“Well,” said Mrs. North, dropping her work in her lap, “I never thought of that before.”

“Why,” said I, “where will you find in the Free States husband and wife and children living together as servants in the same family?”

Said Mrs. North, “It is rather uncommon with us to find two sisters living together as help in a family.  At least, it is always spoken of and noted as pleasant and desirable.”

“What would Northerners think,” said I, “of gathering the old parents and all the brothers and sisters of their domestics together, in small tenements near their own dwellings?  He who should do this would be regarded as a very great saint.  So that you may as well say that slavery is a system by which a serving class is kept together in families, as to say that its purpose and effect is to break up families.”

“Just think,” said Mrs. North, “of the serving class in our families here at the North,—­how they are separated by states, by oceans, from one another!”

“Be careful, Mrs. North,” said I, “how you even hint at such mitigations in slavery, for you will be denounced as a ‘friend of oppression’ if you discern anything in the system but ‘villanies.’  You never hear such a feature of slavery, as that of which we have just spoken, recognized here at the North by our zealous anti-slavery people.”

“Do you not think,” said she, “that if we were candid and less passionate, and viewed the subject as anti-slavery men at the South do, we should exert far more influence against slavery?”

“If we exerted any,” I replied, “it would be ‘far more’ than we do now.  If we would only cease to ‘exert influence’ in that direction, and begin to learn that the people of the South are as Christian, benevolent, and good in every respect as we, this first, great lesson, which we all need to learn, would do us all great good.  Self-righteousness is the great characteristic of the Northern people with regard to the South.  Fifteen States declare that they are justified before God in continuing the system of slavery.  The other States would be ashamed to condemn those fifteen States for immorality in the discussion of any other subject; but here they assume that one half of the American nation is convicted of crime.  I take the ground that, if the Churches and the ministry of those fifteen States say, With all the evils of slavery, it is right and best that we should maintain it, I will so far yield my convictions as not to feel that they are less righteous than I.”

“Oh,” said Mr. North, “but they have been born and educated under the system.  Of course they must be blinded by it, and their moral sense perverted.”

“There,” said I, “Mr. North, is the ‘Northern Evil’ again.  Oh, what a shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this way, and to erect their own moral sense into such self-complacent superiority!