Talking of our ancestors, George, in the time of the Revolution, (by-the-by, yours were a set of dear, honest old creatures, for there were no Abolitionists then among us,) reminds me of an anecdote about George Washington and a favorite servant.  Billy Lee was an honest, faithful man, and a first-rate groom, and George Washington—­you need not blush to be a namesake of his, though he was a slaveholder.

The two were in a battle, the battle of Monmouth, the soldiers fighting like sixty, and Billy Lee looking on at a convenient distance, taking charge of a led horse, in case Washington’s should be shot from under him.

O, but it was a hot day!  Washington used to recall the thirst and the suffering attendant upon the heat, (thinking of the soldiers’ suffering, and not of his own.) As for Billy Lee, if he did not breathe freely, he perspired enough so to make up for it.  I warrant you he was anxious for the battle to be over, and the sun to go down.  But there he stood, true as steel—­honest, old patriot as he was—­quieting the horse, and watching his noble master’s form, as proud and erect it was seen here and there, directing the troops with that union of energy and calmness for which he was distinguished.  Washington’s horse fell under him, dying from excessive heat; but hear Billy Lee describe it: 

“Lord! sir, if you could a seen it; de heat, and dust, and smoke.  De cannons flyin, and de shot a whizzin, and de dust a blowing, and de horses’ heels a kickin up, when all at onct master’s horse fell under him.  It warn’t shot—­bless your soul, no.  It drapped right down dead wid de heat.  Master he got up.  I was scared when I see him and de horse go; but master got up.  He warn’t hurt; couldn’t hurt him.

“Master he got up, looked round at me.  ‘Billy,’ says he, ’give me the other horse, and you take care of the new saddle on this other poor fellow.’

“Did you ever hear de like?” added Billy Lee, “thinking of de saddle when de balls was a flyin most in our eyes.  But it’s always de same wid master.  He thinks of every thing.”

I agree with the humane jurist quoted by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe:  “The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him.”  She thinks slavery is worse still; but when “I think of every thing,” I am forced to differ from her.

The most of our Southern slaves are happy, and kindly cared for; and for those who are not, there is hope for the better.  But when a man is hung up by the neck until he is dead, he is done for.  As far as I can see, there is nothing that can be suggested to better his condition.

I have no wish to uphold slavery.  I would that every human being that God has made were free, were it in accordance with His will;—­free bodily, free spiritually—­“free indeed!”

Neither do I desire to deny the evils of slavery, any more than I would deny the evils of the factory system in England, or the factory and apprenticeship system in our own country.  I only assert the necessity of the existence of slavery at present in our Southern States, and that, as a general thing, the slaves are comfortable and contented, and their owners humane and kind.