"When Mrs Chesnut* married South, her husband was as wealthy as her brothers-in-law, Mr Binney or Mr Stevens. How is it now? Their money has accumulated for their children. Their old man's goes to support a horde of idle dirty Africans—while he is abused and vilified as a cruel slave-owner. I wish his 'Uncle Tom'—for he has one who never tasted calamity in any shape and whose gray hairs are honored, though they frame a black face—could be seen or could be heard as he tells me of 'me & master'—&c&c&c. We are human beings of the nineteenth century—and slavery has 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.
There now!! What good does it do to write all that? I have before me a letter I wrote to Mr C while he was on our plantation in Mississippi in 1842. It is the most fervid abolition document I have ever read. I came across it, burning letters the other day. That letter I did not burn. I kept it—as showing how we were not as much of heathens as our enlightened enemies think. Their philanthropy is cheap. There are as noble, pure lives here as there—and a great deal more of self-sacrifice. . . ."
*Mary Boykin Chesnut's mother-in-law Mary Bowes Cox Chestnut (1775-1864) was from a prominent Philadelphia family. Also indicated are Philadelphia attorney/legislator Horace Binney and New Jersey entrepreneur Edwin Stevens.
