Lewis Tappan: “If we are permitted to apply this rule in testing the moral condition of the South, the result will not be favorable.”

It is so commonly taken for granted, that every white man at the South is a slaveholder, that many will doubtingly inquire, where are these non-slaveholding citizens to be found?

It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing.

No other cause can be assigned than slavery, which drives from your borders many of the virtuous and enterprising, and at the same time deters emigrants from other States and from foreign countries from settling among you.

The slaveholders form a powerful landed aristocracy, banded together for the preservation of their own privileges, and ever endeavoring, for obvious reasons, to identify their private interests with the public welfare.