Lewis Tappan: “We have called your attention to the practical influence of slavery on various points deeply affecting your prosperity…”

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.

It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively to the rich.

Hence with them slavery is the INSTITUTION of the SOUTH, while it is in fact the institution of only a portion of the people of the south.