A spirit of emancipation was then common among slaveholders; many slaves were set at liberty, and Christians, and philanthropists, were anxiously looking forward to a period of universal emancipation.  A gentleman, by name Benjamin Lundy, published at that time an anti-slavery paper in Greenville, East Tennessee; which paper had an extensive circulation.  About that time, I gathered up my anti-slavery juvenile doggerel, corrected it, as well as I could,—­selected poems from Cowper and others, on the subject; forwarded the manuscript to the aforesaid B. Lundy, and the result was, a little volume of anti-slavery poems.  But the abolition excitement broke out in the North, and the South took the alarm.  The mouths of clergymen were closed in the pulpit; for it was deemed inadvisable, in consequence of Northern interference, to discuss the subject of slavery in the pulpit, social circle, or under any circumstances, whatever.  It was thus, we see, through the intermeddling of Northern abolitionists, that discussion was cut off in the South.  Rigid laws were then enacted by the state Legislatures, for the suppression of public discussion; and there were also enactments which threw obstacles in the way of emancipation; and thus, the fetters of slavery have been drawn tighter, and tighter, from that day, to the present time.

A short time after the excitement commenced in the South, a committee of panic-stricken citizens called on Mr. Lundy, after expressing for him personally the highest regard, they politely requested him to discontinue his paper; expressing the opinion, at the time, that its publication was no longer consistent with public safety.  Mr. Lundy complied with their request, and it was rumored, whether true or false, I know not, that he remarked, that it was a great pity that the Yankees could not mind their own business.  Mr. Lundy, I believe, was a Yankee himself, but was said to be a gentlemanly, humane man.  Some are no doubt ready to ask, Why was it, that the abolition excitement in the North, produced such a panic in the South?  It was the revolting and shocking doctrines, which they openly promulgated.  It was their notorious disregard of the laws of God and man, and all those ties which bind us together as one great nation; their denial of the right of the South to hold slave property, notwithstanding that right had been guaranteed to them by the Federal Constitution; their advocacy of the right of the slave to arise in the night and cut his master’s throat; or, else, burn his house over his head; their advocacy of the right of the North to force emancipation on the South, at the point of the bayonet, &c.