NOVEMBER 27, 1861: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Southern diarist, writes:
"On one side
Mrs. Stowe, Greeley, Thoreau, Emerson, Sumner, in nice New England homes—clean,
clear, sweet-smelling—shut up in libraries, writing books which ease their
hearts of their bitterness to us, or editing newspapers–all which pays better
than anything else in the world. Even the politician’s hobbyhorse—antislavery
is the beast to carry him highest.
"What
self-denial do they practice? It is the cheapest philanthropy trade in the
world—easy. Easy as setting John Brown to come down here and cut our throats in
Christ’s name.
“Now, what I have
seen of my mother’s life, my grandmother’s, my mother-in-law’s:
"These people
were educated at Northern schools mostly—read the same books as their Northern
contemners, the same daily newspapers, the same Bible—have the same ideas of
right and wrong—are highbred, lovely, good, pious—doing their duty as they
conceive it. They do not preach and teach hate as a gospel and the sacred duty
of murder and insurrection, but they strive to ameliorate the condition of
these Africans in every particular. . . I say we are no better than our judges
North—and no worse. We are human beings of the nineteenth century—and slavery
has got to go, of course. All that has been gained by it goes to the North and
to negroes. The slave-owners, when they are good men and women, are the
martyrs. And as far as I have seen, the people here are quite as good as
anywhere else. I hate slavery. I even hate the harsh authority I see parents
think it their duty to exercise toward their children."
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