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LETTERS
TO
CATHERINE E. BEECHER,

IN REPLY TO
AN ESSAY ON SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM,

ADDRESSED TO
A. E. GRIMKÉ.

REVISED BY THE AUTHOR.

BOSTON:
PRINTED BY ISAAC KNAPP,
25, CORNHILL.
1838.

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Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 1838,
by Isaac Knapp,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

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LETTER I.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ABOLITIONISTS.

Brookline, Mass., 6 month, 12th, 1837.

My Dear Friend: Thy book has appeared just ata time, when, from the nature of my engagements, itwill be impossible for me to give it that attentionwhich so weighty a subject demands. Incessantly occupiedin prosecuting a mission, the responsibilities ofwhich task all my powers, I can reply to it only bydesultory letters, thrown from my pen as I travel fromplace to place. I prefer this mode to that of takingas long a time to answer it, as thou didst to determineupon the best method by which to counteract the effectof my testimony at the north—which, as the prefaceof thy book informs me, was thy main design.

Thou thinkest I have not been ‘sufficiently informedin regard to the feelings and opinions of Christian femalesat the North’ on the subject of slavery; for thatin fact they hold the same principles with Abolitionists,although they condemn their measures. Wiltthou permit me to receive their principles from thypen? Thus instructed, however misinformed I may[4]heretofore have been, I can hardly fail of attaining toaccurate knowledge. Let us examine them, to seehow far they correspond with the principles held byAbolitionists.

The great fundamental principle of Abolitionists is,that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property.Therefore, we affirm, that every slaveholder isa man-stealer. We do so, for the following reasons:to steal a man is to rob him of himself. It matters notwhether this be done in Guinea, or Carolina; a manis a man, and as a man he has inalienable rights,among which is the right to personal liberty. Now ifevery man has an inalienable right to personal liberty,it follows, that he cannot rightfully be reduced to slavery.But I find in these United States, 2,250,000men, women and children, robbed of that to whichthey have an inalienable right. How comes this topass? Where millions are plundered, are there noplunderers? If, then, the slaves have been robbed oftheir liberty, who has robbed them? Not the manwho stole their forefathers from Africa, but he whonow holds them in bondage; no matter how they cameinto his possession, whether he inherited them, orbought them, or seized them at their birth on his ownplantation. The only difference I can see betweenthe original man-stealer, who caught the African inhis native country, and the American slaveholder, is,that the former committed one act of robbery, while theother perpetrates the same crime continually. Slaveholdingis the perpetrating of acts, all of the same kind,in a series, the first of which is technically called man-stealing.The first act robbed the man of himself;[5]and the same state of mind that prompted that act,keeps up the series