“They are owing,” said I, “originally, to the peculiar state of feeling on the part of the North toward the South.  This was not in consequence of injury experienced; for slavery had not inflicted injury upon the North; but, right or wrong, Northern disapprobation of slavery, and the ways of manifesting it, are the fountain-head of our present national trouble.  Let great numbers in one section of such a nation as this conscientiously disapprove of their brethren in another section, and not only so, but hold them guilty of an immoral and an inhuman system, and deal with them in such ways as Conscience, that most merciless of inquisitors and persecutors, alone employs, and if the indicted section be not exasperated, it will be because the accusation is true,—­that their system has destroyed their manhood.”

“But my hope and belief,” said he, “are, that all these changes are to result in the overthrow of slavery.”

“I can only say,” said I, in answer to such a remark, “that he who expects relief from our trouble through the eradication of slavery, and urges on secession and division as the means to effect it, is in danger of having his enthusiasm counted as fanaticism, if not madness.”

“How I wish,” said he, “that we could join and buy up these slaves and set them free.”

“Kind and well meant as this proposal is,” said I, “nothing is really more offensive to the South.  It implies that her conscience is debauched by self-interest, and that by offering to remunerate her if she will part with what we call her ill-gotten booty we shall assist her to become virtuous.  Such a proposal makes her feel that fanaticism has assumed the calmness which is its most hopeless symptom.”

“Then,” said he, “is the North to change all its opinions?”

I said, “If this implies the abandonment of moral or religious principle in the least degree, Never.  Our only hope lies in our possibly being in the wrong, and in magnanimously changing our views and feelings, and our behavior.  This, upon conviction, it will be most noble to do for its own sake, leaving the effect of it to Him by whom actions are weighed, and to those who, we shall have concluded, are naturally as magnanimous and just as we, and who, if guilty of oppression, were liable to the very same accusation when we first confederated with them, and when Northern slave-importers put their hands with Southern slave-holders to the Declaration of Independence, both averring that all men are created free and equal.

“We seem now to have concluded that we have put ourselves entirely right, and that our Southern brethren are entirely wrong.”

“I cannot feel,” said Mr. North, “that we are to blame for having our opinions, and for expressing them honestly and fearlessly.  What more have we done?”