Lewis Tappan: “In breaking the chains which bind the slave, be assured you will be delivering yourselves from a grievous thraldom.”

In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor.

You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged.

You have lamentable experience, that such is not the case where slaveholders bear rule.

But we have some official confessions, which give a still more deplorable account of Southern ignorance.