find, to a certain point, their explanation and excuse in the
circumstances in which the South is placed?

The power of surroundings is incalculable. If we ourselves, who condemn
slavery, and are right in so doing, had been reared in Charleston; if we
had led a planter's life from our earliest infancy; if we had nourished
our minds with their ideas; if we considered our monetary interests
menaced by Abolitionism; if the image of more fearful perils, of violent
destructions and massacres, appeared to haunt our thoughts; if the
political antagonism between the North and the South came to add its
venom to the passions already excited within us, is it certain that we
ourselves should no be figuring at the present time among the
desperadoes who are firing upon the ships of the Union, and attempting
the foundation of a Southern Confederacy?

It is well to ask this of ourselves, in order to learn to respect, to
love, and consequently to aid those whose conduct we blame the most
strongly. For my part, whenever I am tempted to set myself up as a judge
or an accuser of the South, I ask myself what I should do if I belonged
to the South, and this brings me back to the true position. I remember,
too, what I saw, with my own eyes, at the time when the discussion on
slavery was carried on in France; the colonial passions, the blindest
and most violent of all, broke out in Martinique and the isle of
Bourbon, as they had broken out before in Jamaica, where the circulars
of Mr. Canning, the proposition, for example, to suppress the
flagellation of women, had excited a veritable explosion. There were
some very honorable men among those who were indignant at this measure;
and, among us, likewise, the planters who determined to combat all
modification of the negro system, were good men. Severity is almost
always a defect of memory; we blame others without pity, only when we