Lewis Tappan: “They are the nobility of the south, and they find it expedient to forget that there are any commoners.”

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.

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 power of the slaveholders, as we have already showed you, depends on the acquiescence of the major part of the white inhabitants in their domination.

We surely need not detain you with farther details on this head, to convince you what an enormous sacrifice of happiness and prosperity you are offering on the altar of slavery.