There now lies before me a paper, containing the following remarks: "There is, however, one admitted feature in American slavery of a character so shameful as to justify almost anything that can be said or imagined of the institution. Men live with their female slaves in a state of concubinage, beget children, raise them in their families with a perfect knowledge of their origin, and sell them or leave them to be sold by others in case of decease or reverses." It is strange that those who indulge in such opprobrious remarks about southern slaveholders, do not look after their own white bastards which are scattered over this entire country, east, west, north and south. Men are everywhere, (with a few exceptions,) the world over, utterly devoid of all parental affections for their illegitimate children; and the Southern man, no doubt, has fully as much concern about his mulatto bastards as the Northern man has about his white bastards. What is the Southern man to do with his brood of mulatto children? Suppose he liberates them, their condition is but little improved thereby, unless he sends them out of the country. It is, however, clearly his duty to educate and manumit such children; but what is the duty of the Northern man surrounded by a score of his illegitimate progeny? The condition of the children of the white concubines of the North are not a whit better, than that of the colored concubines of the South; and the Northern man who suffers his children to become the victims of poverty and vice--to sink into the very lowest depths of degradation!--hopelessly, irretrievably lost, is no better than the Southern man who suffers his mulatto children to be sold. One thing is clear; the Northerner can do much more to ameliorate the condition of his unfortunate offspring than the Southerner; and for this reason, he is probably the worst man of the two. CHAPTER I.