1864 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 363 



the fate of the south affects you. But I am in the 

 condition of most thoughtful Englishmen. My heart 

 goes with the south, and my head with the north. 



I have no love for the Yankees, and I delight in the 

 energy and self-sacrifice of your people ; but for all that, 

 I cannot doubt that whether you beat the Yankees or 

 not, you are struggling to uphold a system which must, 

 sooner or later, break down. 



I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with 

 the negro ; don't believe in him at all, in short. But it 

 is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad 

 political economy ; bad social morality ; bad internal 

 political organisation, and a bad influence upon free 

 labour and freedom all over the world. For the sake of 

 the white man, therefore, for your children and grand- 

 children, directly, and for mine, indirectly, I wish to 

 see this system ended. 1 Would that the south had had 

 the wisdom to initiate that end without this miserable 

 war ! 



All this must jar upon you sadly, and I grieve that it 

 does so ; but I could not pretend to be other than I am, 

 even to please you. Let us agree to differ upon this 

 point. If I were in your place I doubt not I should 

 feel as you do ; and, when I think of you, I put myself 

 in your place and feel with you as your brother Tom. 

 The learned gentleman who has public opinions for which 

 he is responsible is another " party " who walks about in 

 T's clothes when he is not thinking of his sister. 



If this were not my birthday I should not feel justified 

 in taking a morning's holiday to write this long letter to 

 you. The ghosts of undone pieces of work are dancing 

 about me, and I must come to an end. 



1 Cf. Reader, February 27 onwards, where these general 

 arguments against slavery appear in a controversy arising from 

 his ninth Hunterian Lecture, in which, while admitting negro 

 inferiority, he refutes those who justify slavery on the ground that 

 physiologically the negro is very low in the scale. 



