Here is the root of the difficulty.  We agreed that if reflecting people at the North would adopt Scriptural views on that point, peace would soon ensue; for all the discussions of the supposed or real evils in slavery, which would then be the sole objects of animadversion, would elicit truth, and tend to good.  If the South felt that the North were truly her friend, they would both be found cooperating for the improvement and elevation of the colored race.  Every form of oppression and selfishness would feel the withering rebuke of a just and enlightened universal public sentiment.  But now that the quarrel runs high as to the sinfulness and wrongfulness of the relation itself, there is nothing for the South to do but to stand by their arms.

“One gentleman made some remarks which interested and instructed me more than anything that was said.  He confessed that the whole subject of the relation of master and servant,—­in a word, slavery, was, for a long time, a sore trouble to him, because he constantly found himself searching for his right, his warrant to hold his slaves.  At last he resolved to study the Bible on the subject.  He naturally turned to the last instructions of the Word of God with regard to it, and in Paul’s injunctions to masters and servants, he found relief.  There he perceived that God recognized the relationships of slavery, that the golden rule was enjoined, not to dissolve the relation, but to make it benevolent to all concerned.  He found the Almighty establishing the relation of master and servant among his own chosen people, and decreeing that certain persons might be servants forever, being, as he himself terms them ’an inheritance forever.’